About DivX releasing rules (TDX2k2)

[spectra]

Ok i can understand that ogg/mcf... isn't ready for the new rules, but why is it still a MUST to release in DivX 3.11 or XviD.
Isn't DivX5 (after DivX4) out long enough to be stable. And hasn't the latest Doom test proofed that DivX5.02 is ready to be used with high quality (btw. on the DivxGuides page there is still the old test with divx4, the 2nd with divx 5 is here http://www.doom9.org/codec2.htm )??

What do you think ??

[MaXiMuS]

error sorry:(

[NeVeRLiFt]

Originally posted by spectra
Ok i can understand that ogg/mcf... isn't ready for the new rules, but why is it still a MUST to release in DivX 3.11 or XviD.
Isn't DivX5 (after DivX4) out long enough to be stable. And hasn't the latest Doom test proofed that DivX5.02 is ready to be used with high quality (btw. on the DivxGuides page there is still the old test with divx4, the 2nd with divx 5 is here http://www.doom9.org/codec2.htm )??

What do you think ??

I think DivX5 (maybe to harsh and I have edited it... sorry) :devil:

DivX5 is crap for making 1cd DVD rips and Nandub or Fairuse can both make better quality 1cd rips.
You wanna say different? Show me I have lots of movies and samples ready to compare. I have a ftp you upload to it and download from it if you want.

DivXNetwork souled out and they will never be used.

Just my .03

I do like that there not using CBR mp3 no more and maybe now that XviD is allowed who knows what we will see in terms of quality...
I know I dont have the perfect setup yet with XviD :(

[int 21h]

We are deliberately avoiding pushing the standard of a 100% commercially minded corporation.

Furthermore, we believe that releasing in a format that a commercial entity would have direct benefit from (more users, etc.) is unresponsible. The possiblity of anyone making money on anything we do is one we wish to avoid. We do this for fun, not to make some corporation rich and powerful :(

[flloyd]

While it is very positive that they demand VBR I find it is quite odd that they recommend --r3mix. The "--alt -preset" commandline has already proven countless times to be superior to --r3mix. Plus it is very configuable to different bitrates. I think that they should definitely replace --r3mix with --alt -preset.

[manono]

Hi-

You seem to understand these things. I couldn't understand at first why DivX 5.02 wasn't allowed, but your explanation makes a little bit of sense (although not enough in my opinion).

But what I truly do not understand is the insistence that movies up to 110 minutes must be done for 1 CD, not taking compressibility into account at all. I frequently work with old black and white movies and even silent movies in 4:3 AR. And I've seen plenty of badly sourced Hong Kong movies. These things are just plain impossible sometimes to do for 1 CD with any sort of quality. So, is there a justification for that particular rule (and please don't say to go down to 448*xxx for 4:3 movies-you know enough about the quality that'll give you).

[spectra]

Originally posted by NeVeRLiFt
DivX5 is crap for making 1cd DVD rips and Nandub or Fairuse can both make better quality 1cd rips.

I really doubt that, especially when it comes to 1 CD Rips, cause i seen Divx 5 compressing quite better. Ok the pic will be a bit blurrier but thats the same with XviD. But this also has it's good when it comes to 'moving backgrounds' in DivX 3.11 they are gone in DivX5.


Originally posted by int 21h
We are deliberately avoiding pushing the standard of a 100% commercially minded corporation.

Ok if this is really the scene opinion on the DivxNetwork, then i can understand not using it. Hopefully some free 100%-MPEG4-compliant solution will make it into the next standard, cause MPEG4-standalone player will be there in 2003.

btw: avi and the old Divx3.11 is Microsoft code, so you are pushing the most 'commercially minded corporation' in this sector too.

[maven]

i think that pusing VBR only does not yield _that much_ of quality increase but rather results in invalid AVIs (see Avery Lee's comments on VBR MP3 in them...).
if pushing VBR audio i'd much rather have it in a form that is _remotely constructed_ to be used w/ VBR audio (e.g. right now only OGG kind of qualifies)...

as always, just IMHO....

[Koepi]

I can't share the thoughts on ogg/ogm.

They're quite usable - but that's just my oppinion and this might be biased because I develop a little ogg-stuff ;)

If they clearly state that they want VobSub subtitles, then just don't use Tobias' SubDS-filters. Then you'll have no problem at all.

Or does this concern the problems users experience in the toy-OSes like win9x? I think they're all gone when not using SubDS either. But well, it's their decision, and I don't support pirating movies (_I_ just do this stuff for my pleasure - and for having alternatives to commercial products. If you don't show them the right direction they do what they like and people use that (DRM,...)).

Hm. Sounds like we're getting a philosophical thread here ;)

Regards,
Koepi

[twistee]

After reading the standards..i kinda agree with most of what they put. Except for not having ogms...i only use ogm (or ogg...) now, as they seem to be the most reliable, and really easy to use. Anyways, I dont get movies from these 'scenes' anymore, so i dont really care what they use.

