What is ISO compliant MPEG4?

[neo_tech]

Hi everyone,
i bought a new DVD player. so far it has given very good results with dvds, cds, cdr,cdrw,dvdrw, cdas, mp3s and all. Its manual says that it supports standard ISO MPEG4 with GMC and Q-PEL support. now am confused, coz MPEG4 is just a container, there can be innumerous cominations of different elements like audio video, fps, width, compression and what not...so if i want to convert an AVI into mpeg4 format which can be easily played by my standalone then what settings EXACTLY should i use and which software should i use to convert the avi file?
i tried converting some of the avis to xvid and some to divx...most common problems i encountered were...jerky video, freezing, and unavailability of the GOTO(search) option...also if i try to FFWD it like 2x,4x,16x,32x the movie would stop playing and would go back to the main menu of the movie...that means i have to start the movie from beginning...all this means that am not encoding the movie in a format that is comliant to my standalone.
am too eager to use mpeg4 format coz it takes up half the space as compared to svcd, or a vcd.

can somone pls guide me so that i can make use of my mpeg4 feature of my standalone?
Thanks

[BigDid]

Hi everyone,
i bought a new DVD player. so far it has given very good results with dvds, cds, cdr,cdrw,dvdrw, cdas, mp3s and all. Its manual says that it supports standard ISO MPEG4 with GMC and Q-PEL support...
Hi and welcome to the forum.

Can you name your brand and model of SAP player to have specifications to begin exchanges. :thanks:

Did

[neo_tech]

heres the site:-
http://www.videoconworld.com/consumer-durables/consumer-electronics/dvd/index.php

my model is Videocon DVD 33SA/ 33SS

[GodofaGap]

MPEG4 is not a container, it is a complete audio/video standard. The container of that standard is refered to as MP4 and will usually contain only a confined number of different video and audio codecs.

Unfortunately the link you provided does not give any kind of clues what they actually mean. But if I had to make a guess it would be that it plays MPEG4 video (e.g. DivX or XviD) + MP3 audio in AVI. (perhaps AC3 as well)

[Soulhunter]

What is ISO compliant MPEG4?
Afaik anything that can be decoded by the reference decoder... ;D

But unfortunately most standalones are limited to a certain profile/level/tool set!


Bye

[neo_tech]

ya u won't find much info about it on net. but its performance is excellent. thats the only link i could found.
btw i just tried encoding an avi xvid to divx thru Virtualdub using these settings:
video: fast recompress, compression divx 4.1
audio: full process mode, compression lame mp3

and everything worked fine on the player :)

i also wanted to add subs to the movie thru VD itself so i installed directvobsub plugin...and voila it worked!

1 thing i wanted to ask...what if i JUST want to add the subs to a movie WIHTOUT changing a bit in its video and audio streams...what i mean to say is that i want to add ONLY the subtitles and nothing else...no encoding no rippin and no nothing...just the subs permanently to the movie...then whats the easiest way to achieve this?

[GodofaGap]

It's not possible, unless you use softsubs. But I doubt your player support this. You will have to check the manual if it for example plays subs from an srt file burned separately on the disk.

[neo_tech]

actually why i want to do this is coz my player supports say DivX format, so why would i waste my time in converting movies to vcd/svcd format and also they take too much space as compared to a DivX movie.
thats why am trying to find a way to simply burn the subtitles into THAT divx movie itself without re-encoding it into any other format.

is this possible..pls tell me which software can do this easily?

thanks

[setarip_old]

i also wanted to add subs to the movie thru VD itself so i installed directvobsub plugin...and voila it workedam trying to find a way to simply burn the subtitles into THAT divx movie itself without re-encoding it into any other format.See the first quote -You've already done so!

If you check the documentation of your DivX-compatible standalone player, you MAY find that it also supports showing subtitles, of specific format(s), that are in a separate file on the same disc - either with the same name as the .AVI file or (in the case of Philips DVP 642/37) a specific, special name...

[celtic_druid]

If it supports the divx media format, then it should support xsubs. Otherwise as said most players support at least external srt's.

