Another Player with divx pro features?

[monty0815]

I'm trying to encode a test clip with xvid 1.0 beta.
Has anybody tried this and could give me directions which settings should be suitable for a hardware player test?

[Doom9]

set profile to as@l5, then press the ... button right to the profile to configure, check qpel, gmc and bvop (b-frames) and configure them properly (it's the same as with dev-api3 except that the factors are now divided by 100, so a quantizer offset of 1.00 corresponds to 100 in dev-api3.
and set quantizition to mpeg, not mpeg custom.

[monty0815]

A kind soul posted some Pictures of the Player on another board.

You can find them here (http://www.dvdboard.de/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62298)

cu, monty

[CruNcher]

gee that sounds to good to be true :) full ISO ASP support, but actually their 7 ASP levels and they only stateing ASP, but wich level ? ALL ?
also the Mp4 Container and AAC Audio support are stil missing. So still more Beta Standalones are coming till the Real Deal. So better stay with your X-Box :D
Doom9 you got Nero Digital, so we can expect a new Codec Shootout soon ?

5~2Mbps can achieve DVD quality <- hmm so L0-L3b indeed not bad

http://cruncher.mufflastig.com/XviD/Profiles.png

[Doom9]

well.. it must be asp level 5 because for the rest, the resolution is a killer criteria already. And even previous players had no problems with a max bitrate above 3mbit. DivX certification goes above that as well both in bitrate and resolution.
As for the read deal.. MP4 is imho not an option yet. The software is severely lacking (show me an mp4 editor that rivals virtualdub). I have yet to regret sticking to AVI..

[bond]

monty,
already some more results about xcd? will it play .dat files (renamed .avis (!) not mpg as on s/vcd) on xcd?

[monty0815]

Yep XCDs work fully, both with dat and avi extension (of course the avi must be fully supported, but if its called dat the player is still clever enough to decode it using avi filters, or whatever it is this thing uses ;-))
what I'm not happy with is the xvid performance, but it's probably just me and my lacking skills. I tried the matrix lobby shootout and the explosion (as doom9 mentioned) all with bframes, gmc and qpel but many clips play more like a slideshow. The problem is the bitrate and the resolution, what settings make sense for a standalone player?

[bond]

Originally posted by monty0815
Yep XCDs work fully, both with dat and avi extension (of course the avi must be fully supported, but if its called dat the player is still clever enough to decode it using avi filters, or whatever it is this thing uses ;-))woaw, great :)

what I'm not happy with is the xvid performance, but it's probably just me and my lacking skills. I tried the matrix lobby shootout and the explosion (as doom9 mentioned) all with bframes, gmc and qpel but many clips play more like a slideshow.hm, so it seems the mediatek also has problems with high-motion, high bitrate scenes :(

The problem is the bitrate and the resolution, what settings make sense for a standalone player?hm, i (at least) would expect a media player to be able to play the mpeg-4 asp without troubles
but for the mediatek? who knows?
lets ask the other way round: what resolution, what bitrate did you use?

[monty0815]

Well one clip was:
672x272 (2.47:1) [=42:17]
1955 kb/s
That was CBR Xvid with all "pro" features

---> slideshow
the standardized test cd would sure be handy at this point

[bond]

hm, i guess this means that the mediatek chip is still not strong enough to decode both without problems at the same time:
qpel, gmc AND high-motion scenes :(

i guess if you play the same scene without gmc and qpel it will work!?

[Doom9]

actually, the best test for high bitrate is using the quantizer mode and set the quantizer to two. I had no problems using dev-api3 on such clips (with multiple b-frames it required packed bitstream to play flawlessly), even using dual AC3 audio. Maybe there's a problem with the CBR mode in XviD 1.0, who knows (have you tried the same settings in dev-api 3 builds?), people around here generally don't use CBR unless you hold them at gunpoint ;)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
hm, i guess this means that the mediatek chip is still not strong enough to decode both without problems at the same time:
qpel, gmc AND high-motion scenes :(

i guess if you play the same scene without gmc and qpel it will work!? I would hope so!