EDIT
I just thought of something...if they say they dont like ogg and stuff like that as its still in development and bugs...why would they want to use xvid...as that is still in development, and although it isnt really buggy or anything...either is ogg...hmm, oh well...

[int 21h]

OGM has no viable future :(

You can be sure that Xiph will make certain of that.

[Nogami]

I mean, there are a lot of good suggestions there, but...

I like DiVX 5.02... I think it provides better quality is some cases and requires fewer encoding hacks/workarounds to produce a good quality encode. I'm not happy with the commercialization factor either, but since I didn't pay for it... :P

I share the other poster's comments about VBR-MP3. Until I get word that the concerns that Avery Lee talked about have been solved, I won't go anywhere near VBR inside an AVI wrapper. I certainly won't use them for my own encodes as I want to create "in-spec" files.

A spec sheet is nice and all, but by being so preachy and "laying down the law" so to speak, they're going to discourage a lot of people from posting content just because people like me cannot be bothered to read through 4 pages of spec guides. When I have a paying project, I'll take that sort of time to make sure my stuff is done to the client's specs, but when I'm doing stuff for free to post to the net, people will get what I give them.

I'll do my best to put out an encode with the best possible audio & video quality, using the formatting options that are the best for the video in question (in my expert opinion) but if they don't like it... They get what they pay for.

N.

[Hanty]

TDX is about scene politics and streamlined standardization, don't confuse it with quality.

[NeVeRLiFt]

All you people talking crap about DivX5 and saying it can make a good 1cd rip.... bring it! I'm ready anytime to compare. Nothing beats Nandub right now so accept it. DivX5 is buggy and loses to much detail and its full of spyware and made by people who souled out.


LoL even Fairuse makes better 1cd rips than DivX5

[Doom9]

I don't understand the fuss about all this.. most people here probably backup for personal use so these rules have no effect on us anyways.. I just mentioned it because it's nice to see that XviD gets more endorsement.

[Hanty]

Neverlift : What? Do we need your approval that a DivX5 encode looks good in order for the codec to be good?

[Koepi]

Doom9,

I think the problem I see in there is that many people need some directives (*caugh* it's meant as bad as it sounds) which they blindly follow.
And if they now see that ogm "has no viable future" or is "buggy" and has lacks in "usability" they'll simply back-off without further thinking (they're not complying to "standards"... *caugh again*).

But nice to know that "the scene" has detected XviD as alternative, I agree, it shows that the work spend there isn't lost (and that a "simple" educational project gets accepted as usual mainstream products), I agree on that point.

@Neverlift:
One thing I don't understand, _why_ do you always provoke the people and try to annoy them? (Well, at least to me the sound in your posts is a little bit disturbing.) I don't think we're here to make a "dick length competition" (dunno if you can say something like that and it still means "Schwanzvergleich"). I appreciate that you like your nandub-rips, and I can understand that e.g. XviD has some issues with curve-treatment. But still, there's no need to sound that way.

Best regards,
Koepi

[werky]

If they insist to continue to use DivX 3.11. Is just their problem.

I don't see anyone trying to download 700 Mb of a movie encoded with a codec who can't be played in their Standalone MPEG-4 ISO Compliant.
And these machines will be on the market by the end of the year.

About the comercial side on divx 5 from Divxnetworks i don't see any good on using an obsolete codec from Microsoft.

final note:
The worst of that all is the eternal problem with DivX 3.11 about FREEZE frames. No matter what technique you use and how much care you got with the encoding you never know if it will be free of freeze frames. I'm not talking about the stoping on playing cause this doesn't happen with divx 5 decoder, i'm talking about the damaged frames made by the divx 3.11 codec.


well
hasta my friends

[Razor04]

I don't see why everyone insists on being compliant for a stand-alone player. At this point I have not read of any final standard. When there is a standard I will probably switch over to a method that is fully compliant, but until then I really see no point in worrying about compatibility when no one knows what exactly you have to do to be compatible.

[cofferscuffs]

err.. tdx sucks mmk?

imho divx/xvid/etc are useless today. cost of cds is almost nothing, svcd beats divx/xvid (then dvdr beats svcd - conundrum!)... i could talk a lot of crap (mainly on why divx sucks and why the divx scene sucks even more... but i wont. instead ill leave you with this:

[ 22:42:38 ] _[ @Doom9 ] say.. DVD-R provides much better quality... they will reply.. but it takes longer to download. mention that divx is a shorter download.. they will say: it only plays on pc.. tell them about tv-out.. they don't want to use it..
[ 22:43:07 ] _[ @Doom9 ] tell them that DVD-R is supported by a lot more standalones than SVCD.. they say all non svcd compatible standalones suck

theres always something better in another person's view.. why bitch about it? ;)

the solution?

