Is there much room left for higher compression?

[Doobie]

I notice that in Doom's comparison, the top codecs are all pretty similar, even if tweaked for different priorities. Does this reflect that video is compressed about as much as it will ever be or does this reflect limits of mpeg4?

In 10 years, will we have twice (I won't even hope for 10x) the compression? And, I don't mean twice the compression as those sales people mean.

I thinking the only way we'll have much better quality is by bigger storage mediums, like a 10GigHz monster that can decode high definition video from a 20GigByte removable disk.

[trbarry]

Some of the current limitations on how well we can compress things have to do with how much CPU time we are willing to spend on it. But processors are getting faster and cheaper, so that alone will yield advances in practical compression technology.

And personally I don't see us near any theoretical limits yet anyway. So things should get a lot better.

- Tom

[gabest]

Well, I know a good way to increase the compression. Use a dvd and then you can fit 7 times more data to the same place in your cd holder case :P

Seriously, I don't think cpu time has anything to do with the limits, I spent 12 hours to transcode a dvd a few years ago and now only 2, still divx311 and xvid don't have that much difference, maybe only a few percent.

[Ookami]

I think that most people have, somewhat, very optimistic (or pesimistic, depends where you come from ;) ) thoughts about the future...

I remember reading in the mid 90's that we'll have VR interfaces instead of the mouse etc. as standard in the year 2000. *cough*

And not to mention those silly SF from the 50's with the people in the year 2000 flying around in their space shuttles.

Same with codecs, it goes in much smaller steps that certain people want to sell us, I mean, if we all get the idea that not too much changes, we could get the blasphemic idea that we'll be happy with what we already have, and that would be... :scared:

So, be prepared for big changes like Blue-Ray "it's great altough no one has seen it" DVD (I would be happy if a double layer home DVD burner would be released, but that would not be so good for the poor movie industry), Xiph "it will be released in this century" codec or Pentium "We'll need it because the next Windows will need ~ 2 GHz for the GUI alone" X processor. And do I have to mention the great progress in plastic "Yes, that is my wife!" surgery? Isn't technology a great thing?

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by Ookami
I think that most people have, somewhat, very optimistic (or pesimistic, depends where you come from ;) ) thoughts about the future...

I remember reading in the mid 90's that we'll have VR interfaces instead of the mouse etc. as standard in the year 2000. *cough*

And not to mention those silly SF from the 50's with the people in the year 2000 flying around in their space shuttles.

Same with codecs, it goes in much smaller steps that certain people want to sell us, I mean, if we all get the idea that not too much changes, we could get the blasphemic idea that we'll be happy with what we already have, and that would be... :scared:

So, be prepared for big changes like Blue-Ray "it's great altough no one has seen it" DVD (I would be happy if a double layer home DVD burner would be released, but that would not be so good for the poor movie industry), Xiph "it will be released in this century" codec or Pentium "We'll need it because the next Windows will need ~ 2 GHz for the GUI alone" X processor. And do I have to mention the great progress in plastic "Yes, that is my wife!" surgery? Isn't technology a great thing?

Cheers,

Mijo.

That's very true. Science comes in baby-steps.

That last part was LOL hilarious. ^_^

[killingspree]

very true, but remeber the famous Bill Gates quote:
(not exact wording)

"I can't imagine anybody needing more than 640k of RAM"

...well :D

steVe

edit: sorry... corrected mistakes :stupid:

[Koepi]

Bill Gates stated in 1982:

"Noone needs more than 640kb RAM". Had nothing to do with hard disks. And I've yet to see a M$ product which would work with that "little" memory... (try coding in assembler and you'd be amazed how much 640kb are...)

Regards
Koep

[mpucoder]

I thought it was Steve Jobs who said "No one could possibly need more than 64K"

I know until I started using the computer for audio I thought I'd never fill up my 1G drive.

[killingspree]

when my dad bought his 486 he said he'd not buy another computer for at least 7 years - lol

steVe

[Arky]

Originally posted by Koepi

(try coding in assembler and you'd be amazed how much 640kb are...)


Indeed, there are many coders who put Micro$oft to shame, in terms of code efficiency!

Check out the attached file and prepar to be <awestruck> at what can be achieved with just 64k, let alone 640k.

It's a damning indictment of M$, really, when you look at how absurdly large their operating systems are. Honestly, one might almost cycnically suspect that M$ are driving hardware purchases upwards by deliberately increasing minimum-spec requirements... ( ;) )


Arky ;o)

[chemmajik]

trbarry said it right with better faster cpu's/gpu's/hd's it will get better, but I do agree we are slowing down more bec most codecs are doing a real good job esp with the vbr & multiple passes. When blu-ray hits people will start to say forget small size I want the best quality & then next size! Prob is who wants to wait for it when we have the technology that can do it know with DVD or CDR? 3k for blue-ray, I wonder how much it will cost in 2yrs from now, hmm?

