>h.264< ?

[Shootist]

Hi,
yesterday I read a newsline called "h.264" in a magazine. I`ve wondered me because they said, it makes mpeg1+mpeg2 files only a half/quarter of the size it would produce today. But only the hardware today is to slow. Anybody heard something else about? Or can somebody correct me if I`m wrong.

[Update]

For all who want to test the interesting new codec and maybe the future of MPEG goto Rarewares http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/ under the mpeg section

The source can be found at hdot264 page (http://hdot264.sourceforge.net/)

The project is still in very early development. So all who don`t want to test the codec may waste time because even with the fastest settings it still takes some minutes to encode a single frame. Also decoding is very buggy. But the result is amazing. All people should hope that this project gets continued because the potential is huge.


good settings for the encoder.cfg: (from Tommy Carrot, Selur)

-reference frames=1
-searchrange=8 (instead of 16)
-RDOptimization=0
-AdaptiveBlockTransforms = 0 (may result in crash, I have to set it to 2)
-NumberBFrames = 0 (disable)

decoder.cfg:
-move the file to C:\ or maybe the codec won`t find it
-set: 0 ........NAL mode
If your are still not able to decode the avi, use yuv2avi (http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=174083) to convert the yuv file to avi.


Use a low res to speed up the encoding!

@developers Please continue the good work! It`s worth doing so!

[CruNcher]

use search button above
it's an alltime discussion here ;)

[IBJr]

Originally posted by CruNcher
use search button above
it's an alltime discussion here ;)

Was that sarcasm? All I could find were threads w/ at most 20 replies.

[Tommy Carrot]

If you searching for "H.26L", you will find more matches. It's the old/development name of H.264.

[rjamorim]

http://hdot264.sourceforge.net/

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by rjamorim
http://hdot264.sourceforge.net/

I'm afraid that project is dead. :(

No changes since months.

[rjamorim]

Yes, but at least the author seems to be alive.

http://www.everwicked.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1540

[Shootist]

ok, I tried to download the source and compile it, but I`m not so familar with sourceforge`s system. is there a tool to download the source easily? (I tried WINCVS, but I had many problems with this tool)

would be cool if someone answers...

[CruNcher]

@IBJr
sorry i forgot to mention the old name H26L

@Shootist
http://bs.hhi.de/~suehring/tml/download/Unofficial/
there you can find the newest unofficial Reference Code by one of the
VCEG Memberst he is the Software Maintainer and as you can see long time no update has been done on the Reference Code it looks like their almost finish and the new Spec is going to be released soon only speculations but the evidence speaks for itsself :)
Mpeg-4 V10 AVC lays in Santas christmas bag ;)

[Shootist]

thanks a lot

[Tommy Carrot]

Be warned: The reference software is VERY slow. It ain't good for anything else than short (~100 frames long) tests.

But after the h.264 is standardized, i guess we shall see several project based upon it. Maybe Xvid2 too? :D

[Koepi]

h.264 is going to be adopted to the mpeg4 standard as "Advanced Video Coding" AVC profile.

So no need for xvid to split up - or did we call it xvid1 vs xvid0 when we started implementing Advance Simple Profile (vs. Simple Profile)?

We'll modify the GUI so you can choose the profile you want to use for encoding which enables/disables xvid's vfw controls accordingly. But let's wait for the integration/presentation of h.264 into mpeg4 first - and let's make ASP stable.

Regards
Koepi

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by Koepi
h.264 is going to be adopted to the mpeg4 standard as "Advanced Video Coding" AVC profile.

So no need for xvid to split up - or did we call it xvid1 vs xvid0 when we started implementing Advance Simple Profile (vs. Simple Profile)?

We'll modify the GUI so you can choose the profile you want to use for encoding which enables/disables xvid's vfw controls accordingly. But let's wait for the integration/presentation of h.264 into mpeg4 first - and let's make ASP stable.