[ 22:43:10 ] _[ @c_Cuffs ] so the awnser is
[ 22:43:16 ] _[ @c_Cuffs ] uncompressed avi ownz

:D

[midiguy]

I really couldn't give a rats ass about the TDX rules. what I really don't get though, people go on preaching about how DivX 5 is produced by a bunch of corporate assholes and the like, and how it is a MUST to use DivX 3.11 AND the AVI container. but, both the AVI container AND DivX 3.11 are MICRO$OFT code! they were produced by the biggest and baddest corporation out there! why do you think M$ didn't sue when its MSMP4V3 codec was hacked??? something else that really bother me is how when people liek the peopel from TDX make a statement and then people just go and follow what they say without even bothering to do their own tests and research. like a bunch of mindless robots. and you know what? I DO release my own anime encodes, and I have my own personal encoding group. I couldn't give two shits what those dickheads at TDX have to say.

PS: Sorry if this post offended anyone. I am just a little wound up right now.. and sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes.

[int 21h]

Originally posted by midiguy
I really couldn't give a rats ass about the TDX rules. what I really don't get though, people go on preaching about how DivX 5 is produced by a bunch of corporate assholes and the like, and how it is a MUST to use DivX 3.11 AND the AVI container. but, both the AVI container AND DivX 3.11 are MICRO$OFT code! they were produced by the biggest and baddest corporation out there! why do you think M$ didn't sue when its MSMP4V3 codec was hacked??? something else that really bother me is how when people liek the peopel from TDX make a statement and then people just go and follow what they say without even bothering to do their own tests and research. like a bunch of mindless robots. and you know what? I DO release my own anime encodes, and I have my own personal encoding group. I couldn't give two shits what those dickheads at TDX have to say.

PS: Sorry if this post offended anyone. I am just a little wound up right now.. and sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes.

I hope it makes you feel better that TDX doesn't give two shits what your anime encodes, and neither do the rated sites that adopt TDX as a nuking guideline. ;)

The rest of you, TDX doesn't affect you, go on about your business, nothing to see here.

[SirDavidGuy]

Why does TDX not only set rules that make sense in a much broader sense of compatibility (Any DivX or XviD video, MP3, AVI container), and rules for number of minutes on 1 CD (within reason, again), and after that, whatever gives the best quality at a given size?

No one codec is going to give, universally, the best quality. Shouldn't quality always be the goal, not standardization? (Of course, once again, within reason ;) )

[smok3]

if divx3.11 = cracked ms code &
wm8 = ms code &
divx3.11 > divx5.0X

how come
new wm8 < divx5.0X ??? :confused:

p.s. i really wonder what a word 'cracked' means in this term, i mean how come ms cant produce something better that they did years ago?

enligten me pls :)

[cofferscuffs]

Originally posted by SirDavidGuy
Why does TDX not only set rules that make sense in a much broader sense of compatibility (Any DivX or XviD video, MP3, AVI container), and rules for number of minutes on 1 CD (within reason, again), and after that, whatever gives the best quality at a given size?

No one codec is going to give, universally, the best quality. Shouldn't quality always be the goal, not standardization? (Of course, once again, within reason ;) )

Go look at the tv scene... the goal there is speed it seems. The tdx rules has definatly made the divx scene better, but it cannot include lots of different formats for many reasons, the main one being the question of duping of rls in different different codecs and because if you gave them a chance to choose... they would just stick to what they do anyway.

[NeVeRLiFt]

Let me guess you have not heard nothing about Corona...


Originally posted by smok3
if divx3.11 = cracked ms code &
wm8 = ms code &
divx3.11 > divx5.0X

how come
new wm8 < divx5.0X ??? :confused:

p.s. i really wonder what a word 'cracked' means in this term, i mean how come ms cant produce something better that they did years ago?

enligten me pls :)

[smok3]

Originally posted by NeVeRLiFt
Let me guess you have not heard nothing about Corona...

still not enligtened :p , or should i read ur great machine specs?

[Doom9]

@koepi: you already mentioned one reason why ogm is not allowed.. check the isonews divx forums and see all the people with crappy windows versions bitching about the Vite ogm releases.. these releases work just fine on a proper OS but (unfortunately) you can't expect anybody to upgrade to a real OS... even my site still has about 30% visitors using W98 / ME despite me having it made more than clear that those are crap times infinity.

other than that let me just quote int21h The rest of you, TDX doesn't affect you, go on about your business, nothing to see here. the only reason I mentioned TDX was because I think it's nice that XviD is allowed. period.