[avih]

Originally posted by Arky
Indeed, there are many coders who put Micro$oft to shame, in terms of code efficiency!

Check out the attached file and prepar to be <awestruck> at what can be achieved with just 64k, let alone 640k.

It's a damning indictment of M$, really, when you look at how absurdly large their operating systems are. Honestly, one might almost cycnically suspect that M$ are driving hardware purchases upwards by deliberately increasing minimum-spec requirements... ( ;) )


Arky ;o) damn Arky, that's a fine piece of code ;) i really liked the 'inside the pipe' and the water scenes. great. i stopped at the credits, just to write this 'review'. going to watch it again now.

cheers Arky ;)

[killingspree]

wow... this is amazing... i cannot imagine how they packed all of this into 64 k...

/me stunned (:

steve

[gabest]

Come on men, even if these demo files are amazing, isn't this thing running on Bill's operating system too? How much prewritten code does it use from other dlls? Just directx alone is several megs, without that it wouldn't even start up.

[avih]

Originally posted by gabest
Come on men, even if these demo files are amazing, isn't this thing running on Bill's operating system too? How much prewritten code does it use from other dlls? Just directx alone is several megs, without that it wouldn't even start up. actually, some older demoes don't use directx at all, the just use vesa mode or something dimilar, and are pretty amazing as well. iirc, they're a bit bigger than 64k though (but less than 300k)

[sh0dan]

"64k intros" are a fairly common category, and there has been made thousands of these over time. "demoes" are not size restricted, and are often 5-10mb in size. I also made a 64k intro, with a software 3d renderer, software generated samples, geometry generation (2d and 3d).

The demoscene has unfortunately declined in the later years - especially since the introduction of 3D-hardware. Now I get my optimization-lust satisfied by doing video stuff.

To be a bit on-topic - these things are of course different, since there cannot be (many) things that cannot be mathematically generated.

Some links:
[intros]
alien sex clone (http://www.bluespoon.com/rune/asc/asc.exe). Originally a 64k DOS intro, wrapped in windows GUI. (so it now takes up more than 10 times the space ;)
bakkslide 7 (http://www.rociek.com/audiovisual/bakkslide7_win32.zip). One of my alltime favorite intros. Extremely stylish, very good music. Software rendered - extremely optimized. From 1999.
fr-019: poem to a horse (http://www.farb-rausch.com/fr019_party.zip). Another intro by the same guys as mentioned above.
bjoer7000 (http://www.tpolm.com:8080/archive/b7000/tpolm-bjor7000.zip). A very stylish intro (also 64k converted to windows) by my favorite group TPOLM (The Planet Of Leather Mummies). Not very complex code though. ;)

[demos]
moral hard candy (http://www.blasphemy.dk/prods/moralhardcandy-patched.zip). Great software-rendered demo.
lapsus (ftp://ftp.se.scene.org/pub/demos/scene.org/parties/2000/assembly00/demo/lapsus_by_maturefurk.zip) by maturfurk. 3D accellerated. Great code. Great modelling - strange music.
VIP2 (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php3?which=10) by Popsy team. 3D accellerated - very nice graphics.
louis lane (http://www.blasphemy.dk/prods/llane_f.zip). Also software - very stylish.
te-2rb (http://www.tpolm.com:8080/archive/te2rb_7002/tpolm-te-2rb72k.zip). Demo by TPOLM - crappy code - good style. Great music.


Just say so, if you want more. :)

[Doobie]

There was a demo for the Atari 800 computer that used only 2KB to create a starfield of different colored starts flying different speeds, using the computer's highest resolution (320x192, which allowed plenty of boarder for TV sets, far above that of a crappy Apple ][+, heh). That 2KB also included all the required video memory! Between each scanline, the program would rewrite the video data and the next scanline would be drawn from the same video memory as the previous scan line.

[sh0dan]

An old (1995), but really nice 4k intro:

reanim8 (http://cultact-server.novi.dk/kpo/ANIMATE.ZIP).

It features nice shaded 3D-graphics, runs nicely on a 486DX, and even on my win2k. There are even some other intros with nice adlib music.

[OUTPinged_]

@Doobie:

I believe that latest codec comparison isnt pushing top codecs to their limits with his testing. I mean, he still gets artifacts but most tests come with "well they look about the same until you magnify them 4X".

I wonder what results he would get if he tried to put 2 hour long HDTV capture into 1 DVD-R. How would codecs compare in that case...

[stax76]

I think there is room for more compression but there are some problems. Performance was mentioned already. A big problem is there must be a common standard for hardware compatibility so better compression technologies might come too late

[Tommy Carrot]

h.264 is claimed to be a big step above mpeg4. But the first useful implementations will only arrive about a year later.

/I cannot imagine what horsepower would it require to encode/playback HDTV stuff./