Regards
Koepi

Yes, but Advanced Simple Profile is just an extension to the Simple Profile. H.264 (or AVC) is an entirely different technology, it works completely differently (iirc not DCT based, multiple macroblock sizes, etc.). There would be only a few shared code-parts, so the source would be a complete mess.

But your version sounds better, i would be glad if that is possible without difficulties. :)

[-h]

The AVC profile will be a radical departure from the other profiles. I would rather see a fork into a new project (or even start from scratch with the reference source and optimize from there).

It's just that almost all the core components - the transform, quantization method, motion compensation, block sizes, frame referencing, vlc codes, block storage syntax, etc. - are different compared to the existing MPEG-4 profiles. It could be implemented inside XviD, but there'd be such small amounts of shared code it would cause a lot of headaches - about the only functions you could share between AVC and the rest would be sad16/sad8 and colorspace conversions!

Not that I wouldn't like to see it done :) I know Isibaar has been keeping an eye on the development of the standard. I haven't looked too closely at it actually, so it might have more shared parts than I'm thinking.

-h

[karl_lillevold]

You are right. There is almost nothing in common between H.264 and the old MPEG-4. Sharing a common code base does not make a lot of sense, IMHO.

[vinouz]

BTW, -h, do you and Isibaar & other xvid developpers plan to work on H264 now ?
I've been some far away from xvid project, because, at the point it was when I looked at it, I didn't feel very useful and it needed quite work in order to be fully inside the core project.
But, then, to starting a new fork, I'd greatly appreciate join your team.
I've democoded some quite long some years ago, and did a software to treat signal on my F030's DSP, so I think my skill can still be of some use here, when talking about optimisations and signal processing.
But dou you guys have new about the Hdot264 project ? Maybe it's the fork that's to join. I'm waiting the finalization of the standard, though...

Vincent

[vinouz]

BTW, I wish you all a merry X-Mas and happy new year, at least a happy christmas, as I won't be available until then.

Vincent

[-h]

There's not really any formal way to join or contribute to XviD - write some code, post it to the devel mailing list, and if it works (well) it'll probably get committed in some form. Point optimizations (such as only rewriting or creating assembly for a single function, like an RGB->YV12 conversion) are the most common and easiest bits of code to create.

I don't know of any concrete plans to work on a H.264 codec, but if it's done I know that any coding experience is welcome.

-h

[gino25]

Hdot 264 has an activity of 23%. Do this project continue his development?

[rjamorim]

Just FYI, I uploaded a build of hdot264 (http://hdot264.sourceforge.net/) to RareWares. Link is at the bottom of post.

File compiled with Intel Compiler 7.0.

Regards;

Roberto.

[Selur]

hmm,.. installed hdot264.inf, but when I want to configure it it want's to create an encoder.cfg . Which starts as empty 'txt' file,.. so could you or someone else please post some info's on how to configure the codec?

Should it be done like mentioned in this post http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=745296&forum_id=212109 about the decoder.cfg ? (I know decoder != encoder)

May be a little ReadMe distributed with the codec might be wise. :)

Thx

Cu Selur

/edit
Even if u don't configure the codec, there's a problem, it asks for an h264enc.dll, but the only dll in the zip is named hdot264.dll,...
edit/

[Mango Madness]

whoa, a binary of h.264! Even though i haven't a clue how to get the config file working or whatever it's excellent to see a compiled version. Thanks for the work and maybe some people smarter than I will shed light onto how to get it working.

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by Selur
hmm,.. installed hdot264.inf, but when I want to configure it it want's to create an encoder.cfg . Which starts as empty 'txt' file,.. so could you or someone else please post some info's on how to configure the codec?

Should it be done like mentioned in this post http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=745296&forum_id=212109 about the decoder.cfg ? (I know decoder != encoder)

May be a little ReadMe distributed with the codec might be wise. :)

Found the sample files and a readme. Will upload with the missing DLLs.