[athos]

How about this: If you very badly want to use DivX5, encode using b-frames, no gmc, no qpel. change the fourcc to xvid. since they are both supposed to be standard compliant, this should be legal? at least hard to detect. i suspect that one would be able to tell a fake xvid from a real one, for example by examining the sequence of frame types, but how about DivX4 with xvid fourcc?

my point is that once the codecs develop further, and truly become standard compliant, the difference between them will not be the format of the resulting video stream, but the method with which this compressed data is produced from the source material. i am not saying that divx5 is at all better than xvid, but i am saying that soon i think the standards should spec what kind of file format is allowed, and maybe some requrements of the encoding method (for example vbr, vki) but then it should be up to the encoder to choose what method gives best results (ie what codec to use)

[Wilbert]

@koepi: you already mentioned one reason why ogm is not allowed.. check the isonews divx forums and see all the people with crappy windows versions bitching about the Vite ogm releases.. these releases work just fine on a proper OS but (unfortunately) you can't expect anybody to upgrade to a real OS... even my site still has about 30% visitors using W98 / ME despite me having it made more than clear that those are crap times infinity.

In a bad mood today? You know that most people are using those crappy windows versions (like me, and I don't have any problems with it), so it makes perfectly sense that their rules are made in such a way that the average user can play those movies.

[Hanty]

Wilbert : Thus sacrificing quality for compatibility.

*Wanted*
Open minds that do not see codecs in black and white.

[int 21h]

Yes and there is such a huge quality difference between a malformed avi and a 'proper' OGM file.

[Wilbert]

Thus sacrificing quality for compatibility.

Doom was talking about crappy windows versions and ogm. Apperently a lot of people have problems playing ogm-files on their crappy windows system (I have no experience with that since I don't make ogm-files, at least not yet).

I don't see why encoding in DivX3,4,5/XviD would imply sacrificing quality for compatibility (except of course that DivX4/5 are not allowed, but I guess not for compatibility reasons).

[buba king]

Originally posted by Wilbert
Doom was talking about crappy windows versions and ogm. Apperently a lot of people have problems playing ogm-files on their crappy windows system (I have no experience with that since I don't make ogm-files, at least not yet).

that must be some really crappy systems.. i have no problem running 640x480 XviD + Vorbis (-q 1) in a ogg.. on a fregging 550mhz (the slowest system in my collection) so ppl are only lacking good drivers etc. btw.. ppl with ~300mhz systems sould manage to fork out 100$ for a 1gh duron system. (cpu+mobo) :devil: and ppl who are running win98/me..:scared: well its their loss.. :rolleyes:

[buba king]

Originally posted by cofferscuffs
imho divx/xvid/etc are useless today. cost of cds is almost nothing, svcd beats divx/xvid

i have to agree on that (i love svcds) but when (?) i get my set top mpeg-4 player then i want movies in MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2 since the quality gain is GREAT and you can use better resolutions. DVD-Images are overkill. I want 5 movies on ONE DVD+RW :D .

[Hanty]

int 21h:

I don't know about you, but I'm out to make my encodes at the best *possible* quality. Settling for less in order to make archaic OSes play the encode properly tells of compatibility having higher priority than quality.

Not that it really matters to me, I just don't want fanboys coming to the forum assuming tdx is the be-all-end-all of divx encoding and then disagreeing with anything that is in conflict with the rules.
I've seen to much of that kind of narrowmindedness.

[NeVeRLiFt]

@smok3

theres a search buttom use it and stop gawking over system specs :p

[mikemikez]

Werky,
"
I don't see anyone trying to download 700 Mb of a movie encoded with a codec who can't be played in their Standalone MPEG-4 ISO Compliant."


I heard that DivX 3.11 will soon be converable to MPEG4 without loss!

Any news on that anyone?


Mike

[int 21h]

Originally posted by Hanty
int 21h:

I don't know about you, but I'm out to make my encodes at the best *possible* quality. Settling for less in order to make archaic OSes play the encode properly tells of compatibility having higher priority than quality.

Not that it really matters to me, I just don't want fanboys coming to the forum assuming tdx is the be-all-end-all of divx encoding and then disagreeing with anything that is in conflict with the rules.
I've seen to much of that kind of narrowmindedness.

The quality loss between OGM and AVI is negligible, that is, if it even exists.

The narrowmindedness here is the developers that refuse to support Operating Systems that are still at use with the mainstream public.

And that sir, is another reason OGM will remain a niche creation. You OGM fanboys are all the same. :p

[NeVeRLiFt]

@mikemikez

There is a post about this and -h talks about it.

I will find the link and add it later...


edit:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24338

[Hanty]

Originally posted by int 21h

The narrowmindedness here is the developers that refuse to support Operating Systems that are still at use with the mainstream public.


You stopped making sense now. If guys like Lee, Gabest, Koepi, Nic, h-, robshot, light_uk etc followed that kind of logic there would never be advancements made in appz/tools/codecs. They would never be able to implement new, more demanding and better technology if it had to be 100% backwards compatible with obsolete OS:es and hardware.

