DivX He-3 codec now available from DivX Labs

[DigitAl56K]

Today we released a new beta of the DivX He-3 codec! You can install it on top of the DivX Create package, and you do not need to be a registered user to participate in the beta.

The DivX® He-3 codec builds on the previous DivX Helium codec, with enhanced support for Dual Core, HT, and SMP CPU detection, lots of bug fixes, and even more blazing performance. Even the single-threaded versions run faster! And that's not all...

Read more and access downloads over at DivX Labs (http://labs.divx.com/archives/000064.html).

[IgorC]

There is still same bug. When I try to play movie the system is hanged up.
Same inferior quality as Beta fusion. Same speed. Encoding is slow for ASP.
No progress at all during 1 year.
More of the same.

[DigitAl56K]

There is still same bug. When I try to play movie the system is hanged up.
Same inferior quality as Beta fusion. Same speed. Encoding is slow for ASP.
No progress at all during 1 year.
More of the same.

It's far, far faster!

Are you playing with the DirectShow or VFW decoders? Have you tried installing DivX 6.0.3 as a base before installing He-3 codec?

[fight2win]

Thanks for the cool update, DivX Team! ;)

[IgorC]

Digital56K
I'm sorry I'm not going to provide any feedback because I've already uninstalled it.

[DigitAl56K]

Digital56K
I'm sorry I'm not going to provide any feedback because I've already uninstalled it.

OK. FYI: This thread is for people who are going to test it ;)

Has anyone checked out the new 1-Pass Target Quantizer mode in profile mode? What kind of gains do you see using something like Extreme or Insane modes vs the 6.0 codec on your own boxes? (Post the spec and gains!).

Presumably some of you do Live capture also - what do you think of the new High Performance mode and the new implementation of Fastest mode?

[jggimi]

Digital56K
I'm sorry I'm not going to provide any feedback because I've already uninstalled it.IgorC:

It is reasonably obvious to the ordinarily prudent person that you do not like the software -- codecs, encoders, ancillary tools -- produced by DivX Networks. Many of your prior posts have been filled with negative invective.

You're not required to like their products, nor use them. Negative feedback is fine, but only when it is constructive.

Unfortunately, all you have to say is "DivX Sucks!!!" This helps no one.

You have violated the behavioral guidelines I published in How to avoid flame wars (http://forum.doom9.org/announcement.php?f=56). If you have nothing of value to add, please, don't post.

Struck for rude behavior.

[Edited for clarity]

[fight2win]

i love divx products, they provide top notch support, and their products (codecs) are also very very user friendly and provide great results! "DivX Rocks"! And yeah, one more thing, they don't have that attitude problem which the open source supporters have! i have not yet tested the new codec as i am a little too busy right now, but i am going to test it this weekend, but i have played back some content, it plays cool, as always! ;)

[tomos]

i'm trying it now, definite speed improvements, 20fps for 1080 material with an avs script - fastest. much better than the old 'helium' codec. looks good on my projector too.

i wont go into any technical stuff (wouldnt know) but i like this so far :)

[CruNcher]

@fight2win
Some people will never forget what they did that's also the reason why so many are skeptical about the coming Dr.DivX OSS release so much in it comes from OSS code that they have to go this way anyways (and what they gonna add to it ????) comunity improvements most likely will go into their Encoder stuff and maybe into Buisness Products but the question is what will they give back ???, and it's fine if your happy with the product as such that's all what count's and no i have nothing vs DivX nor Inc (they aren't Networks anymore) :)

[DigitAl56K]

Please keep this thread on topic

Dang people, for a thread at Doom9 this has to be one of the most painful I've ever been on ;)

Cruncher: If you want to post that feedback in another thread I can ask Gej and thekid to address it.

Anyone care to actually comment on He-3? :S

[riggits]

Please keep this thread on topic

Dang people, for a thread at Doom9 this has to be one of the most painful I've ever been on ;)

Cruncher: If you want to post that feedback in another thread I can ask Gej and thekid to address it.

Anyone care to actually comment on He-3? :S

hooray! testing now under way.... are there any improvements to the internal deinterlace filters?

[Ice =A=]

I have the same error I had with the previous version (memory adress 0x00000-something, I wrote about that one allready), it won't run on my Athlon X2.
It's time to switch to Nero-AVC...

