A word on DivX / XviD capable DVD Players [Archive] - Page 2

thevidgod

28th June 2003, 16:15

THe truth is your manuver in the set top players was a smart choice.
imagine dvds with divx contenets you could hacve probaly about 2 hours of better than dvd qaulity video.......... imagine blue-ray dvds..........................

But the problem is set tops will die out within 5 years the computr will probaly be converted into a all-in-one system with gaming internet email and telivision. You need to prepare yourself for online pay per view technology where youy are not very strong. there are still very few pay per view movies. you need to focus your efforts on the movie studios so they contract you to encode there movies for VOD because if you dont you will be left in the dust. everyone else; real, microsoft, quicktime are focusing there efforts on that. but yo useem to be not concerned about it?

may i ask why?

CruNcher

28th June 2003, 23:44

@ thevidgod

they concentrating on XXX VODS its also a great profitable market and the studios don't expect much only that the billing system is working correctly :rolleyes:

Doom9

29th June 2003, 00:51

@thevidgod: I have my doubts about VOD especiallly in circles that I hang out in, yet DXN has their own DRM system ready for potential customers. Though, the best DRM won't help if you don't have a good codec to go with it so DXN is developing both.

shlezman

29th June 2003, 09:09

Originally posted by Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall
Lets get Doom and whoever here wants to help an early copy so that we can make sure that we have all the questions answered.

j

Please do

@doom9
I couldnt agree with you more, the problem of DXN today is M$ and the H.264 (in the very near future), I believe that Real are out of the game of broadband VOD. The quality of Divx codec is *great* but outdated, today's video coding technology can offer much more then Divx (5). DRM will *NEVER* work and all major movie studios will eventually understand that (and maybe start makeing good movies ... but that is off topic).

About DXN trying to make a buck from certifications, I think it's great but I'm not sure that they can assure us (customers) the "user experience" (how I hate this phrase) that we expect.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson

9th July 2003, 16:59

A first version of the DivX Certfication FAQ is up. I'm sure the Q&A will bring up even more questions so please send them my way so we can post them.

http://www.divx.com/divxcertified/

Back for an edit.... forgot to mention we have finally as of yesterday given one of our chip partners, ESS, full DivX Certfication.

http://www.divxnetworks.com/press/pr_detail.php?pr_id=66

Darrrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX

bond

9th July 2003, 17:18

at least you have the courage to say that you dont want to achieve xvid support with your certification

zag2me

9th July 2003, 17:21

A very informative faq, I learnt alot from it. The certification program looks like a very good idea. Its a shame about GMC and Qpel confusing the issue to the basic end user though.

Any news on the kiss players getting "compatible" or "certified" yet?

Darrius "Junto" Thompson

9th July 2003, 19:46

Originally posted by bond
at least you have the courage to say that you dont want to achieve xvid support with your certification

Let's be clear. XviD support is not required however we recommend it be supported. We cannot enforce that Chip manufacturers be 100% compliant to XviD releases. However, instead we are working with XviD so that a user can use a DivX Profile within XviD to help ensure compliance, but it would be rather hard to tell a chip manufacturer they MUST support another codec, it is much easier if we work together with XviD to make sure the codec just works.

Darrius

manono

9th July 2003, 23:46

Hi Junto-

I find this question and response a bit disingenuous and self-serving:

There are products without the DivX Certified logo that imply they support DivX. Can these products playback DivX content?

If the product is not DivX Certified or DivX Compatible, the products probably will not work.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm happy that your company has stepped forward to insure a better viewing experience for us all in the future. But I know of no standalone DVD/MPEG4 player that flat out won't play DivX/XviD. And it would be pretty stupid for a manufacturer to claim DivX playback, if it won't play them at all. I don't think he'd sell too many units. If it were I, I think I'd reword the answer to read something like:
If the product is not DivX Certified or DivX Compatible, the product may not work to your full satisfaction.
And on a related note, has any thought been given to insuring support for external subtitles? That's one of my main irritations with my player (Bravo D1), that none of my non-English movies with SSA subs can be played with the subs. But then the manufacturer didn't promise external sub support, but it is a necessary requirement for the future, in my opinion.

dTb

10th July 2003, 03:23

Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
.... forgot to mention we have finally as of yesterday given one of our chip partners, ESS, full DivX Certfication.

http://www.divxnetworks.com/press/pr_detail.php?pr_id=66

This is great news Junto, hopefully it's not long before we see players using these chips.:D

I echo what manano has said somewhat, I think subtitles are very important and any device I buy will need to support them.

shlezman

10th July 2003, 07:12

Are the certified player required (by DXN) to have a DRM system (of any kind) in them ? for VOD for example

Doom9

10th July 2003, 07:53

@junto: the requirements for divx4/5 have been clearly outlined, but what about divx3? 1 /2 CDs is rather vague...

