Which container for x264 with ac3 and anamorphic?

[Slogra]

Which container can i use for x.264 with ac3 sound and anamorphic aspect ratio? And what program do i use for this?

[stephanV]

Matroska, MKVmerge...

[foxyshadis]

mp4, mkv, ogm, quicktime 4+, and probably more. :p I'd go with stephan's suggestion though.

[Slogra]

Thank you for your fast answers :)

[Caroliano]

AFAIK OGM can't handle native MPEG4 and there is no suport for AVC. AVI is very better than OGM in that case... the only thing for wich OGM exist is for suport vorbis as sound, nothing more....

The best option is Matroska, as it is designed for suport as many formats as possible, and maybe mp4, because Nero implemented that, although it is not defined in the standart.

And what you mean by quicktime? The .mov? They are not planed to suport this type of audio and video. No one will expect an High profile AVC + AC3 in an quicktime file. And it is proprietary.

[stephanV]

Nero doesnt support AC3 in MP4. Nothing does AFAIK.

[Doom9]

Nothing does AFAIK.I agree. This is clearly a case for Matroska. OGM would work as well though. AVI works, too, but if you start using advanced AVC features and think cutting will work the same way it works for DivX and XviD, you'll soon find that this is not the case at all.

[stephanV]

OGM would work as well though.
OGM exhibits the exact same problems as AVI.

AVI works, too, but if you start using advanced AVC features and think cutting will work the same way it works for DivX and XviD, you'll soon find that this is not the case at all.
How is it not?

[movax]

I assume that he means that VFW x264 encoded AVIs are indeed not the best choice for simple splitting/joining operations, as I've never had luck with chopping up and rejoining AVC AVIs without resorting to Avisynth. Those files seem to cause bits of trouble though, I believe someone just did a big AVC + AVI release, and problems were reported.

[stephanV]

I cannot say I have found any noticable problems with cutting and joining AVC AVI's, but that might just be my luck and I haven't tested it very extensively.

[Doom9]

How is it not?what happens if you were to cut at an I-frame that is not an IDR frame? Those long time references are likely to cause problems. And then there's the offset you incurr with b-frames that (I think you told me about that).
OGM exhibits the exact same problems as AVI.agreed. But as well doesn't mean just as well.. MKV has the upper hand in this scenario as it natively supports AVC and AR signalling.

[stephanV]

what happens if you were to cut at an I-frame that is not an IDR frame?
If you only mark IDR frames as key frames (which x264 does AFAIK) there is no problem. And only marking IDR frames as key frames is the right thing to do, since I frames are not key frames in AVC.

Those long time references are likely to cause problems.
Not really, at worst you cut at a b-frame which then can't be properly decoded anymore, but I doubt this would pose any major problems on decoders and this situation is not any better for non-packed XviD streams.

And then there's the offset you incurr with b-frames that (I think you told me about that).
The offset shouldn't cause any problems... in fact, while you're at it you can just delete the drop frames while cutting and get rid of it all together. (that is the encoding offset, not the decoding delay)

Trying to re-derive key frame flags of AVC streams with VirtualDub is a much bigger problem if you ask me, so don't break your index! :p

(but this is possibly a problem of ffdshow)

Anyways, editing non-keyframe-only streams streams is highly problematic whatever container you'd use.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Personally I would re-encode the 6Ch AC3 stream to an 6Ch AAC stream and use YAMB to mux the whole lot into the MP4 container with some chapter points.... but I guess I'm on my own with this one ;)


Cheers