Mp4 ... no comment

[symonjfox]

Hi everyone.

It's a long time since I want to create MP4 files, and now I heard there are many softwares that can do it, I tried to make them.

And let's go on: first of all, I captured a simple clip directly in MPEG4 DivX 5.02 Pro, then I demuxed the audio and encoded it into both MP3 and AAC.

Here are my troubles:

1- I can't find a player that works well with these kind of files. When I can Play MP4 files, I see that the CPU is more occuped than the same in AVI-Divx format.
The players I tried are: Divx Player, Quick time player 6, Mpegable player and wmp4player

2- The most important video features of MP4 are not supported yet. I tried every kind of Video encoding and every player I found doesn't support them. Quartel Pixel, B Frames, GMC give visual improvements (both with DivX pro and Xvid) but there's no player that can play them well.

3- Audio encoded in MP3 is nice, but if I want to get better quality using Long Time Prediction AAC (or just Main AAC) it doesn't go on some players. For example the only one player that supports Main AAC is wmp4player and Mpegable, but Quick time 6 and DivX Player doesn't.

4- A small comment about Quick Time 6: they made a lot of commercial saying that their player supports MPEG4 ... well, it's better clarify all: they supports only MPEG4 Simple Profile, then they support MP3 audio and AAC Low complexity.

I really hope to see some updates for all these programs, because it's not possible to sell a program (like Mpegable 4X or Quick Time 6 pro) and say they are MPEG 4 compilant ... they should say everything about it!

Instead I recomand the wmp4player (and thanks to the MPEG4IP team that is working well on this way)

[Tri]

There is an MPEG-4 plugin for Windows Media Player from www.envivo.com, but I haven't tested it much.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

i'm still lookin for nice encoder....
mpegable 4x is lores useless sh*t,
QT6pro won't accept anything but real .avi
(no frameserving with avs or VFAPI..etc.)
mpeg4ip guys speak of compiling my own win version

mp4 might die before it was born.....

[-h]

?

You can convert an XviD avi to an mp4 stream with the mpeg4ip tools.

-h

[symonjfox]

Or use MP4UI (wich was compiled using the MP4IP sources http://www.mediacruiser.de/mp4UI/ )

My disappoint was for commercial players that say that they are MP4 compilant, but in reality they aren't. wmp4player (made by MP4UI team) is the most compilant I have ever tested. A lot of work has to be made, but they're working well, congratulations.

[ivan_alias]

Whats the benefit to using MP4 as a container?

Is it that you can have XviD & AAC?

Is it so you can burn to CD and potentially play them in the new DVD players that support MP4 (to whatever extent)

It is cos it's cool?

It is because its a proper standard such as MPEG1 and 2?

I've been using: AVI (Divx 3.11 and VBR mp3)
AVI (XviD and VBR mp3)
AVI (XviD and AC3)
OGG (XviD and vorbis)

and so my collection is a mess in terms of standards! I have found that my AVIs are prone to failing and the Ogg files I have sem to be a little more tollerant of errors on a CD, so is this a benefit of MP4 too?

There also seem to be very few tools for MP4 usage, I thought that the licensing terms for MPEG4 alowed edicational projects now? (maybe I miss-understood this)

Is AVI still king purely because of its adoption?

[DeXT]

@I4004: of course you can find compiled versions elsewere (this site as an example), for both the mpeg4ip tools & player.

@ivan_alias:

AAC is always better than MP3.

It has big chance of being supported by future hardware players.

It's pretty cool!

It's a proper standard like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. DivX + MP3 is not an international standard, just a "de facto" standard subject to change (take DivX + AC3 as an example).

It's streamable so it's better tolerant to errors.

There are a few tools because still everyone sticks to AVI. Wait a few months and this should change.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by symonjfox
My disappoint was for commercial players that say that they are MP4 compilant, but in reality they aren't. wmp4player (made by MP4UI team) is the most compilant I have ever tested. A lot of work has to be made, but they're working well, congratulations.