Darrius "Junto" Thompson

10th July 2003, 15:45

Originally posted by manono
Hi Junto-

I find this question and response a bit disingenuous and self-serving:

Please don't get me wrong. I'm happy that your company has stepped forward to insure a better viewing experience for us all in the future. But I know of no standalone DVD/MPEG4 player that flat out won't play DivX/XviD. And it would be pretty stupid for a manufacturer to claim DivX playback, if it won't play them at all. I don't think he'd sell too many units. If it were I, I think I'd reword the answer to read something like:

And on a related note, has any thought been given to insuring support for external subtitles? That's one of my main irritations with my player (Bravo D1), that none of my non-English movies with SSA subs can be played with the subs. But then the manufacturer didn't promise external sub support, but it is a necessary requirement for the future, in my opinion.

Thanks. I agree, I"ll blame that bad answer on someone else :) It will be changed shortly using the answer you suggested.

Subtitle support will be up to the manufacturer, however we have found a very good way to handle subtitles so that implementation or support in hardware should be simple. This is currently in development and will be given to our partners as soon as it is ready. We created a specification for using subtitles within an AVI file where they can be turned on or off and included within the AVI rather than outside the AVI. We will provide the tools to create these subtitles so they can be used with devices that implement this specification and we will provide tools that should allow you to easily convert your subtitles to this specification in the event the manufacturer does not support another subtitle format such as SSA subs. The best way to get most of these features in is for us to all email or keep doing forum posts and hope they read them and tell them what everyone would like to see and why the feature is worth their time for implementation.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

Darrius

Darrius "Junto" Thompson

10th July 2003, 16:00

Originally posted by Doom9
@junto: the requirements for divx4/5 have been clearly outlined, but what about divx3? 1 /2 CDs is rather vague...

Yeah you're right, this is vague. I'll make sure we add more to this. Since DivX 3.11 added a little more complexity we ensured
that certfication covered at least 95% of the content created in DivX 3.11. The minimum requirment is decoding of 3.11 content at 640x480 @ 24 fps with MP3 audio. We also included certfication clips at 720x480 @ 30fps but the minimum is 640x480 since the majority of the content in 3.11 is this size or less.

Thanks. I'll get this in the FAQ.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson

10th July 2003, 16:07

Originally posted by shlezman
Are the certified player required (by DXN) to have a DRM system (of any kind) in them ? for VOD for example

Yes we do. For certification we require implementation of our DRM. There are very few major CE manufacturers that will implement support for a new video technology unless DRM is also included. Our DRM system has been used quite successfuly now with over a few hundred thousand transactions, is easy for end users to use, and of course we ensured hardware implementation would be possible. I'll get ask that more details be published about this in the FAQ.

Thanks everyone for the additional questions we missed. What else?

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
Director of R&D DivX

Doom9

10th July 2003, 16:55

What else?allowable DivX3 parameters.. I suppose low motion / fast motion is no issue because that was really the came codec, but what about max/min bitrates, keyframe intervals/spacing.
I think SBC actually comes in handy for you because it has a bitrate cap which was often used to create DivX3 content.

BTW.. what does "95% of the content" stand for? If I take the TDX rules as a reference, the 1 CD cutoff is around 2h. Are 95% of all movies really shorter than 2h?

Though I guess I'm not the only one being a little disappointed about the half-hearted DivX3 support. I tend to think that at least until the release of DivX5, DivX3 was the most used codec.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson

10th July 2003, 17:55

Originally posted by Doom9
allowable DivX3 parameters.. I suppose low motion / fast motion is no issue because that was really the came codec, but what about max/min bitrates, keyframe intervals/spacing.
I think SBC actually comes in handy for you because it has a bitrate cap which was often used to create DivX3 content.

BTW.. what does "95% of the content" stand for? If I take the TDX rules as a reference, the 1 CD cutoff is around 2h. Are 95% of all movies really shorter than 2h?

