matroska and hardware player

[netterpaladin]

hi,

since doom9 started testing the hardware mpeg4 player, there were quite a few threads about what features, etc. will be supported by these players.

One big issue were for example multiple i?b? frames. They are in the mpeg4 specs but seem to be not supported by the players. Another was the memory limits of these players.

I know matroska was designed for editing purposes BUT if it was playable in hardware player it would be another big plus for matroska?

So my question is, how compatible/suitable is matroska for hardware players?

Daniel

[Doom9]

on the subject of multiple b-frames, it appears as if it's a question of the bitstream format but I haven't had time to verify this myself (the last time I wanted to run some tests I almost broke my neck but that's a long story).

I'm sure Chris has plans for matroska standalones all over the place, but this really depends on the manufacturers, which in term look at their consumer base. So I suppose by the time Matroska could actually reach a critical mass, processing power is no longer much of an issue.

[Atamido]

Some files using native MPEG-4 b-frames have just been produced. The tools are still in development stages, but once they are released, you should have no problem creating Matroska MPEG-4 files with REAL b-frames, and not packed ones.

Hardware players should have no problem dealing with real MPEG-4 b-frames as they already deal with them in the MPEG-2 in the DVD's.

[Neo Neko]

Actually I think the odds on set top players supporting containers like Matroska is much more feesable than and even more likely than things like Vorbis support. Granted there might be issues with memory requirements for file indexing. But the CPU and system requirements for container handling should not be much. And IIRC Christian has been speaking with some employees of the companies responsible for the set top Divx players. If I am not mistaken the project to convert Divx3/MSMPEG4 streams to current Divx that -h was working on before he got a bad case of real life -Tm ;) was kind of a request on the part of one of them.

[ChristianHJW]

I admit i am not investing too much time into this, as doom9 was pointing out already, first we need a bigger userbase until this becomes really attractive for the hardware device manufacturers.

When i was talking to Neuston and KiSS about matroska support in their units i did this because i was convinced they must have huge problems with VBR MP3 audio getting out-of-sync from AVI, and also with the missing DivX3 playback. matroska could have been a neat solution for both of these problems, as sync is certainly not an issue for us and thanks to a proper mode2 form2 support we could have come up with a solution to transmux 700 MB DivX3 AVIs into 800 MB MPEG4 ISO matroska files ( -h mentioned that when losslessly transcoding DivX3 into MPEG4 ISO the file size would probably grow by some 5 - 15% ). However, there was no response from KiSS for that, and the Neuston people seemed to be pretty interested on the start, but quickly lost interest when SIGMA announced DivX3 support, even with limited playback resolution, for their EM 8500 chip.

Dont forget folks, all the major Japanese hardware manufacturers have announced settop units based on µC-Linux, a Linux derivate made for microprocessors, and this and the higher CPU power/memory will open the door to adapt matroska fairly easily for next generations units ...