I miss xvid/divx.

[weaver4]

I moved away from xvid/divx about a year ago to H264 for smaller file size and better quality.

I have a lot of different toys and I seem to have to encode x264 differently for all of them. One way for my iPad, another for my WDTV Live, one for my popcorn hour, one for my playstation, one for my iphone, one for Apple TV.

Now I know that I should be able to encode for everything using H264 Main Profile 3.0; but that is not great quality. So I should be able to use HP4.0 on everything but my iPad and iPhone...and Apple TV, but it does not seem to work out that way.

Not to complain but I miss the AutoGK->XviD->PlayOnAnything days.

Anyone have a secret formula (or tool) to resolve my pain?

[Midzuki]

^ Anyone have a secret formula (or tool) to resolve my pain?

Yes — try to convince the manufacturers of the playback devices to produce hardware 100%-compliant with the H264 specs. :)

[weaver4]

Like DivX Certification??

[JEEB]

I think you are misunderstanding something.

There was never a PlaysOnAnything standard. It was just because most of the makers -- or at least part of them happened to support exactly certain features and resolutions (resolution support was actually pretty random IIRC -- it's just that we didn't exactly want HD onto those players and they would've not really been able to cope with that in the end, even 720x480 or 720x576 wouldn't always work). The fact that there were no certain profiles, no levels (there actually were, but those were quite not looked upon) etc. etc. just made people go for the lowest common denominator.

Which is also what you seem to have also found out. If you would have had an older iphone/whatever you'd have the pleasure of encoding level 3.0 baseline for everything if you wanted a single encode for everything :P

With H.264 there are somewhat clear limits and finding out what exactly a certain piece of hardware supports is no longer as hard as it was with the "limitless" age of MPEG-4 Part 2 and friends. You should actually be happy of all this actual knowledge instead of thinking that something was "better" during the age of MPEG-4 Part 2 >_>

Anyways, I'd see the popcorn hour, the PS3, WDTV Live and iPad all supporting 1280x720 H.264 Level 4.0/4.1 with AAC audio in the mp4 container. That's one encode. Depending on your iPhone's model it either fits the same as what I already mentioned (iPhone 3GS and onwards IIRC) or needs level 3.0 baseline, leaving pretty much your Apple TV -- for which I just don't know what works and what doesn't (not to mention that there are multiple generations of it).

TL;DR "Yeah right, PlaysOnEverything. You wish."

^

Yes — try to convince the manufacturers of the playback devices to produce hardware 100%-compliant with the H264 specs. :)
They are fully compliant (in most cases, forgetting about random decoders failing with weightp etc.), just limited to a certain feature set.

Which makes sense.

[Dark Shikari]

I moved away from xvid/divx about a year ago to H264 for smaller file size and better quality.

I have a lot of different toys and I seem to have to encode x264 differently for all of them. One way for my iPad, another for my WDTV Live, one for my popcorn hour, one for my playstation, one for my iphone, one for Apple TV.

Now I know that I should be able to encode for everything using H264 Main Profile 3.0; but that is not great quality. So I should be able to use HP4.0Oh no! A 5% loss of compression! Whatever will you do? :rolleyes:

[nm]

Not to complain but I miss the AutoGK->XviD->PlayOnAnything days.

There were (and still are) lots of mobile devices that only support MPEG-4 SP and not ASP.
Plus arbitrary resolution and bitrate limits like many devices have with H.264.

[Kuukunen]

Is Main Profile 3.0 worse than Xvid/DivX?

Why do you miss them then?

[nurbs]

One way for my iPad, another for my WDTV Live, one for my popcorn hour, one for my playstation, one for my iphone, one for Apple TV.
Assuming you have a new iPhone (3GS or 4) and an AppleTV 2 HP@3.1 in MP4 with AAC audio will work on all of your devices.

[weaver4]

Assuming you have a new iPhone (3GS or 4) and an AppleTV 2 HP@3.1 in MP4 with AAC audio will work on all of your devices.

I think it is Main Profile 3.1, isn't it?

[nurbs]

Apple lists Main Profile in the specs, but everything they released since the iPhone 3GS definitely supports High Profile.

[Audionut]

I think it is Main Profile 3.1, isn't it?

No, apples spastic transfer software thinks it's MP.
But the devices themselves support HP.

[7ekno]

Simple solution, don't use a manufacturer that doesn't support your profile choice (aka any "i" crap :P) ...

7ek

[Blue_MiSfit]

Apple's own iTunes video content is High Profile, or so I'm told.

I have an iPhone 4, and I can sync across High Profile stuff just fine. Not sure what the issue is here...

If you need to be compatible with first generation iPhone/AppleTV/older iPods, then use baseline @ L3. Otherwise, you can simply target the device which supports the "simplest" settings, and simply encode for that. Increase bitrate a tiny bit to make up the difference if you absolutely must :)

Derek

[IgorC]

Not to complain but I miss the AutoGK->XviD->PlayOnAnything days.


It wasn't that easy. All the mess around Qpel, different types of GMC, the number of B-frames, resolution.
After to say NO to all those features Xvid files have become more playable on almost everything.

As of x264, go to the maximum common profile supported by your hardware. Excellent solution.