Though I guess I'm not the only one being a little disappointed about the half-hearted DivX3 support. I tend to think that at least until the release of DivX5, DivX3 was the most used codec.

Low vs Fast Motion should have not affect as long at birate is kept wihtin the boundaries. The average and peak bitrates allowed for DivX 3.11 Certfication are lower as we had to make a compromise to support as much DivX 3.11 content as possible while making it possible to even support and make sure manufacturers supported it. DivX 4\5\MP4 are supported in Silicon as DivX 3 is much more complex and expensive to implement in a chip so much some of this support has to be handled in software. It was hard enough just educating and convincing others how important it was to support 3.11 and I'm happy we reached a compromise that enabled 3.11 support to happen.

The chart on the certfication faq says: Note: For DivX 3.11 content at Home Theater Profile, the required average bitrate is 1000 kbps, and the required maximum peak bitrate is 4000 kbps.

Sorry I didn't understand your question about the 1CD cutoff. You can have 2 CD's, it really doesn't matter as long as bitrate compliance is met. The 95% measurement was our "research" in looking at the properties of many, many, many files random people and groups created and when decoded our success rate was 95% for these files and the 5% that failed were due to the bitrate requirement not being met, however failure does not necessarrilly mean the file did not decode. It means that it does not playback at full frame rate flawlessly like we would like it to... instead it would have some "jerkiness, stuttering or momentary freeze" which we consider a failure within the 5%. Maybe the NFO should also list the Peak Bitrate with the files created using the TDX rules since it indicate the likeliness of a flawless playaback on hardware?

Darrius

Soulhunter

21st July 2003, 20:30

Darrius "Junto" Thompson;
> "If they can build a product just with MP4SP for half the price, with less risk, and make more money with higher volume they certainly will" <

Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall;
> "Will the box maker be willing to pay that much more for it? The answer appears to be a firm - no" <

Yap! Not much people want to spend 500$ or more for an player... But how much people want to spend 5000 or 10000 bugs? Near like none?! Still there ARE companys that build HighEnd DVD-Players in this priceclass! So, why not make players with MP4 ASP, AAC, Matroska etc. support ???

Just some thoughts...

Bye

Yusaku

22nd July 2003, 05:51

Originally posted by Soulhunter
- But, how much people want to spend 5000 or 10000 bugs ???

- Near like none...!!!

- But there ARE some HighEnd DVD-Players in this priceclass out there...!!!

Unfortunately, if you take this $10.000 player apart, you'll most likely find a $10 central CPU with a (relatively) cheap digital electronics; and all the expensiveness of the system will be spent on actual audio/video quality on their analog sides, and maybe the optical drive (and IMO most will be spent on nice polished logo on front...). Plus, none of the quality freaks that can afford these will be interested in recompressed contents, which is what 99.9% of MPEG-4 files are now.

The reason of course being the price of a new chip and R&D goes to milions of dollars, while you can expect to sell some 500 pieces of $10 000 priced DVD player.

Honestly, how many people on this board would buy $10k DVD player? I know for sure I would not be one of them.

I think I read something on these lines in some interview with the McLaren F1 DVD player developers (I think it goes for something like $40 000?); they were "very unhappy" about the fact that they have absolutely no control over actual media decoding - you can do just so much with PGAs.

--- ontopic:

What I still cannot understand is why the $500 level DVD players cannot just take 1GHz one-chip processor, 64MB flash/128MB RAM and a video encoder. I believe such chip combo could be done under $100 easily - and the R&D costs of recompiling mplayer should not be so high (the release of GPL infected code is tough - but since it'll be limited to your hardware, it is not such a pain...) All in all, you end up with the manufacturing price of <$200 per unit - going for $350+ street price.

Soulhunter

23rd July 2003, 16:42

> "Honestly, how many people on this board would buy $10k DVD player? I know for sure I would not be one of them." <

Yap! Won't buy $10k player too...(max. 1000$ for me) But what I mean is that maybe "ONE or TWO" companys could build a more exp. player with more Chip-Power and seperat A/V processing (Avi+VBR-MP3) Btw, whats with the HighDef. profile of DivX? Any player out there that could play it yet?