/edit
Even if u don't configure the codec, there's a problem, it asks for an h264enc.dll, but the only dll in the zip is named hdot264.dll,...
edit/

Me is dumb. I'll upload the needed DLLs ASAP.

whoa, a binary of h.264! Even though i haven't a clue how to get the config file working or whatever it's excellent to see a compiled version. Thanks for the work and maybe some people smarter than I will shed light onto how to get it working.

right click on the .inf file -> install.

I'll see if I can provide a NSIS installer soon.

Regards;

R.

[Selur]

"Found the sample files and a readme. Will upload with the missing DLLs.
Me is dumb. I'll upload the needed DLLs ASAP."
Cool, looking forward to it,.. btw. what's the xvid.inf for that's in the zip file ;) ?

Cu Selur

[rjamorim]

Uploaded. The zip file now contains hdot264.dll, h264enc.dll, installation .inf script, readme and sample config files.

No NSIS yet. Should be done this afternoon. (After I update MPEG4ip)

what's the xvid.inf for that's in the zip file?

Dunno! But it was there in the CVS, so I added that too.

Anyway I removed it in this new package, because I think it's indeed useless. If somebody misses it, please report.

Regards;

Roberto.

[Selur]

thx, for upping the files,..

/edit:
for those who are testing,.. atleast if u use avs2avi you neeg do copy the h264.dll in the same dir als av2avi.exe .
Copying it into the system32 folder might also work

If someone finds some nice settings plz post them
Thx
edit/

Cu Selur

[sillKotscha]

Originally posted by Selur
Copying it into the system32 folder might also work

moin Selur,

right click on the .inf file to install hdot264 already copys the dll into the system32 folder ;)

cheers Sill

[Selur]

oh,.. didn't notice that, okay than that's not an alternative ;)

Cu Selur

[rjamorim]

Uploded the package in a NSIS installer.

Seems to be working fine here. But please report any issues you might experience.

Regards;

Roberto.

[Mango Madness]

any special encoding programs needed? Cause neither vidomi nor virtualdub can handle it. I used the default config file but it seems the codec goes into thread deadlock (at least with virtualdub).

[Selur]

ehmm,... you have to configure the encoder.cfg, open it and you will see why,... (as far as I saw the standard encoderer.cfg only encodes 2frames ;) )

Cu Selur

[Mango Madness]

i can't even get it to encode 1 frame ;) but i did notice that option

[Ramirez]

Well,it's works for me, I'm using Vdub, and Default Encoder.cfg
The only problem is >Speed, on my machine it takes something like 5 min to encode a single frame. (XP1800)

[Selur]

and that at a resolution of 176*144 ;)

Cu Selur

[Ramirez]

I don’t quite understand this post above, was that an irony?

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by Ramirez
I don’t quite understand this post above, was that an irony?

I don't think so. Fact is, h.264 is as slow as you will get. ;)

Wait some years until you can even dream of real time encoding.

[Selur]

hups my mistake (mixed Source and Input), but don't expect too much, here some values from the standard encoder.cfg:

SourceWidth = 176
SourceHeight = 144
(though a lot of detail should be lost)

IntraPeriod = 0 # Period of I-Frames (0=only first)
QPFirstFrame = 31 # Quant. param for first frame (intra) (0-51)
QPRemainingFrame = 30 # Quant. param for remaining frames (0-51)
FrameSkip = 1 # Number of frames to be skipped in input (e.g 2 will code every third frame)
MVResolution = 0 # Motion Vector Resolution: 0: 1/4-pel, 1: 1/8-pel
UseHadamard = 1 # Hadamard transform (0=not used, 1=used)
SearchRange = 16 # Max search range
NumberReferenceFrames = 5 # Number of previous frames used for inter motion search (1-5)

Quant 30+ also doesn't soudn too good.

Cu Selur

[Tommy Carrot]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32577
is the old topic of this stuff. You can find some settings there, i was able to reach the awesome 1/3 frame/sec at 640*384. :D I just hope the VFW codec is not even slower. :)

[Mango Madness]

1 frame per 15 minutes on a duron 1.33 (133/133) w/256meg of PC133. At least i've gotten past the first frame. cheers.