They are MPEG compliant though. If we go by what you outline then no encoder/decoder currently in the public space is MPEG4 compliant. Because none of them yet impliment all of the MPEG4 specs. If all they support is simple profile decoding and they do it correctly they are MPEG compliant.

Not to say that they should not print in bold words Simple Profile decoding only. But if we want them to get their terms correct we should to.

I think videos should be labled by their aspect ratio instead of this crappy fullscreen/widescreen terminology as well. In the near future widescreen will be full screen and fullscreen will just be crap.;)

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

Originally posted by -h
?

You can convert an XviD avi to an mp4 stream with the mpeg4ip tools.

-h

i know that,and that's ok.....,but from new(although not quite
..ok),finished format i expect the following:

a)it's better than any previous mpeg4 implementation
b)it can play quite well
c)tools are available (EASILY available,and not that i have to break my
neck looking or compiling my version..ok.ok i'm currently dloading package from this site,but if it turns out it's some solaris version
then i'll be lucky again....LOL!)
d)it's not slower in encoding than xvid/divx.....

is it really so hard.....?(hehe just kidding)


it's better if it can be made(not by tempering with divx/xvid) from raw .avi and with avs scripts,etc.

i don't see point in putting xvid/divx in this container just for the sake of it.....
and standalone mp4 players are still not quite mainstream (i know only of kiss and i don't know if that works at all..etc.)

but i have to do more reading on format itself...for example i have many weird resolutions divx's....would that be playable in this new format without further processing(adding black borders etc.)?
that sort of questions.....



cheers

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by ivan_alias
Whats the benefit to using MP4 as a container?
IMHO there are 2 major advantages for the time being :

1. There is RTP streaming support for MP4, unlike other formats that have HTTP/TCPIP only ...
2. Its likely that there will be hardware players coming to the market that will support it

Is it that you can have XviD & AAC?
Any good container should be capable of handling AAc audio these days. Even OGM could support it easily, but as OGM is not coming with a replacement for the old ACM audio codec interface it is necessary to hack support for every single audio codec into the OGM DShow filters, like what Tobias has been doing with Vorbis.

This is not a sensible thing to do with AAC though, Dolby would ask Tobias for licensing costs.

Is it so you can burn to CD and potentially play them in the new DVD players that support MP4 (to whatever extent)
Yes, this is for sure a very big potential advantage for MP4 container, upcoming hardware support ( see above ). I seriously never believed somebody would be brave enough to come up with a hardware player for AVI files, but in fact KiSS proved me wrong and did so.

I have big doubts about the compatibility of this device, and AVI is very bad from a technical point for being played in a hardware device, but lets see what the first potential users playing with it will report here.

Its strange that this player is not supporting MP4 ???

It is because its a proper standard such as MPEG1 and 2?
no doubt here ... the MPEG-LA is still ruling the video world ... lets ee if the opensource community can establish a real alternative ;-) ...

I've been using: AVI (Divx 3.11 and VBR mp3)
AVI (XviD and VBR mp3)
AVI (XviD and AC3)
OGG (XviD and vorbis)
and so my collection is a mess in terms of standards! I have found that my AVIs are prone to failing and the Ogg files I have sem to be a little more tollerant of errors on a CD, so is this a benefit of MP4 too?
AVI has no inherent EDC ( Error Detection, like CRC, Adler, etc. ), so its fully relying on the EDC/ECC from the filing system it is handled on. MP4, as well as Ogg and MCF, do have an underlying EDC to give more safety here, to my knowledge all use CRC/CRC32.

With respect to your collection, its a part of the MCF development program to be able to release transmuxing programs ( we hope Koepi will help us here ;) ) that will allow easy conversion of AVIs, OGM, MPEGs etc. into MCF format.

There also seem to be very few tools for MP4 usage, I thought that the licensing terms for MPEG4 alowed edicational projects now? (maybe I miss-understood this)
MP4 is still a proprietary format, and even with the current licensing being relatively nice with small projects distributing not mayn copies ( up to 10000 copies are free of any licensing costs i guess ), developers are afraid to support it because they feel the wrath of MPEG-LA in their neck. You wont see Avery Lee support the MP4 format in Virtualdub for sure, for this very reason.