Some of this companys that are disigning this HQ players have no "nice polished logo on front" ! Not much people know this companys, because most people have not the $ to buy thier stuff... I'm not talking of well known companys like "Sony" etc. I was talking about companys like http://www.proceedaudio.com/ Ok, probably they sell 10 times less than the other companys, but their stuff also cost 10 times more...

And if a player would support all kinds of Input (high resolution, high bitrate n' nearly all formats) I would pay more than 500$ for this. And I know a'lot ppl that would pay 500$ or more for an HQ-Player as well !!!

Bye

zag2me

23rd July 2003, 16:46

Well the Sigma chip in the kiss players is incapable of playing the "Home Theatre" profile for Divx content. I think anything over 3000 kbs is just too much for the chip. Another limitation is the size of files that can be read, this is currently a 2gb limit so "high definition" divx content is still along way off.

Soulhunter

24th July 2003, 13:05

"I think anything over 3000 kbs is just too much for the chip"
- Yes, thats it! If such a standalone-player is not able to do the same things that my PC can do (high-res./ high-bitrates), I feel no need to buy a standalone...

"Another limitation is the size of files that can be read, this is currently a 2gb limit so "high definition" divx content is still along way off"
- Is there any reason why not to cut your encode in 2or3 pieces (smaller than 2GB) before you burn them on DVD-R ???

zag2me

24th July 2003, 14:27

Originally posted by Soulhunter

"Another limitation is the size of files that can be read, this is currently a 2gb limit so "high definition" divx content is still along way off"
- Is there any reason why not to cut your encode in 2or3 pieces (smaller than 2GB) before you burn them on DVD-R ???

Yes you can split the movie up, but who wants to watch a movie in 3 seperate parts?

DVDHack

25th July 2003, 04:06

I have a KiSS player 450 model and after 7 months with it now I can conclude that it is a piece of crap. The company is short in all areas except excuses.

It does not play mpeg4 up to 2GB, I have complained several times to KiSS about an issue I have with a file that's 1.8GB. Their only response is that they'll fix it in the future. I still have issues with pausing, searching etc. Proper MP3 support toi months to iron out. This is a piece of HW not SW and they should get it to work before marketing - its been out now for over a year and still there are problems.

I have gone through a stack of BIOS releases to fix things, they don't respond to your enquiries and the player does not do what they claim it will. The player is very expensive for the grief it causes the owner. If KiSS responded to emails with real information they might keep die hards engaged but they are utterly hopeless.

I suggest that anyone looking to purchase this unit should look at purchasing an Xbox instead - it plays everything the KiSS does and more (Oh, and you can play games too). If you still want a KiSS send me a PM if your're in Auatralia - its going cheap.

Charbax2

25th July 2003, 05:07

The Archos AV300
http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500521_specs.html
playsback DivX Simple Profile at up to 640x480 and 30fps according to this review at ExtremeTech
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1202660,00.asp

It is supposed to kind of support b-frames but no CMG nor Qpel of course.. It is supposed to have a Texas Instruments DSC25 DSP processor inside. So it's nice, portable and 500$.

And this Chineese company is supposed to come with another portable DivX player:
http://www.iavias.com/eng/whatsnew.htm
as it says "Play DivXtm Movies". on nice 6,5inch screen for 3 houres but it's bigger and heavier than the Archos AV340. BUt supposedly same 500$ kind of price according to
http://www.coolmacintosh.com/macworldreport071703.html

And so, RCA and Intel/Microsoft are comming with portable Mpeg4 players. They are all using Texas Instruments or Xcale processors. Sony is using their own processor in their crappy but cool looking new Clié thing that playsback mpeg4 at only 116x86 resolution (or something like that).

So, why can't someone make a perfect set-top-box, that handles all formats through Open Source development, emulates all consoles, connectes to all internets and uses all the best peer-to-peer networks? Sell that thing for less than 200$ too. Basing the processing powers on a Texas Instruments DM310 (http://www.ti.com/dm310), Intel xScale or Samsungs S3C2440
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/News/SystemLSI/SystemLSI_20030721_0000007669.htm

I just figured if a little french company can make Simple Profile 640x480 resolution DivX work in the pocket, that someone should be able to make a box that playsback 100% of all the illegal movies to download on the internet..

So DivX cares about DivX decoder chips, but is there also DivX encoding chips comming? So the set-top-box comming for christmas would be an Open DivX Tivo with network/internet features and OS that makes VOD, p2p and meaningfull Live Entertainment possible?