[Gej]

Hi CruNcher

You must be talking about the DivX 4.0 “close closing” back in days. At least this “incident” lead to the creation of XviD (as you seem to be in the know, XviD start with a 100% DivX codebase…) so depending how you look at it, it was not necessarily a bad thing.

About Dr. DivX OSS, we do not want to throw a half-baked product into the community, allow us to take our time and make sure that the software is working the way it should before unveiling it to the word. Now rest assured that Dr DivX OSS will stay OSS, our mighty Converter will stay what it is, a Converter, there is nothing to be afraid of on that side.

Also like it on not, but we have developed complete and extensive support for DivX Codec (and also XviD) into the Consumer Electronic space starting from nothing in a couple of years, now everyone can play they content on $60 DivX certified DVD player. That may not look like an achievement to you, but no Open Source project could have done that.

BTW: you should give He-3 a try, it’s definitely faster, the kind of fast you can feel…

[Gej]

I have the same error I had with the previous version (memory adress 0x00000-something, I wrote about that one allready), it won't run on my Athlon X2.
It's time to switch to Nero-AVC...

I have an Athlon X2 and I do not have this error, can you give more precisions, on the Application used for encoding, the source and the settings. Or point me to the other post if you have already posted about that

Thanks

[Ice =A=]

Thanks for your interest!The other posts are here (http://forums.divx.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/776104432/m/645109452) .

[ChronoCross]

Well it's a bit faster on insane mode. The quality increase isn't signifigant but the speed up puts it on par with a decent codec. I don't have a SMP or multi core system so I was only able to test single processor with HT.

[fight2win]

i've run into some trouble, when feedback windows was enabled, the pc just restarted within minutes of 1st pass, and when it was disabled, virtualdub just closed itself after 1 hr.! source was pal dvd movie, unconstrained mode,insane quality,qpel off,high bitrate of 1424 kbps, 2-pass! divx 6.0.3 and he-3 were being used!

[Gej]

Just to share my experience, because the He-3 Codec heavily loads all the CPU executions units (integer, floating point and SIMD) it may put overclocked CPUs to their knees. I personally experience Virtual Dub just disappearing in the middle of encode due to too much overclocking. If you test He-3 please make sure your CPU is at a stable speed. The best way I found to find if the CPU is stable is to use Prime95 and run as many instances as you have CPU (launch it with the -A0 and -A1 parameters and so on) and run the torture test with the in-place large FFT option, a CPU can be considered stable if all Prime95 instances can run without error for 8 to 12 hours, 24 is even better. My X2 4400 boot at 2.6Ghz, run 3DMark at 2.4Ghz but pass prime95 and encode only at the default speed.

[ricardo.santos]

WOW WOW WOW

if my tests are correct this beta version is faster, a lot lot lot faster when using the EXTREME AND INSANE QUALITY MODES and im not a using dual core pc.!!!

Good work Divx Team.


BALANCED MODE
Processing thread priority: normal
source clip duration- 5 minutes(vob file)
conversion done with virtualdubmod 1.5.4.1
conversion done on a pentium 4 2.66ghz with 512Mg ram

Divx6
1pass- 7.10m
2pass-7.03m

DivxHE3
1pass-5.55m
2pass-5.54m

DivxHe3 was faster and if i was converting a film with a duration of 100m i would estimate that DivxHe3 would take less 60 minutes to convert it.(30m less for each pass)

BETTER QUALITY MODE

Divx6
1pass- 11.54m
2pass- not done

DivxHE3
1pass- 9.07m
2pass-8.43m

DivxHe3 was faster and if i was converting a film with a duration of 100m i would estimate that DivxHe3 would take less 100 minutes to convert it.(50m less for each pass)

EXTREME QUALITY MODE

Divx6
1pass- 19.10
2pass- not done

DivxHE3
1pass- 10.40m
2pass- 10.23m

DivxHe3 was faster and if i was converting a film with a duration of 100m i would estimate that DivxHe3 would take less 6 hours to convert it.(3 hours less for each pass)

INSANE QUALITY MODE

Divx6
1pass- 23.20m
2pass- not done

DivxHE3
1pass- 14.12m
2pass- not done

DivxHe3 was faster and if i was converting a film with a duration of 100m i would estimate that DivxHe3 would take less 6 hours to convert it.(3 hours less for each pass)


Hope this date helps!