[lapin]

I still do not understand why we're discussing TDX rules HERE (should be done somewhere else).
This forum is about making things by yourself, TDX is about distribution. Simple as that...

yes, i know, arguing about codec & format is nice... i like it too :D

[mikemikez]

Is this really so hard to understand?

The most important thing is a constant product and a constant quality. It doesn't matter if their is a codec now that does something a bit better, the advantages of compliance to these "rules" are far greater.

Onnce there is a really sollid and proven new combination of video and audio codec or container format I'm sure these "rules" will be changed. Personally I think that once we've seen MPEG4 play properly on set-top machines the "rules" will be rewritten.


Mike

[vybez]

Rather to open a new subject on the TDX2k2 rules I'll post my question here.

Regarding NTSC (29.97 fps) and "framerate MUST be as close to original source framerate as possible". Does this mean that IVTC shouldn't be performed? I thought that by doing that (when possible) you increase the bitrate = better quality?

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by spectra Ok i can understand that ogg/mcf... isn't ready for the new rules,

You will have to wait for MCF a little longer than expected, but why is OGM not ready to be used in your opinion ? OGM files play perfectly on Linux ( mplayer ) and all Windows OS, even ME/98, maybe with the exception of some subtitle streams.

Main problem about using OGM is that no p2p program will recognize the .ogm ending as a video file, so people rename it to .avi, and this is where the problems start, nothing else.

[Doom9]

I still don't get why this is a matter of discussion around here.. I assume that most people here rip for private purposes and don't have to adhere to any rules. Nobody has said that you should follow TDX.. it's strictly a release scene thing.
it is everybody's right to decide for themselves which formats are ready for prime time and which aren't. if a group of people decide not to use a certain format that's their right.. as it's your right to disagree with that decision but you don't have to try and convert them to your beliefs just because of that, do you?

[neo_sapien]

The decision to preclude Ogg containers from scene releases is narrow minded at best. I've encoded something like 300 gigs of DivX SBC, DivX 4, XviD and DivX 5 in the year that I've been encoding and the simple fact seems to me that AVI goes bad. If you burn an AVI file to CD-R and then proceed to look at it sideways it'll become corrupt and unplayable. Not so with Ogg-the error detection makes certain that the file will play even if a good part is error-laden. And what about downloading an AVI file? If you get, for instance, 300 megs of a 700 meg ogg file, you can actually play back the partial ogg file right off the bat. Not so for AVI, unless you want to go through the trouble of rekeying the file in vdub and direct streaming it to a new avi file.

Ogg is remarkably error resistant, which is why back in March I went through the trouble of converting my entire collection to Ogg, even scene releases I had downloaded. The only CDs that go into my movie archive (basically a small cardboard box :) ) are those containing Ogg files (with the exception of MP4 test rips) because I know that they'll last and I'll be able to play them a year from now.

The move to XviD is nice-with luck we'll see that the majority of releases in the DivX scene have b-frames now.

Rather than advocating the old AVI SBC/MP3 sort of standardization, the scene should be advocating future MPEG-4 compliance as a new form of standardization so that in 6 months we can sit down and watch these rips on a TV.

Just my $.02

[int 21h]

Originally posted by neo_sapien
The decision to preclude Ogg containers from scene releases is narrow minded at best. I've encoded something like 300 gigs of DivX SBC, DivX 4, XviD and DivX 5 in the year that I've been encoding and the simple fact seems to me that AVI goes bad. If you burn an AVI file to CD-R and then proceed to look at it sideways it'll become corrupt and unplayable. Not so with Ogg-the error detection makes certain that the file will play even if a good part is error-laden. And what about downloading an AVI file? If you get, for instance, 300 megs of a 700 meg ogg file, you can actually play back the partial ogg file right off the bat. Not so for AVI, unless you want to go through the trouble of rekeying the file in vdub and direct streaming it to a new avi file.

Ogg is remarkably error resistant, which is why back in March I went through the trouble of converting my entire collection to Ogg, even scene releases I had downloaded. The only CDs that go into my movie archive (basically a small cardboard box :) ) are those containing Ogg files (with the exception of MP4 test rips) because I know that they'll last and I'll be able to play them a year from now.

The move to XviD is nice-with luck we'll see that the majority of releases in the DivX scene have b-frames now.

Rather than advocating the old AVI SBC/MP3 sort of standardization, the scene should be advocating future MPEG-4 compliance as a new form of standardization so that in 6 months we can sit down and watch these rips on a TV.

Just my $.02

MPEG-4 compliance doesn't currently exist in a small little package that we can put our rips into.

Its ironic that in one paragraph you're advocating OGM, a proprietary open source format, and in the next you're talking about moving on to MPEG-4 compliance. You think all those OGM files will load right up into your MPEG-4 set top player?

Far be it from me to bring you back to reality, dream away.

