A word on DivX / XviD capable DVD Players

[SeeMoreDigital]

I see what the problem is now!

I was under the misapprehension that all DVD/Mpeg4 standalones could recognise the MP4 container.

It was not until earlier this week that I discovered, this not to be the case!

How very short sighted of player manufacturers not to include this option. Especially Sigma, who alone with Kiss, got the ball rolling in the first place. And who strangely include MP4 container compliance with their Xcard!

Cheers

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital How very short sighted of player manufacturers not to include this option. Especially Sigma, who alone with Kiss, got the ball rolling in the first place. And who strangely include MP4 container compliance with their Xcard!

You have to understand that

- there is no sense in supporting MP4 for them currently, as there are hardly any working and spec compliant MP4 files out in the wild. This may change soon, because of
* 3ivX MP4 muxer
* Nero Digital
* new AAC audio encoders

- MP4 support makes only sense if AAC audio is supported also as its the standard audio compresison format in MP4 container, and as stated many many many times before, most current decoder chips are not capable of decoding a decent resolution MPEG4 ASP video in combination with an AAC audio stream !!

- your X-card doesnt know shit what a container is, its the driver software coming with it that does the demuxing of the raw video MPEG4 ES stream and passing it to the decoder card, all the card itself is doing is decoding the video frames, thats all

Clearer now ?

[bond]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
- there is no sense in supporting MP4 for them currently, as there are hardly any working and spec compliant MP4 files out in the wild.the only non spec compliant mp4 files i can think of, which could maybe be out there in a remarkable number, are the ones created from divx5, but this shouldnt be a big problem for the hardware manufacturers as they already support the divx5 hacks

- MP4 support makes only sense if AAC audio is supported also as its the standard audio compresison format in MP4 containermp3 is also possible in mp4 and as good as all hardware players support mp3 decoding already :D

and as stated many many many times before, most current decoder chips are not capable of decoding a decent resolution MPEG4 ASP video in combination with an AAC audio stream !!before i believe you this you will have to show me a hardware dvd/divx player that supports aac decoding already ;)
i dont think that aac decoding needs more power than wma, ac3 or mp3, which is already possible, for example

and the new mediatek is already very strong, maybe some old chips wouldnt handle that, but they wont handle "decent resolution mpeg-4 asp" anyways

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
You have to understand that

- there is no sense in supporting MP4 for them currently, as there are hardly any working and spec compliant MP4 files out in the wild. This may change soon, because of
* 3ivX MP4 muxer
* Nero Digital
* new AAC audio encoders

- MP4 support makes only sense if AAC audio is supported also as its the standard audio compresison format in MP4 container, and as stated many many many times before, [b]most current decoder chips are not capable of decoding a decent resolution MPEG4 ASP video in combination with an AAC audio stream !! Some of what you have said may be true, but this can be seen as an... "chicken and egg" situation!

If hardware players supported the MP4 container from the start. Who knows, we may have had applications able to create such files months ago.

This is what confused me. I just assummed that all standalones supported the MP4 container (like my Xcard) and as a result kept submitting posts on the forum asking "where are all the MP4 container making applications"!

As for Mpeg4 ASP. Great, it's finally here!

However I've generated many 720x480/576 anamorphic Mpeg4/AAC MP4 container encodes and all are perfectly watchable via my Xcard even without ASP!

Cheers

EDIT: Originally posted by ChristianHJW
your X-card doesnt know shit what a container is, its the driver software coming with it that does the demuxing of the raw video MPEG4 ES stream and passing it to the decoder card, all the card itself is doing is decoding the video frames, thats all

Clearer now ? No. The card decodes both the video and audio streams. I know this for a fact as I can remove the sound card from my PC and the AAC audio still can be heard!

And I've just done it again. TO CONFIRM!

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW

- your X-card doesnt know shit what a container is, its the driver software coming with it that does the demuxing of the raw video MPEG4 ES stream and passing it to the decoder card, all the card itself is doing is decoding the video frames, thats all

Clearer now ?

btw, it seems to me that the EM8485 can decode AAC in hardware...