Ricardo

[ricardo.santos]

onlyn problem found is that it overwrites divx6, i was no longer able to use the divx6 when i installed then divxhe3 from the list ib virtualdubmod.

[mgh]

A big jump in both compression and speed compared to 6.
Small problem, it is liable to hang Windows explorer if you have thumbnails for avis enabled. Solution-i had to disable thumbnails with instructions provided at divxlabs.

[fight2win]

i ran memtest and prime95 both for around 12 hrs. (ofcourse one bye one), no errors or warnings!

[Gej]

Thanks fight2win, so it’s not the overclocking.
Can you confirm that you have the same “virtual dub” disappearing issue with both he-3 AND DivX 6.0.3 ?
What is you hardware config and what type is your source file ?

[fight2win]

Source: Pal DVD (avs script generated using gknot, avisynth 2.5.6)
2.4 ghz winxp sp2, 512 mb ram !
have not tried with 6.0.3, just with he-3! will try with 6.0.3 tonight!

[DigitAl56K]

@ricardo.santos: Those are some great results! :)

Something else you might want to try: We added a new 1-Pass mode that lets you set a target quantizer instead of a bitrate. This should be compatible with DivX Certified devices because it is restricted by the VBV. Although you can't specify the absolute file size by way of setting the bitrate using this method, if you set a reasonable target quantizer (like Q5) then it could be possible to avoid doing multipass completely, halving your encoding time on top of the performance improvements you are already seeing.

I'm interested in getting feedback on this new feature ;)

[DigitAl56K]

fight2win: A fellow beta tester over at forums.divx.com had some problems when the feedback window was enabled. Were you using this also?

[DigitAl56K]

onlyn problem found is that it overwrites divx6, i was no longer able to use the divx6 when i installed then divxhe3 from the list ib virtualdubmod.

You can work around that for easier testing. Copy the old DivX.dll in Windows\System32 to DivX60.dll before installing He-3.

Now go and add a vidc entry for it under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Drivers32 (something like vidc.dx60=DivX60.dll).

Then install He-3, and both will be available in VirtualDub. However, be warned that all of the files you produce with the 60 codec will then have a bad FourCC code of "DX60", so you will need to manually patch them back to "DIVX" after encoding (using something like abcAVI) or they will be useless on any computer but yours, and they certainly won't work in a DivX Certified player ;)

[Sagittaire]

No doubt it's very faster even for one thread benchmark ... but quality is better ???

PS: divx 6.0.3 seem to be buggy for me in multipass encoding mode. The average bitrate for second pass is good but is dramaticaly low for the third pass ???

[sjchmura]

Sorry for a simple question ...

Is this current beta a "ASP" Like encoder or "AVC" like?

In 2005 with blue-ray, PSP, HD_DVD all supporting AVC, why not just use AVC for quality???

[DigitAl56K]

sjchmura: That's a different topic, which I don't mind addressing, but please post it in another thread. This thread is for feedback on He-3 codec :)

[Gej]

sjchmura: Long story short: PRICE
PSP: $250
HD-DVD or Blu-Ray: in the $1000 range at launch

DivX Certified DVD: less than $60
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000204SWE/ref=pd_ts_c_th_1/104-8891036-6343127?v=glance&s=electronics&n=1036916

[jggimi]

Could we please keep this thread .... as ragged as it is ... on topic?

[Gej]

:-) will do

[Adub]

Is there a possibility, for those who only have the divx6 codec that came with the create bundle and who want to stick only to it, to download and use this codec? It is registered and everything but I don't want to spend money on a create bundle that I would probably never use just to take advantage of the new speed developments of of He-3?
Please and thank you.

[Gej]

Yes its possible download the Create bundle, install it (it will install a trial version) then you can install the He-3 Codec on top of it and enjoy all the features of the He-3 codec (It doesn't requires a registration and it is not time-limited)

[DigitAl56K]

Er... actually it is time limited, but it doesn't time out until January ;)

Incase you're wondering why: We time limit our betas just incase there are any little bugs in them - we don't want the beta versions to be used forever.