[NeVeRLiFt]

@int 21h

Hi

Everyone knows after the Mpeg4 Home DVD unit (set top box, etc)is released, alot will change, people will be making there encodes so they play on the unit. The settings will be what works on the unit. Resolution, and audio compliance are a biggie, and maybe even bitrate.

I look forward to the day the first Mpeg4 set top box is released :D

I'm sure TDX will change to make there releases work on the units.

[neo_sapien]

Of course this has occurred to me. Note that I'm advocating Ogg as a storage container. I don't mean for it to be permanent. It would take something like 5 minutes to demux the component streams and remux them to an MP4 container. Heck, I could do it right now with Graphedit, Virtualdub and mp4tools. The only thing preventing me from making rips directly into MP4 now is the lack of b-frame ISO decoder support. If I didn't mind not having any advanced simple profile options in all my rips, I'd have found it prudent already to switch to making purely MP4 rips.

The thing is, though, in several months when MPEG-4 set tops are released, the Ogg containers will have kept these movies intact and ready for conversion to an MP4 container. With the AVI container, the lack of error detection means that X amount of movies will have gone bad by conversion time.

Now one of these containers will ensure future compliance through conversion to a bonafide MPEG-4 container. The other container will ensure that we have 700 (795) megs of errors.

Originally posted by int 21h


MPEG-4 compliance doesn't currently exist in a small little package that we can put our rips into.

Its ironic that in one paragraph you're advocating OGM, a proprietary open source format, and in the next you're talking about moving on to MPEG-4 compliance. You think all those OGM files will load right up into your MPEG-4 set top player?

Far be it from me to bring you back to reality, dream away.

[CaPPyD]

Originally posted by neo_sapien
Of course this has occurred to me. Note that I'm advocating Ogg as a storage container. I don't mean for it to be permanent. It would take something like 5 minutes to demux the component streams and remux them to an MP4 container. Heck, I could do it right now with Graphedit, Virtualdub and mp4tools. The only thing preventing me from making rips directly into MP4 now is the lack of b-frame ISO decoder support. If I didn't mind not having any advanced simple profile options in all my rips, I'd have found it prudent already to switch to making purely MP4 rips.

The thing is, though, in several months when MPEG-4 set tops are released, the Ogg containers will have kept these movies intact and ready for conversion to an MP4 container. With the AVI container, the lack of error detection means that X amount of movies will have gone bad by conversion time.

Now one of these containers will ensure future compliance through conversion to a bonafide MPEG-4 container. The other container will ensure that we have 700 (795) megs of errors.



Man... you are whacked out on something fierce...

I have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about when you say your AVI's go bad....

I've got movies here that I downloaded and burned almost three years ago and I still watch them all the time...

Again, I want some of the drugs yer taking, cuz they seem to be some pretty strong hallucinogens....

:D

[neo_sapien]

LOL. Don't I wish. I have a copy of the 2cd DivX rip of the LOTR DVD Screener right here with me in an AVI container. About 190 megs of it is totally gone and unrecoverable, and there's maybe 510 megs of useful data. I tried to remux it into something that'll play in vdub, no use. So now I have an unplayable AVI, all because of a lack of error detection. This isn't the only CD that's fallen victim to AVI's suckassitude. Gimme your address, I'll mail you a copy of LOTR on AVI. LOL :p

[Christo]

Hello everyone,

First of all let's make it clear - no MPEG4/DVD players ona horizon...
High licensing fees had killed MPEG4 hardware support for the near future
Hollywood and other Movie making bonzes opted for MPEG2 Complex profile
It gives 2 times better compression than MPEG2 Simple (current DVD)
This decision isn't final yet but almost certainly will be...

Now, Microsoft pushing their own standard - Corona (WM9)
No support for it from movie making bonzes either
BUT, 80% of DVD players makers, such as Pioneer, Panasonic, Apex, other already
pledged their support regardless of Hollywood decision

I know many of you will say that Windows Media isn't what everyone was waiting for
But this is what we gonna get. In Beta on September 4. In final release by the end
of this year. The players will roll after that. To make it universal standard MS promises
to freeze farther development. That means no WM10,11,etc - Corona (WM9) forever.
Even if the encoding code will be changed abit in a future the decoder always be
backward compatible. Those guys in Seattle really know how to set standards,
don't they ;)

Some may say Windows Media quality plain sucks. I tried WM8, no it doesn't. In fact
I considere it to be more efficient than any DIVX. Of course Corona (WM9) is going
to be even better (20%). Here is something to remember preencoding/premastering (filtering, resizing, etc) very often affects quality more than encoding itself. I have
done a test of converting a DVD/VOB 4 min clip to WM8 and got a file 2 times less in
size with quality equal or better than the original. Preencoding work was done on
Virtual Dub (deinterlacing, filtering, resizing) and encoded with WM8 maximum quality.