Ogg Theora and MCF are both open standard alternatives suitable to replace AVI in the near future and being a real alternative to proprietary containers like MP4, RM or MPEG.

I am not sure if Xiph people plan to support transmuxing of AVIs into Ogg in the end ( note i am not talking about OGM, but Ogg Theora ) but at least for MCF this is part of the specs ( AVI/VfW compatibility mode ). This is very important to make sure a format gest widely used IMHO, if people cant use their existing VfW video streams in a container, they wont use it. Also they certainly dont want to be limited to a certain number of codecs only. MCF will guarantee support for all VfW codecs, as well as for other new codecs on the basis of the UCI codec API ( http://uci.sf.net ).

Is AVI still king purely because of its adoption?

Yes .... but only for the time being ;) !!

[ivan_alias]

Thanks Christian, thats a great reply.
I'm glad you are back on here!

[bond]

Hm will it be (technically) possible to play back mode2-mp4 files in standaloneplayers (similar to s/vcd)?

Using the search button i just found an older thread in which de_xt wrote that mp4 files dont work with his mode2 cd maker, how is the situation now?

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by bond Hm will it be (technically) possible to play back mode2-mp4 files in standaloneplayers (similar to s/vcd)?

I will eat my old shoes if MPEG-LA should add a mode 2 form 2 extension to the MP4 container ..... highly unlikely. AFAIK there are no plans at all for a CD based Video standard using MPEG4 video and MP4 container, its all targetd on HDTV and blue laser DVDs.

Of course, XCD people could make it, but this doesnt give it hardware support in standalones automatically ....

[DeXT]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Its strange that this player is not supporting MP4 ??? Althought not advertised, there's a small "MP4" logo in the player frontend... so I guess it actually does support MP4.

I will eat my old shoes if MPEG-LA should add a mode 2 form 2 extension to the MP4 container ..... highly unlikely. AFAIK there are no plans at all for a CD based Video standard using MPEG4 video and MP4 container, its all targetd on HDTV and blue laser DVDs.

Of course, XCD people could make it, but this doesnt give it hardware support in standalones automatically .... Yes I think that MPEG-4 will be initially supported only on DVD in a standard way, but probably not on the current form (they will use new copy protection schemes instead of CSS). However non-official support for MP4 on CDs is possible, at least for players supporting DivX. Their ability to read them in Form2 relies on each player model, since some hardware players seem to start to support Mode2/Form2 natively (such as the Freecom Beatman portable MP3 player).

MP4 is not supported on XCD just due to playback problems (Envivio uses a propietary file reader filter so it cannot be used with XCD filter, which is a file reader, too). You can burn it but then you'll have to find a way to read it without manually extracting it.

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
You wont see Avery Lee support the MP4 format in Virtualdub for sure, for this very reason.

Hummm... sorry, but that seems contradicting at best and stupid at worst.

Why, Mr. Lee supports MPEG1 decoding - that is patented, but the patent owners aren't charging fees - but won't support the MP4 container - that is patented, but the patent owner isn't charging fees?

Heh.

[Neo Neko]

Some day he might. But as for now how often would you need such a feature as opposed to MPEG1 and 2 edditing?

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
But as for now how often would you need such a feature as opposed to MPEG1 and 2 edditing?

Of course, it would be pretty useless ATM.

But Christian placed it as "Avery won't EVER add MP4 support" ("You wont see... for sure")

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by rjamorim But Christian placed it as "Avery won't EVER add MP4 support" ("You wont see... for sure")

We might ask him what his plans are here ... i know where to find him ...

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
We might ask him what his plans are here...

I don't really care what his plans are. I'm just stating that this decision of not supporting MP4 for licensing reasons (if he really decided it) is stupid. :)

[Phobos]

is that mpeg4 advanced simple profile compatibility for mpeg4ip tools still on the works?? it has been that wah for almos a year