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital As I can remove the soundcard from my PC and still obtain AAC audio! ... so you have your speakers connected to the X-card instead of your soundcard ? Or do you have 2 pairs of speakers ? or will sound come from the TV speakers in this case ?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... so you have your speakers connected to the X-card instead of your soundcard ? Or do you have 2 pairs of speakers ? or will sound come from the TV speakers in this case ? I don't use the sound card at all. All the audio comes from the Xcard's digital output which is connected to my DSS amp!

Cheers

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital Some of what you have said may be true, but this can be seen as an... "chicken and egg" situation!
I was not validating the present situation, nor trying to give any kind of recommendations to hardware players not to support MP4, i was just reporting what i was told from one of them why they arent supporting it officially in their units.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Zhnujm btw, it seems to me that the EM8485 can decode AAC in hardware... ... i admittedly had no idea it has an AAC decoder built in, but still i am pretty convinced the MP4 parsing is done by the software driver, and then the raw MPEG4 video and AAC audio blocks are passed to the decoder chips .... if i was the engineer designing the unit, thats how i had done it, as its much much simpler and easier to update then with parsing the MP4 or AVIs in hardware ;) ...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
I was not validating the present situation, nor trying to give any kind of recommendations to hardware players not to support MP4, i was just reporting what i was told from one of them why they arent supporting it officially in their units. Personally, I can't see any logical reason why all the DVD/Mpeg4 standalone player manufacturers are not supporting the MP4 container, right now.

And as the MP4 container can do pretty much everything that the VOB container can do (and more). I think it's fair to say we've lost at least a years worth of developement with regard to MP4 applications!

Not having MP4 container in every stanalone, may have even helped you guys out!

Cheers

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by bond the only non spec compliant mp4 files i can think of, which could maybe be out there in a remarkable number, are the ones created from divx5, but this shouldnt be a big problem for the hardware manufacturers as they already support the divx5 hacks ... lol !! I didnt say that most MP4 files existing are not spec compliant, i said that there are simply not enough spec compliant MP4 files out there for the manufacturers to justify MP4 support ;) .....
mp3 is also possible in mp4 and as good as all hardware players support mp3 decoding already :D ... yes, MP3 is possible according to MPEG4 specs, but everybody will use AVI for MPEG4 + MP3, so whats the point in doing that :D ? And do you see any MP4 files out in the wild, containing DivX + MP3 ? I dont ....
before i believe you this you will have to show me a hardware dvd/divx player that supports aac decoding already ;) .. it was done according to my contacts, and it works fine thanks to libfaad2, but they dont add it ( yet ) because the demand is not there, and licensing costs are not trivial ( although acceptable ).
i dont think that aac decoding needs more power than wma, ac3 or mp3, which is already possible, for example .. it does, again according to my contacts. He told me clearly that MPEG4 at decent resolutions, plus LC-AAC is not possible at least in the EM 85xx chips .... of course, i have no idea about the ESS or Mediatek chipsets.
and the new mediatek is already very strong, maybe some old chips wouldnt handle that, but they wont handle "decent resolution mpeg-4 asp" anyways ... yeah, i hope AAC audio decoding and MP4 parsing will be offered soon, because if players cant support that, how can we even think they might be able to handle matroska's most used features like RV9 + Vorbis ever ....

[SeeMoreDigital]

Well you can't blame the first Mpeg4 chipset manufacturer (Sigma) for not including MP4 capability!

So who is to blame. You could argue that Kiss were at fault. Maybe if they had included it with their first standalones, other manufacturers would have followed suit.

So, if this is the case. What frightened them away from MP4. Surely not AAC licensing!

Cheers

EDIT: Like I said before. It's a chicken and egg situation!

[bond]

SeeMoreDigital:
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
I didnt say that most MP4 files existing are not spec compliant, i said that there are simply not enough spec compliant MP4 files out there for the manufacturers to justify MP4 support
...
the demand is not there, and licensing costs are not trivial ( although acceptable ).these are important reasons of course and the reasons why it isnt implemented till now


.. it does, again according to my contacts. He told me clearly that MPEG4 at decent resolutions, plus LC-AAC is not possible at least in the EM 85xx chips .... of course, i have no idea about the ESS or Mediatek chipsets.tell them their player is outdated :D

... yeah, i hope AAC audio decoding and MP4 parsing will be offered soon, because if players cant support that, how can we even think they might be able to handle matroska's most used features like RV9 + Vorbis ever ....lets hope so :)
i think we are atm only at the beginning of a new hardware player generation...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... it does, again according to my contacts. He told me clearly that MPEG4 at decent resolutions, plus LC-AAC is not possible at least in the EM 85xx chips .... of course, i have no idea about the ESS or Mediatek chipsets... My experience is totally different!