ME THINKS CORONA IS OUR FUTURE

bye, now

[int 21h]

Originally posted by Christo
I have
done a test of converting a DVD/VOB 4 min clip to WM8 and got a file 2 times less in
size with quality equal or better than the original.

This sentence alone reveals it all. If you think you can take input from one lossy format, and convert to another lossy format, and up with something that looks better.. well then.. I have a bridge in Singapore for sale... Seriously though, you're a member of that SmR group right? :p

Hell, while you're at it, you may as well reduce the framerate to something like 20 fps, it will probably look better, less movement of the picture and all.

[Christo]

Hey, I was serios
Less noise because of temp smooth 2,
Sharper pictur because of prescise bicubic 0.75 and IVTC

[NeVeRLiFt]

Me and some friends already have Corona I mean WMP9 and where trying to play around with the codec. I'm gonna test it for Videocapture.

[smok3]

Originally posted by int 21h
If you think you can take input from one lossy format, and convert to another lossy format, and up with something that looks better.. well then.. I have a bridge in Singapore for sale... if u take ur mp3's and bridge them over a good equalizer then they can sound better (thats subjective), altho some additional (mesurable) noise and distortions will be added, thats just an example.

overall subjective quality generally is not measurable
thats from:
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/doc/vorbis-fidelity.html

you may as well reduce the framerate to something like 20 fps, it will probably look better, less movement of the picture and all never tryed that :p , but i did deinterlaced a lot of video stuff just to get that 25fps film like look, it looks cool to me :)

p.s. and i removed that bold tags in quotes, seems like the post looks kinda better without them :devil:

[theReal]

With the AVI container, the lack of error detection means that X amount of movies will have gone bad by conversion time

I have a good solution for this problem: Mitsui CDRs !! :D

On an SG Ultra CDR, I'm absolutely sure my avi files will still play in ten years (correct storage assumed) without the need for any additional error correction.

Most no-name, and even most brand-name CDRs I would not trust for more than half a year, that's right...

[neo_sapien]

I'm using Ogg and Memorex black just to be on the safe side.

[theReal]

According to info I read about CDR manufacturers there's only a bunch of actual manufacturers who produce for all the different brands. Memorex, according to this info gets all (or some? or most?) of their CDRs from Ritek Co. - and that is not exactly on the safe side...

I don't trust anything else than Kodak and Mitsui anymore...

[neo_sapien]

From what I read, memorex black is japanese, made in a Grade-A fab plant. I asked around, read a few forums, and I kept getting the recommendation of memorex black.

These CD-Rs aren't Ritek, they're from a plant called taijo hinjen (sp?) or something. black is good, because all black cd-rs come from this plant.

[SirDavidGuy]

Originally posted by neo_sapien
they're from a plant called taijo hinjen (sp?) or something.

Taiyo Yuden?

Very high quality CD's (Very little C1/C2 errors on reading back), but be wary of burning them at speeds higher than they're rated for.
I know of at least 4 people who have had them explode (One of them being me.)

[Mentar]

Wow. doom9 is definitely the best place for information about encoding, and the quality of the boards and most threads are impressive. However, I've got to say that - politely spoken - I have rarely seen that many articles containing opinionated and highly questionable statements on doom9 boards as there are in this thread.

Here's the list of items I disagree with most:

1) The statement that the DivX5 codec "doesn't produce decent 1-CD releases" is (sorry) nonsense. Most of my encodes are anime (generally considered to be on the more difficult end of encoding source material) and I've wasted 6 weeks with tinkering and testing with friends before we unanimously agreed that the quality of DivX5 (no qpels, no GMC, with b-frames for the best quality/size/CPU usage tradeoff) was superior. The theory claims a gain of around 25% in compression, and this is what our testing showed too. We redid many of our old encodes in 3.11SBC with DivX5 (and ogg, see later), and every single feedback we got was "wooo, what an incredible improvement". There may be other reasons to exclude DivX5, but quality is not a valid one.

2) The selection of MP3 strikes me as questionable, too. Vorbis achieves a better quality with a size saving of around 35% compared to MP3. AC3 is valid since it serves a different purpose (5.1 sound), but is also much larger in filesize (hence, a smaller bitrate for the video).

3) The subtitle part made me wonder if the authors really understand the topic at all. Vobsub is no "format" which can be muxed into a video. If you want to mux it, you need to do OCR (for examply subresync from the vobsub package) to for example .srt or .ssa or others, which then can be muxed, either into an .avi carrier or for example into .ogm aswell.

4) The container format discussion. When done correctly, .ogm can be made to run in every single operating system with no problem, you just need to install the right software. Except for the fact that right now Tobias seemed to have stopped development of it (a shame), it offers the most powerful and easy-to use container solution so far. A pity, really.