The Archos AV340 with Texas Instruments DSC25 encodes DivX at 320x240 at 25 frames per second. And TI is said to have newer faster processors. Maybe even 352x288 resolution 1-pass real-time encoding would be acceptable?

Soulhunter

26th July 2003, 21:22

@zag2me
"Yes you can split the movie up, but who wants to watch a movie in 3 seperate parts?"
- Are the VOB's on a DVD not splittet...? But they play fine without that you notice this... So why is it not possible with MPEG4 ??? Because the chips have not enough power to play it this way ? Thats what I talked about...! MORE CHIP-POWER (with higher costs for such a player...)
Would be nice !!! ;)

@Charbax2
"So, why can't someone make a perfect set-top-box..."
- Buy an small Desktop-PC with DVD-ROM, TV-Out/VGA-converter 5.1Soundcard etc. Now place it like a VCR/Amp in your A/V-Rack...! Easy Hmm? :D

Bye

Doom9

20th November 2003, 22:36

@darrius: with the imminent release of the elta 8883 MP4, I think the subject of a super certification should be on the table again...

SeeMoreDigital

21st November 2003, 00:21

Agreed!

In fact I've just made a heartfelt plea, in relation to the subject of DivX and the MP4 container here: -

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=401819#post401819

Cheers

Doom9

21st November 2003, 08:45

I think MP4 still lacks the killer application: an editing application like VirtualDub. Muxing with DShow (3ivx) or mp4UI isn't everybody's bag, and cutting and joining is important. Maybe NeroDigital will come with something, but if not, there's still the lack of such a tool that hampers the format's progress. I do think the format should be supported in hardware, but I can see the evil circle why companies won't put money into it (not enough tools -> not enough people using it, not enough people using it -> tools won't be made -> etc).

LigH

21st November 2003, 09:34

Because it is soooo long ago that the last VirtualDubMod version was released (a quarter year now), and not much could be heard about any plans or success, I woudn't be surprised if such activities took that time... :sly:

bond

21st November 2003, 09:46

Originally posted by Doom9
@darrius: with the imminent release of the elta 8883 MP4, I think the subject of a super certification should be on the table again...woaw it seems this player fully supports advanced simple profile :)

but i dont find anything on their hp about the mp4 container?

unixfs

21st November 2003, 11:06

Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
Great questions. Hopefully I can answer them all adequately.

One good example of some of this oversite is the MP4 file format. It sounds great and could be great. Try implementing it in hardware :) So as many of you know it is based off of QT. The MP4 file format keeps all of it's important timing data in one location\chunk, etc.. at the beginning of a file and must be indexed to achieve proper audio\video\data synch. A movie a few megs could have a couple hundered kbytes of index date. AVI although old, has simple interleaving which does not require this. So imagine having a 2 hour movie in the MP4 file format and trying to support it in a DVD\DivX type of player. What happens is for proper synch you have to keep all this index data stored in memory during playback PLUS have enough memory to handle playback (video data). The index data alone can be > 8MB and then you add in what is needed for video playback, menus, etc.. and you have a device that is going to be expensive to build because of a large memory requirement. So for the near future there is a cost problem of even building consumer devices at reasonable costs that support everything that is required for the mp4 standard. Many seem to be moving very slow and not necessarrilly thinking of the big picture which includes cost of implementation not including licensing cost and not also thinking about what users need\want at a minimum. Sorry such a long description I just wanted to list *one* example of how complex this has been and how it is not just a basic technology issue we have to try and overcome. This is just ONE example. Damn this has been tiring.... yet fun.

Darrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX

Hi,
since mpeg4-in-mpeg2 is already standardized (13818-1 appendix 7), why not using it?
I'm thinking of mpeg4 in vob, which is already well established and well working as a container, right? and it doesn't need an index :)

Why using a complex format as Mov when a standalone is supposed to play only audio, video and menus?
Why not reusing all the muxing/authoring code that is working so well for mpeg2 dvds?

Thanks.

SeeMoreDigital

21st November 2003, 12:05

Originally posted by unixfs
Hi,
since mpeg4-in-mpeg2 is already standardized (13818-1 appendix 7), why not using it?
I'm thinking of mpeg4 in vob, which is already well established and well working as a container, right? and it doesn't need an index :)

Why using a complex format as Mov when a standalone is supposed to play only audio, video and menus?
Why not reusing all the muxing/authoring code that is working so well for mpeg2 dvds?

