AutoGK's ESS & MTK conpatability settings

[yetanotherid]

My question is rather simple.... can anyone explain to me exactly what those settings do?

I understand why they're there, in fact as I understand it the ESS setting should allow the resulting AVI to play on pretty much any standalone player, so that's the setting I always use. As a result, I've not once produced an AVI that a player has refused to play, and I've use a variety of them over the last few years.

The reason for my question, aside from curiosity, is that there's occasions where I want to convert a file which AutoGK doesn't handle. Sometimes I could use another converter which will (StaxRip for example) but I don't know if that'll give me the same level of compatibility, or if it can, how I achieve it.
Many times recently I've decoded files to uncompressed video inside an AVI and then converted that AVI using AutoGK (so as not to lose quality with two conversions) however if there's a way to achieve this using another program without the added step of decoding manually I'd be interesting in trying it.

Thanks.

[manono]

RTFM:
A note for those with standalone dvd/mpeg4 players. There are two standalone compatibility options available for you during installation of autogk (note they also available after you installed autogk in its hidden options):

ESS-based standalones. mpeg4 players with ess chipsets don't work with the matrices that autogk uses with the xvid codec (you don't have to understand what a matrix is, just follow the instructions). Please choose this option if you have such player. Perhaps the problem will be fixed with a firmware upgrade, and perhaps not. But you won't be losing anything, or getting a movie inferior in any way by choosing that option. If you have such a standalone player, and your xvid videos play with corruption and/or smearing, try this setting. For both xvid and divx codecs this option also enables home theatre profile which is a part of divx certification for hardware devices and which enables control over vbv buffer. Most standalones have issues with high bitrate spikes that cause internal memory of the player to be full and do not accept more data for a short period of time. This causes pauses, skips and and shuttering. Both divx and xvid support intelligent control of output buffer overflows so that this problem can be eliminated. Make sure to turn this option on if you experiencing such symptoms during playback on your standalone. Note that its not the only possible reason for having pauses and skips - users reported that by burning movies onto dvdrs instead of cdrs playback can be dramatically improved. Also quality of dvd reader in standalone players varies a lot and cheap reader can be a reason behind your problems as well (check out doom9's hardware forum for related discussions)
MTK/Sigma based standalones. the difference to the previous option is only usage of custom matrices for xvid. Vbv buffer control (in the form of ht profiles) is enabled as well by this setting.

If you are not sure which standalone you have its safer to activate ess support which is the most universal at the moment.
I know nothing about what other programs do.

[BigDid]

...
Many times recently I've decoded files to uncompressed video inside an AVI and then converted that AVI using AutoGK (so as not to lose quality with two conversions) however if there's a way to achieve this using another program without the added step of decoding manually I'd be interesting in trying it.

Hi,

You now have the infos. To summarize
- ESS: Home theatre profile, no custom matrixes
- MTK: MTK profile custom matrixes possible

To get same quality/compatibility with another program, you will need to analyse the AGK encoding options and reproduce them (preset). For example see the AGK/Fair Use discussion in one of the threads...

Did

[yetanotherid]

Excellent, thanks guys.
I have a friend who's player is much fussier then mine. It never has a problem playing video I've converted with AutoGK, but some downloaded videos won't play. I've never been able to work out why because loading them into gspot doesn't reveal anything that should stop it from playing them. Of course it doesn't give a descriptive error message, just one that says "unsupported video". I guess now I may know why. It's a Philips player, although I can't remember the model number, but it's fairly new.

So BigDid, when you say "no custom matrixes" (for ESS) I assume that means you'd be using the default Home Theatre profile matrix? It's just that I thought in the past when opening xvid's options I'd seen AutoGK change the matrix. I'll have a look for that thread you suggested and do some more reading.

One other question while I'm here if that's okay....
AutoGKs option to force the use of a sharp matrix.... I know using it tends to result in a larger file size for a given quality, and I know this question probably requires a subjective answer, but how much difference does using a sharp matrix, or for that matter any other custom matrix, actually make?
I've done conversions using both settings in AutoGK and to me the sharp matrix makes no noticeable difference when converting good quality video, but on low quality video it sometimes does. Only to me it's not necessarily a good difference. Maybe a bit like using a sharpening filter on playback. To me it rarely makes a picture look "better" as such, but for want of a better description just makes it look a little more grainy.

Thanks for the info.

[yetanotherid]

I knew I had another question.....

When you have the ESS option selected, and you choose single pass encoding, AutoGK pops up a warning message telling you certain compatibility settings will be ignored. I've always wondered as to which ones.

[BigDid]

... Of course it doesn't give a descriptive error message, just one that says "unsupported video". I guess now I may know why. It's a Philips player, although I can't remember the model number, but it's fairly new.
Hi,

My Peekton reads whatever I throw at it but my new LG recorder not. I made an encode with Qpel to test and had the same message.



One other question while I'm here if that's okay....
AutoGKs option to force the use of a sharp matrix.... I know using it tends to result in a larger file size for a given quality, and I know this question probably requires a subjective answer, but how much difference does using a sharp matrix, or for that matter any other custom matrix, actually make?
You can have a look a post n° 4636 in the main thread, some numbers there. mY subjective answer; quality from poor to very good with Xvid:
Very compressible matrix (Jawor 1cd) , soft resizer, small dimensions and size file =>
Mid compressible matrix (AGK sharp matrix), neutral/sharp resizer, mid dimensions size file =>
Low compressible matrix (Heini MR or Didée 6o9), no resize, High size file


.. To me it rarely makes a picture look "better" as such, but for want of a better description just makes it look a little more grainy.

Better is subjective, depending on the screen to spot the differences. Grainy can be grain :rolleyes: or details or mix of the two.
It may be the time for you to get infos out of AGK, like from the xvidencoder directly. It will tell you what infos are in the preset Home theatre or MTK, you will be able to spot the options used by AGK for encoding, differences in 1 or 2 pass encoding etc...

Did

[yetanotherid]

Thanks again!