Am I wrong to use h264 for SD footage ?

[JonRead]

I have a direct connection to record digital satellite broadcasts at same bitrate as source, so identical to how their air basically. I love to use the h264 codec to encode most 90 mins shows in to 700mb.

People tell me I am "wrong" to encode SD material in h264 as it is only meant for HDTV. But I find a 700mb h264 to be much better quality then 700mb xvid. So why is it so wrong to use h264 for SDTV ? I understand HDTV broadcasts are in h264, but surely that doesn't limit only HDTV to this format ?

So can anyone here tell me if they think I am silly encoding SD in to h264 or is it quite common ?

[talen9]

Well, h264 is used to encode video streams suitable for devices like iPod or PSP ... that doesn't qualify for HD, I think :D

h264 is very good for low bitrate encodings; I think if you'll :search: you'll find out that some comparisons were already done in some (old) thread :)

[Dark Shikari]

People tell me I am "wrong" to encode SD material in h264 as it is only meant for HDTV.They have no idea what they're talking about. H.264 is good in basically all cases.

There are only two cases in which H.264 is not particularly useful:

1. Extremely grainy video in which most of the blocks end up being intra blocks anyways (which also limits the effectiveness of H.264's prediction ability). Obviously this only applies if one intends to keep the grain.

2. Extremely high bitrate video, where all codecs tend to converge in terms of quality.

[JonRead]

Apologies neuron2, title has now been changed, hopefully to an ok one.

[JonRead]

They have no idea what they're talking about. H.264 is good in basically all cases.


Thanks, yes, this is what I thought. I am not quite sure why they said xvid should be used over h264 in the case of SD. If something is better quality at the same file size, then to me it just makes sense to use the best.

[Guest]

That's great, thanks!

I echo what others have said. AVC is not just for HD. It's perfectly fine and reasonable to use it for SD. The only downside is that playback support is a little more dodgy as we transition from MPEG2.

[blizard]

That's great, thanks!

I echo what others have said. AVC is not just for HD. It's perfectly fine and reasonable to use it for SD. The only downside is that playback support is a little more dodgy as we transition from MPEG2.

JonRead: Don't forget to read up on use of different profiles for H.264 (Base/main/high profile) when you encode as there is different support for what kind of player (especially hardware limitation in MPEG-4 AVC capable players) that will be used for decoding in the end. In your case it could be useful to also think of that it is not much use to have a HD content (in 1080p pixel or 720p) when you don't have a screen that output at that resolution so you will gain more from re-size content to a reasonable size for both resolution and storage size.

I would recommend you to take a look at AVIdemux (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=126164)as it contains support for both Xvid and H.264 with a range of containers. It have also a useful set of filter for which you can easy re-size or clean the video image and a range of codec for sound which make it rather easy to use. HDTV broadcast can be in both MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 so I think you will find it useful to cut out commercials in MPEG-2 as that is not that easy to do in VDM if the file contain some part that is recorded wrong. AVIdemux have some problem with b-frames in H.264 and I am not sure if there are any other editor that can handle H.264 in correct way.

In the end there is more to this then a simple record all your capture in H.264 and be happy. You must know what kind of usage you want to have (portable, hardware limitation etc) to play it, how you want to store it - with or without commercials cut out - and how the quality of capture will look in the end as it can be depending on the original source quality and how the broadcaster choice to transmit it to your home. For editing purpose it might be more option to use on a Xvid encoded file then H.264, so it could be more into this then HDTV>SD.

Don't forget to pick a container that will support your need (example MP4 for portable player, MKV for more flexible option of AC3 sound etc) and can work with your combination of codec for sound and image in your video.