Thanks. This very topic was discussed, just a few weeks ago here: -

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64012&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

Although Darrius talks about the probability of a 8MB index file being created, when generating a 2 hour long movie encode in an MP4 container. It has not put people off from using it!

I've generated quite a few 'long movie encodes' this way. And I can't say that I've experienced any major problems!

Cheers

bond

21st November 2003, 12:11

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Although Darrius talks about the probability of a 8MB index file being created, when generating a 2 hour long movie encode in an MP4 container. It has not put people off from using it!in contrary i noticed that mp4 files are much smaller than the source avis!

Doom9

21st November 2003, 12:42

@LigH: did you find anything in the CVS? I didn't bother looking through all trees, but where I looked, the last changes involved merging with the latest vdub version.. there are separate directories for ogm and matroska but nothing for mp4. That's the great thing about open source projects with CVS access.. you're always in the loop if you just bother to check the source.

SeeMoreDigital

21st November 2003, 12:50

Originally posted by bond
in contrary i noticed that mp4 files are much smaller than the source avis! Personally, I don't know enough about the microscopic inner workings of any codec and container, to be of much help!

So if what you say is correct. What's Darrius going on about!

And even if an 8MB buffer chip is required, it's not like it's gonna break the bank anyway now.

As memory of this size seems to be appearing in all manner of electronic devices. Such as cheap graphics cards, digital cameras, CD/DVD burners and even hard drives!

Cheers

LigH

21st November 2003, 14:16

Originally posted by Doom9
@LigH: did you find anything in the CVS?

I'm not familiar with CVS. I don't have much experience with that technology (although I am a software developer - but not C{++}, therefore I don't read sources often). So I just hope that the VirtualDubMod developers will once tell us about their efforts (or even a new executable release on SourceForge).

Starcraftfreak

21st November 2003, 22:08

Originally posted by Doom9
@cruncher: I believe you're barking up the wrong tree here. DivX certified means just that.. it doesn't mean "supporting MPEG-4 level xyz profile abc". It's their right to certify hardware that supports their implementation. Right now I don't know how the certification works so I rather no comment on it, yet they don't claim that they're certifying any generic MPEG-4 compatibility.

To my knowledge, the MPEG-4 standard does not contain any delivery mechanisms. For DVD you have the DVD forum which has defined how a DVD should look like and how it should be played. In order to put a DVD logo on your DVD player, your player must adhere to a standard that goes way beyond an MPEG-2 level and profile. Just to give you an example: There's different audio formats (MP2, PCM, AC3, DTS), there's the definition of the VOB files, their size and how they are to be put on a disc, there's the filesystem of the disc, etc. etc. Now as I said I might be mistaken on this but I haven't found any similar standard for MPEG-4 delivery on CD/DVD media. Thus, everybody is cooking his own soup so to speak. Right now there's chaos when it comes to storing MPEG-4 video. Take XviD as an example. It pretty much implements MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile. But that's just the video part. Now there are people storing it together with AC3 or MP3 sound in an AVI container, there's the OGM crowd that can additionally use Ogg Vorbis audio and put this in an OGM container where we still don't know if it will be thrown overboard by the xiph.org people, then there's Matroska where the specs are firm but the implementations aren't complete yet. And to make this even better, there's a couple of subtitle formats and no definition how you should put a container on a disc. There's the standard ISO format, then there's XCD, but you could also use UDF. Bottom line, what ends up on your CDs or DVDs is pretty chaotic. The industry has failed to see the importance of creating such a standard and DXNs certification program seems to be the first real effort in that area. Of course it would be preferable to have a standard backed by the MPEG4IF but if that doesn't exist what can you do?

BTW, there are some reasons why MP4 and AAC haven't taken off. One is licensing, another is the lack of tools and yet another is that MP4 isn't a format designed for editing. But history has shown us that people creating their own videos need a lot of editing facilities so they won't use a format that's basically a dead end and needs to be demuxed first when you want to perform any editing. I also believe that in the end the AAC only clause has to be dropped because at least when it comes to standalones it makes no sense. Any DVD playing standalone must be capable of handling AC3, and most devices also do MP3, plus there is a lot of existing content that does not use AAC.
So this means that by now there is no solution where we can be sure that it works on a hardware player. Like I make an ISO CD with AVI files that have DivX5 video and MP3 audio, it doesn't work on those players?
I think the hardware players should end up as devices that are similiar to PCs where you can install your own DirectShow filters. On Windows it works pretty good.
But standardized formats that work everywhere would be even better.