[Nudnik]

The Nudnik Speaks:

Definite improvement in speed. For the first time DivX seems to perform as well, even better in some cases than the latest XviD build.

Bravo on leap in quality.

3.0 HT P4 w/1MB cache
1 GB DDR2 Memory

[mgh]

Mini bug:)
With virtualdub-there is definite speed improvement.
With avi.NET, i used to get slightly higher speed of encoding with DivX 6 compared to xvid. Now the speed with DivX is almost half of xvid.
I am guessing that the parameters passed to the codec are interpreted differently by the DivX 6 codec and the helium codec.

[Adub]

Okay thank you guys for answering my question so fast.
One more. Will this over right the Divx play bundle I have installed? I suppose it is not a problem, I could just uninstall HE-3 when it times out, and reinstall my play bundle. I just have to find my registration code again.
Anyway,
Thanks again for the answers!:P

[DigitAl56K]

Merlin7777: It won't affect your DivX registration at all - just uninstall He-3 then re-install an official bundle and you're done ;)

[Adub]

Thanks man!

[mgh]

Stupid question, but will the converter also use the Helium codec?

[DigitAl56K]

No, Converter won't use the He-3 codec yet.

[acrespo]

@ricardo.santos: Those are some great results! :)

Something else you might want to try: We added a new 1-Pass mode that lets you set a target quantizer instead of a bitrate. This should be compatible with DivX Certified devices because it is restricted by the VBV. Although you can't specify the absolute file size by way of setting the bitrate using this method, if you set a reasonable target quantizer (like Q5) then it could be possible to avoid doing multipass completely, halving your encoding time on top of the performance improvements you are already seeing.

I'm interested in getting feedback on this new feature ;)

This new 1-Pass mode is equal XVid 1-Pass quantizer mode or is there differences?

[qwprince]

ok .. i tried out divx he-3 to see if it worked on my LG-VL9810 player .. well it did with both profile & in unconstrained mode with qpel(it was not working with q-pel on in divx6) ...

but the problem i got into was file size difference - instead of the set file size of 700MB calculated in divx calculator itself i get a 9-10% increase in file-size this happens in all modes starting from balanced mode .. i dint check the diff in faster modes ...

the encode was anime - 2h18m50s @ 631kBits Video(1Pass)\64kBits Audio - instead of 700mb i get a 780mb file ... whys this happenin?

i tried with couple of other videos as well but the same 9-10% increase over the calculated bit-rate ...

[DigitAl56K]

This new 1-Pass mode is equal XVid 1-Pass quantizer mode or is there differences?

This mode uses a target quantizer, not a fixed quantizer. It is restricted by VBV so that you get good playback performance in DivX Certified players.

qwprince: Can you give me the encoder CLI string? You can get it using the Settings button in the lower left of the configuration GUI.

What framerate, frame count, and resolutions was your source, and are you filling in the audio information in the bitrate calculator correctly?

[qwprince]

qwprince: Can you give me the encoder CLI string? You can get it using the Settings button in the lower left of the configuration GUI.

What framerate, frame count, and resolutions was your source, and are you filling in the audio information in the bitrate calculator correctly?

CLI Setting:
-bv1 631325 -vbv 4854000,3145728,2359296 -pre 4 -dir "C:\Program Files\DivX\DivX" -b 1 -nf -profile=3

Source Info: 25fps, 348x182, 208250 frames

Im using Vegas 6 for editing and cropping the files as the source is 2 vcd mpeg files ...

& sorry for the double post .. :p

[EDIT]
& pls. fix the issue with the explorer crashing while creating thumbnails .. its really annoying & i really cant do without thumbnails ...

[krisq]

HE-3 hangs my premiere pro (can't get through CompilerVfW). Previous HE version was doing the same thing... WinXP pro sp1, Athlon xp Barton 3000+, 1gb ram... reinstalled divx pro6 and everything went back to normal.

[mgh]

Figured out my avi.NETproblem. It passes on only the bitrate to the codec-i think rest of the settings are unaffected.I was testing insane mode with vdub-so it was encoding in insane mode. Once, I switched to default mode in vdub, avi.NET speed became OK.
BTW single pass bitrate control with insane mode gives excellent quality at lower bitrates where 2 pass was a must earlier.
Lastly, the insane mode no longer takes an insane amount of time.