5) SVCDs "superior" to DivX encoding? I had to chuckle about this one - superior in which way? It forces a lower resolution, it compresses much worse and therefore wastes alot of space. The only "advantage" I can see is that it's easier to download and just burn on CDs to view in SVCD-enabled standalone players. But is that what counts? Diskjockeying during playback kills my fun for sure.

Respectfully, when it comes to both quality AND size-efficiency, I would make a strong case for DivX5 as video codec, Vorbis as audio codec and Ogg as the container. It's no problem to fit a high-quality movie encode with 2 audio tracks and multiple subtitle tracks on a single CD, simply because it uses the available techniques offering the highest quality on the least space, hence enabling higher bitrates in both video and audio with the obvious quality implications.

Just too bad that the ogg development seems to have stopped by now. I hope that the next carrier format to make the limelight will not fall back behind where ogg made it so far.

[neo_sapien]

Yeah, that's the one. I burn them at 12x, and the box says "Write from 1x up to 16x Multi Speed".

Originally posted by SirDavidGuy


Taiyo Yuden?

Very high quality CD's (Very little C1/C2 errors on reading back), but be wary of burning them at speeds higher than they're rated for.
I know of at least 4 people who have had them explode (One of them being me.)

[Tom Servo]

I've been testing the various builds of the WMV9 beta codec.

Generally the picture is fine, at least as good as Divx5 (postprocessing disabled, or else it'd be unfair). While 2601 was getting terrible blocky on highspeed motion, prolly due alpha nature, 2773 and 2798 improved a lot, and 2848 shows almost no blocks at all anymore, only on large uniform surfaces or very highspeed motion (and that only if bitrate congestion happens, for both cases. Talking with MS, I found out that deblocking will go into the decoder). Also WME7.1 doesnt allow VBR even less 2pass, so I couldn't test that one.

I'm still awaiting about any specs how a WM9 DVD layout should look like. If I got those infos, I'll make WM9 MiniDVDs from then. :)

If the majority of the DVD standalone players will support WM9 in future, I think it's worthy to consider doing WM9 MiniDVDs.

And about TDX rules, dunno what to think about it, but this packaging rule is kinda stupid:

Must be packed with RAR, compression is NOT ALLOWED and broken into 15 or 20 MB volumes

Even if it results only into avg. 5% compression, better than nothing.

[oddball]

Have you ever tried to decompress 700 megs of compressed rar files? It takes AGES compared to uncompressed. The 5% is usually actually more like 1% or less from what I've seen. The movie is already compressed pretty much as much as it can be. The gains aren't great enough for the length of time it takes to download those few extra megs on broadband and more of a pain for decompressing them. Uncompressed is how I like them archived thanks.

[SirDavidGuy]

It's because releases are usually split into parts, since they're often released on IRC or newsgroups.

[((( atom )))]

another (the main, i guess) reason is that warez-groups pirate public servers and don't want the admin to easily find these huge files. with these small files he just doen't have a chance to simply search for and delete everything about 100mb or so.

/jc

[theReal]

you can upload small parts to a lot of different free (or inexpensive) web-accounts but you won't find a free account where you can upload 700MB.

Then, if there's only a 20MB part of a rar archive on one server, the admin doesn't have any good arguments to delete the file because he probably can't prove the content is illegal.

However I think downloading movies like this is a pain in the ass and I rather use the time to rent a DVD and make a good Divx backup myself. It's more fun :)

[((( atom )))]

no no, people simply hack vulnerable ftp-servers (windows)with scripts, kids can use and start their own server-process. i've seen some doing that. rather funny, lol. good bandwidth they can achive..
but as you said: go and make it on your own is teh eral fun..

[mikemikez2]

The most important reason for using rar archives is to protect the data in it. I know some groups don't turn on the rar option called "protect archive from damage" but they are just stupid.
Next to that when you got a small part of your upload/download that's messed up you can make things right by just re-upping/downloading/fxp'ing only one 15MB chunk.
(some use 20MB chunks now and DVD-R's are mostly 50MB chunks)

I know some parts of these so called "rules" are questionable but the major advantage is UNIFORMITY. When you are in the scene you will learn to apreciate this a lot and it's way more important and contructive to the scene than just using some tiny bit better codec or so...

Some might just bash this "scene" nomatter what but I think it's pretty amazing how it operates within an extremely distributed "architecture" (which is what keeps the scene alive) and especially how well and organized stuff is being done.
Little mistake in a rip? Same or next day you'll find a nice FIX or rerelease....

Next to that, "the scene" shows us that nowadays the distribution network media corporation have can very well be replaced by people working for free on the internet. (Even under current political pressure) This distribution network is what media companies say gives them the right to charge insane amounts of money for cheap copies that contain maybe a few cents of actual efforts made by the artists.

Don't let them shut down the internet! Don't let them get more controll over over media in general by legally closing down distribution at the level of encoding!

So much for my speech..:)

Mike