Doom9

21st November 2003, 23:54

So this means that by now there is no solution where we can be sure that it works on a hardware player.No, if you select a hardware profile in the DivX5 configuration, your output will be playable on any certified player. But if you don't use those profiles all bets are off. With hardware improving (like the new elta player), you can safely turn on all the available MPEG-4 ASP features, but you don't have any guarantees by the manufacturer or DXN that it will always work.. that's what the certification is for. In time, devices will become powerful enough to handle most content but they'll never be as versatile as a pc, because then they would be a regular PC (with all the problems that involves... just compare the number of times you had to reboot your DVD player and your PC).

Stux

22nd November 2003, 01:06

Originally posted by Starcraftfreak
yet another is that MP4 isn't a format designed for editing

I'm sorry, I have to comment on this.

This is just wrong.

The MP4 format is most certainly designed for editing! It supports multiple track references, and single frame editing.

You can copy any sample (be it audio/video/whatever) from any referenced media and place it in any track at any point at any speed and duration, as many times as you want. No matter what the intra/inter prediction requirements of the sample are.

True there are very few editing tools at this time, and even fewer implementations which support this full power, but that does not mean the MP4 format was not designed for editing. The truth is, the reason the MP4 format was used instead of more traditional muxed stream formats is because of its potential editability!

The MP4 format is also designed for delivery and streaming, but its primary focus is editability.

SeeMoreDigital

22nd November 2003, 02:23

Well, it would seem quite a lot of interesting things are happening, or are about to happen, with regard Mpeg4 video and the MP4 container!

All the new positive information posted in the last couple of days (since Doom9 resurrected this thread) is very refreshing!

However, with everybody seemingly pulling the format in different directions, it's no wonder everything to do with Mpeg4 happens painfully slowly.

Wouldn't it be great if a few companies could get together and grab Mpeg4 by the balls and create some decent encoding, editing, and playback packages!

Starcraftfreak

22nd November 2003, 10:59

Originally posted by Doom9
No, if you select a hardware profile in the DivX5 configuration, your output will be playable on any certified player. But if you don't use those profiles all bets are off. With hardware improving (like the new elta player), you can safely turn on all the available MPEG-4 ASP features, but you don't have any guarantees by the manufacturer or DXN that it will always work.. that's what the certification is for. In time, devices will become powerful enough to handle most content but they'll never be as versatile as a pc, because then they would be a regular PC (with all the problems that involves... just compare the number of times you had to reboot your DVD player and your PC).
I know those profiles (I use Home Theater most of the time). But I worry about supported container formats. Most firms don't provide info on supported container formats. I guess AVI with DivX5 (Home Theater profile) and MP3 CBR audio is a quite save format. I burned some ISO CDs with AVI files on them, which have exactly these formats.
But recently I learned about Ogg Vorbis and it's benefits over MP3 (better quality on lower bitrates), so I'd like to use Ogg Vorbis audio. I guess Ogg Vorbis is not so save when it comes to compatibility. I also read your standardized test thread. I welcome such actions as I am looking forward to buy a really good standalone DVD Player/Recorder.

Doom9

22nd November 2003, 13:39

the DivX certification process is actually described here somewhere (or at divx.com).. if I recall correctly, they test AVI with VBR/CBR MP3 and AC3, but no alternative containers. I doubt DXN would ever create a certification for OGM or Matroska.. your only chance is MP4 if it can achieve widespread use (but not before that.. you've seen how things work with the whole certification thing). But if any player manufacturer supports alternative containers, you can be sure that they'll properly advertise the fact because they can use it to differentiate their product from others. For instance, I know that elta still means to support OGM and subtitles, even for their existing players. Other manufacturers like KISS also have a certain interest in alternative containers... but we'll see how that turns out.

Starcraftfreak

22nd November 2003, 20:31

You are right, the info on their certification program is here: http://www.divx.com/divxcertified/
BTW, there is also info on the maximum peak rates (which you didn't know). But it doesn't say anything about AC3 audio. It says that the DivX certification requires CBR/VBR MP3 audio with DivX video.