[Blue_MiSfit]

You mentioned you were using DivX 4.... PLEASE pretty please don't use DivX 4. If you must use DivX then use 5/6, and I would personally reccommend using XviD.

DivX4 is just too bad for words.

~MiSfit

[neo_tech]

setarip_old i didn't achieve what i want...coz by using VD am re-encoding it with different compressors. remember that DivX 4 and lame mp3 ?

Blue_MiSfit i thought to use DivX 4 coz am afraid that my standalone might not support high compressions introduced in new DivX5/6...but i'll surely give it a try. i once tried Xvid but lot of freezing and all :(

[xyloy]

Blue_MiSfit i thought to use DivX 4 coz am afraid that my standalone might not support high compressions introduced in new DivX5/6...but i'll surely give it a try. i once tried Xvid but lot of freezing and all
It's the same MPEG-4 ASP specs. What standalone players usually don't like is too high bitrate, GMC, most of the time QPEL, and more than one consecutive B-frames.

In my last DivX/XviD little comparison, DivX 6.2.2 Pro gave lower quality than XviD 1.2, and XviD encoded the movie in only 5 hours, whereas DivX was even slower that x264 for a 1h30 movie: it took 32 hours to encode!
(I used "maximized" settings for both codecs)

So why stick to DivX(and especially DivX 4) ?
Plus, XviD has "Home Theatre" Profiles were the GMC and QPEL settings are disabled, and the bitrate is very well restriced by the VBV(Video Buffer Verifier), just like in DivX 5/6. ;)

You just have to remember a few rules:
-Do not use GMC, QPEL, and more than 1 Max B-VOPs
-Do not use "Packed Bistream"(although it's the only thing that can be removed by MPEG-4 modifier without re-encoding)
-No more than 720*576 pixels, 30 FPS, and (approximately) 4800 Kbps.
-Use 2 pass encoding(since you are limited in bitrate, and most of the times the filesize target is 1 CD or two) with enough motion search precision. For example(it's just an example, use your favorite or faster settings if you want):
http://membres.lycos.fr/xcomcmdr/XviD4(AdvancedOptions).png
http://membres.lycos.fr/xcomcmdr/XviD4(TrellisQuantization).png
http://membres.lycos.fr/xcomcmdr/XviD3(ZoneOptions).png
(Cartoon Mode is suited for all kind of non "real" movies, not only old american cartoons like the option's name might suggest)

Of course, don't forget to use the last XviD 1.1.0 stable build available on http://www.koepi.org/xvid.shtml . ;)

[foxyshadis]

(Unless you have dual-code or multi-cpu, then definitely pick up 1.2 cvs build, huge speed boost.)

[SeeMoreDigital]

As far as I'm aware an ISO compliant MPEG-4 stream is any stream that conforms to any one or more parts (and/or sub-sections) of the MPEG-4 ISO/IEE 14496 specifications!

Now when it comes to which parts (of the MPEG-4 ISO/IEE 14496 specifications) your stand-alone player is able to support, is an entirely different issue ;)

[BigDid]

...
You just have to remember a few rules:
...
-No more than 720*576 pixels, 30 FPS, and (approximately) 4800 Kbps....
Hi,

Very good advices. Just wanted to add that depending on the SAP (specially the old ones with ESS chip) 720 width may be even too much; 640 is safer; as is 4000 kbp/s.
The foolproof way is: home theatre profile and 640-width. If succesfull, it is possible to toy with more advanced params.

Did

[neo_tech]

lot of useful guidance.. :) i'll try all that u guys have told me here..espicially that of xyloy.

though i coudn't grasp all that was suggested by xyloy as am new to this a/v editing area :) but still i'll give it a try.

[xyloy]

That's good news. ^^

though i coudn't grasp all that was suggested by xyloy as am new to this a/v editing area
Well, everything suggested is in XviD's configuration box for VirtualDubMod(Video => Compression => XviD MPEG-4 Codec => Configure...). ;)

(The VBV is automaticly enabled if you choose one of the "Home Theatre" profile. Same thing with any other hardware-specialized encoding profile)

[bond]

mpeg-4 asp information (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=73022)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Bummer...

I thought I had created a link to your "MPEG-4 ASP Information" thread...