I've generated 2pass VBR 720x576 encodes and 1pass CBR at up to 6000kbps with LC-AAC audio at 64kbps and above.

All play flawlessly!

So it begs the question. How high does your contact want to go with 'decent resolutions???

Cheers

[SimonSez07]

what player are you using to play these full-res video + lc-aac files? i have been encoding lately to divx5 + (nero) aac in (3ivx) mp4 container and i am not able to find any hardware players that will play these movies. i use b-frames (no gmc or qpel) and sometimes lc or he aac audio. is there a player that will play this because i would buy it. (also interested in ogg vorbis audio playback (in ogm) and 2ch ac3 mixed into avi)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi

I use a Sigma Xcard (as stated in my sig), it's a PCI card that can be installed into a PC, which is able to decode Mpeg4 with AAC audio in MP4, totally in hardware.

Admittedly it's not a stand-alone player. Currently the only stand-alone players that are known to spin Mpeg4 in MP4 are ones fitted with certain types of ESS chip-sets. However, they can't decode AAC audio (at the moment only MP3.

There are forum members with "tricked-up" Xboxes that can also play Mpeg4/AAC in MP4...


Cheers

[SimonSez07]

thanks for the info. i have heard about using an xbox like you mentioned. ive been trying to get xbox media center to work on my brothers chipped xbox for some time now but no luck. anyways there are xbox forums for such things. but its good to know that some people have successfully played mp4 with aac on it.

thanks

[walker373]

I would just like to thank each and every one of you for posting on this thread, i have learnt so much so fast :)

I'm new to hardware players and am planning to purchase one for my parents (i'll be providing the content)

It's good to find a place to get the background and possible issues and a look at the future from those in the know.

Keep it up guys and good luck in your endevours

[chuna]

There is an interesting thread on DivX here: http://forums.eyo.com.au/showthread.php?t=74527

Would like to get some comments from Darrius "Junto" Thompson on the whole process and why some players get certification but yet are not fully compliant with the DivX certification.

I also got an answer from one of the manufacturers in China that most MPEG 4 players dont have enough memory for the DivX certification and at the same time also apply all the DVD playback specs as defined by the DVD forum. So usually what they do is get the DivX certification and then use the DVD playback firmware rather than the DivX certified firmware as bigger companies cant afford not to follow the DVD playback specs due to their affiliation with the DVD forum. This probably explains why in the thread I posted above where some of the DivX certified players dont play the full DivX specs.

Hopefully we can get clarification from the folks at DivX.

[LordRPI]

Actually, chuna, all DivX Certified players do meet our requirements. It was before my time at DivX when this was decided, but manufacturers insisted that we would use one subtitle format which we developed but wasn't out in the open. So .sub and .srt subtitles are not required for certification.

You can find out more about the subtitles here: http://labs.divx.com/archives/000051.html


Sorry for any confusion. If you would like me to get you in touch with anybody at DivX, let me know and I'll point you to the right person.

[chuna]

Originally posted by LordRPI
Actually, chuna, all DivX Certified players do meet our requirements. It was before my time at DivX when this was decided, but manufacturers insisted that we would use one subtitle format which we developed but wasn't out in the open. So .sub and .srt subtitles are not required for certification.

You can find out more about the subtitles here: http://labs.divx.com/archives/000051.html


Sorry for any confusion. If you would like me to get you in touch with anybody at DivX, let me know and I'll point you to the right person.

Lord RPI then you have a lot of checking to do as there are a few that are "DivX certified" which do not meet your requirements thats currently shipping.

[LordRPI]

If you can enlighten me to a few, that would be great.

[chuna]

Lord RPI,

These 2 models: The LG DF8900P and the Pioneer DV-676A, why are they not listed on your web site as DivX certified but yet the product claims to be? And these 2 products have been out for a while.