[Selur]

Tommy Carrot posted on the other thread:
I've discovered the fastest mode:
-reference frames=1
-adaptive block transform=0
-searchrange=8 (instead of 16)
-RDOptimization=0

Are these the changes you did?

Cu Selur

/edit
Was anyone able to decode a file? I just tried to which caused my system to reboot,.. *gig*
edit/

[Ramirez]

I'm experiencing similar problem here, when I try
To decode an h.264 Avi file, my system simply shuts down.:eek:
I'll tray to encode a few frames later, using Tommy Carrot's Fast Settings.

[SirDavidGuy]

Looked at the source (again).

Still no ME (other than FS), making it incredibly slow. Add that to multiple reference frames and 4th/8th/16th pel algorithms used, and it's bound to go incredibly slow.

[Bulletproof]

How is the codec supposed to act when you try to use it? I think I set the config file properly, but when I try to encode a file in virtualdub it never shows the encoding panel, it just freezes the program.. unless its taking a really really really long time for the first frame, im on a 1.9ghz (actual speed) cpu.

[Mango Madness]

yeah, the FPS on my 1.33ghz duron is about .0111 or rather 15 minutes PER FRAME.

[HarryM]

I get 5 frames per minute(!) - full movie about 49 days encoding non-stop.
It's fantastic... :D
The first time I think, that PC frozen or Vdubmod crashed.

[charact3r]

I am the developer of hdot264 and would love to find out how it performs. Unfortunately I only have a 733MHz machine so encoding's particularly slow. Eventually the code will be faster (and probably completely rewritten to achieve this) but this will only happen if people find that the codec performs better than, say DivX 5 Pro or xvid.

So try encoding at a lower resolution (like 320 x 200) and try DivX 5 at the same resolution and bitrate. Suggest encoding with hdot264 first as I don't know how to get an accurate bitrate/filesize with it yet. You can then set divx 5 to have same bitrate.

For decoding, if your computer can't decode using hdot264 in real time, use vdub to convert h264 to huffyuv so that you can watch in real time and compare to DivX.

If hdot264 really is much better than DivX or xvid then I'll work on making it faster. And btw, developers very welcome :)

[Selur]

At least for me VirtualDub crashes when I try to scroll in the file I created,...
Woudl also be nice if you could give us some hints how to configure encoder and decoder cfg,...

Cu Selur

Ps.: What colorspaces does the codec support as input? (could be a reason for my file to be broken)

[charact3r]

Originally posted by Selur
At least for me VirtualDub crashes when I try to scroll in the file I created,...
The best thing to do is to dub again from h264 to an uncompressed format for ease of playback. The codec does not support seeking.
Woudl also be nice if you could give us some hints how to configure encoder and decoder cfg,...,...
These are the same files as used by the JVT software. I don't really know how to use them. Perhaps someone else can enlighten us?
Ps.: What colorspaces does the codec support as input? (could be a reason for my file to be broken)
Same as xvid (xvid code used under GPL for VfW codec).

[Selur]

Thx for the info,..

Another question:

Are the quantizer settings kind of equivalent to the one used in Xvid and go,.. ? (though the default settings of 30&31 are not the best settings for quality comparison?)

Cu Selur

/edit
Virtual Dub conversion (off the hdot264 file to huffyuv)just crashed with because of a division by Zero,.. I'll encode another file later and do some testing with it,.. (hopefully)
edit/

[charact3r]

Look at the following link for reference code (hdot264 uses jm40-ish) and for specification of h.264. I'm not sure how up-to-date the docs here are, if you find a more recent version, please put a link here.

http://bs.hhi.de/~wiegand/JVT.html

So you can read how h.264 quantisation works in the documentation. I think it's a bit more complicated than MPEG-4 quant.

edit: best thing to do is to try hdot264 with the default settings and see what bitrate it comes up with. Then try to match this bitrate with constant q divx/xvid and compare quality.