ChristianHJW

5th December 2003, 13:18

Originally posted by LigH Because it is soooo long ago that the last VirtualDubMod version was released (a quarter year now), and not much could be heard about any plans or success, I woudn't be surprised if such activities took that time... :sly:

According to Cyrius, he wont do it. Main reason for this is that MP4, very much like native matroska files, can be VFR also, and you wont normally know that from looking at the headers.

VirtualdubMod, as you all know, is heavily based on Virtualdub and thus can only handle CFR files. Most matroska files today are done in our VfW compatibility mode, and are thus CFR also, thats why they can be handled, same is of course valid for OGM.

Supporting MP4 correctly on VdubMod, same as MKV native files, is simply impossible, thats why Cyrius probably decided to stay away from that. However, he started about one year ago on a complete new app, which is timestamp based and VFR capable, but due to the many changes Avery was doing for Virtualdub he was more than busy with keeping VdubMod up-to-date with those, so the new tool didnt move forward. He designed a nice plugin structure for it already, allowing MP4 plugins as well as native MKV plugins for possible output formats ;) ....

ChristianHJW

5th December 2003, 13:23

Originally posted by Doom9 I doubt DXN would ever create a certification for OGM or Matroska.. .. LOL ! You bet they wouldnt ;) .... but this is also not necessary, because we will have our own 'certification' program, called 'matroska hardware profiles' .
For instance, I know that elta still means to support OGM and subtitles, even for their existing players. Other manufacturers like KISS also have a certain interest in alternative containers... but we'll see how that turns out. ... the company we are working with has received the sources for both the new matroska C playback library and the MPC SV7 decoder sources, but i recently get no feedback from them at all, very unfortunately. They promised to send a test unit with an alpha MPC SV7 support my way a couple of weeks ago, but i havent received one yet.
It seems they are very very busy fixing existing bugs in their admittedly extremely powerful and feature rich units, so they dont have the necessary development manpower to implement matroska support.

What you all have to understand in this respect, are the following considerations :

1. matroska container, as of today, is mainly used to combine either RealVideo9 or XviD/DivX with new audio compression formats like AAC or Vorbis. There are certainly also a lot of file using AC3, but i dont think there are many with MP3 audio. Now, all current hardware units dont have th necessary processing power to decode a 720 * xxx MPEG4 ASP video and a Vorbis or AAC audio track, at least this is valid for the SIGMA EM 8500 and 8550 chips. So there is no big point for them to support matroska now, as only XviD/DivX + AC3 files could be played, or maybe even Xvid/DivX + MPC SV7.5 ( soon ), but those are not enough to justify the investment to have a developer implementing matroska support, and to maintain the code, and the latter are not even existing yet.
However, with the next generation of EM 8605 or 8615 based units, things will change, especially because above mentioned manufacturer seems to have found a unique way to add even more processing power in a very effective way. This will make

- RV9 + AAC
- XviD + HE-AAC ( maybe even 5.1 HE-AAC )
- RV9/XviD + 5.1 Vorbis

decoding with 30 fps possible, and with decent resolutions, and then the support for matroska will be of a much bigger interest to them then this is the case now !

2. RealVideo 9 looks great, but requires a lot more decoding power than MPEG4 ASP. However, matroska users seem to love RV9, and this is even more valid for MKV files appearing more and more on p2p, and with higher availabilities ( = spread ).
This is a clear trend that can be seen, so for a hardware manufacturer wanting to support matroska more or less completely its almost a necessity to have a close look at RV9 also, porting the programming effort ( although its obviously well possible ) to support matroska including RV9 onto a completely different level.

3. The biggest advantage of matroska compared to other containers, IMHO, is its very good subtitle support, especially for different text subtitles. While SRT is supported fine already on most better MPEG4 standalone player, when loaded from external files, its becoming very clear that supporting SSA/ASS is a big nono, again because of processing power and library size contraints.
I am stating this for the first time publically now, but one of the major interest factors in matroska from the side of the hardware manufacturers, is obviously that there is a good way to display USF subs inside matroska without the need to have a XML library in the firmware, and the fact that USF will support most of the SSA features that are being used today ( not all ), so that a transmuxing tool for AVIs with external SSA subs into a single MKV file with USF subs is well possible, and will open a new potential user circle for them, making it worthwhile to invest the money for matroska support :) ...