672x272 is a rather odd image pixel frame size anyway, but it's unlikely that this will have any bearing.

However, if it's struggling with this amount of pixels, I wonder how it will cope with full anamorphic image pixel frame sizes (720x480/576)?

Monty have you tried spinning RAW Mpeg1 and 2 files?

And.... is my web site working yet?

Cheers

[monty0815]

I normally don't use CBR either, it's just that the encoding takes up a lot of time (I'm kinda low on cpu power ;)) and using qpel doesn't make it any faster.
I tried both dev 3 and 1.0b.
ATM I'm encoding same settings with divx511 (2 pass), see if that works.
Would be a shame if Xvid support is so much worse than divx.

[monty0815]

still doesn't work (the site) :(

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by monty0815
still doesn't work (the site) :( Bummer!

I'm trying to host it (or not as the case may be) on my home PC using Apache server!

Maybe it's to do with the port numbers. Worked fine a couple of weeks ago with very simple pages.

What a pisser!

Cheers

[CruNcher]

@Doom9

ah come on they are not the real deal do you think DXN could get Sigma todo Mp4 chips based on AVI playback, because of the fact that AVI can be edited :P nahh we all know why Players existing today don't we :D and those DivX Players are not capable of full Mp4 features, those that are will have no DXN certification, but a Mp4 Industry Forum one and will be able to display MP4 with BIF features Menus and Play AAC Sound ect, but they won't be alot of these players unfortunately. A good step in full complaince is @ the moment still based on PC alike Systems if you don't wana X-Box you could also buy one of these
http://www.vwbinc.com/sampleproducts2.htm but many of us owning a X-box allready have that feeling :)

[CruNcher]

@monty0815

if you could come into #xvid on freenode i could send you some test samples :)

[monty0815]

The divx 511 clip worked perfectly,
sad actually....

[SeeMoreDigital]

I would still really love to know if the Gran Prix DVD 404-DivX can spin Mpeg4/AAC encodes stored in an MP4 container!

Is there anybody out-there (other than me) who could provide Monty with a clip to test?

Really sorry I cant get my WebSite, or should that be 'Web Shyte' to work!

Cheers

[Doom9]

@CruNcher: DivX capable DVD players are actually a product that is driven by demand, not by the desire of companies to sell us their solution. If it were an idea developed by companies, you'd see MPEG-4 specs compliant players. Why can those players handle DivX3 in the first place? There's no way an MPEG-4 specs player would ever play those.. that was a requirement by potential customers who just happen to have a lot of legacy AVI files. The container is also decided by the market, AVI still dominates by a huge margin, and that is why players handle AVI and no other format. If suddenly the entire world started dumping AVI in favor of the MP4 container it wouldn't take long for players to support this container (or new players to enter the market that would support it), but as long as the large majority uses AVI, AVI it is. And why does the majority use AVI? Because it's there, it works, the tools are here and there are no major problems. Does Dr. DivX make MP4 files? Does AutoGK make MP4 files? Do you think they would if everybody used the MP4 container?
After all.. those are DivX capable DVD players, NOT MPEG-4 capable DVD players. The industry has so far failed to get widespread customer acceptance for what they cooked up, both on the content and on the playback side. Heck, there isn't even a standard how to put MP4 files on a CD/DVD. Mode1 or 2? ISO or UDF? etc... And btw I do know (I've reported about it in the news) about a player that specifically targets MPEG-4 and no DivX, XviD or other codec in particular but that's not the player we're discussing here.

[Doom9]

@monty: it seems that beta1 is broken when it comes to standalones and everybody is encouraged to wait for beta2. So I think you can save yourself any further efforts. But with dev-api3 working properly that are really encouraging results.

[monty0815]

Hi!
I've been testing quite a bit with CruNcher, who sent me a lot of files over the past 2 days, most of them worked fine, but the Player seems to have problems with GMC in Xvid, but all the other features work fine, even at very high bitrates and high resolutions.
I guess CruNcher can give better judgement, since he was the one who encoded all those clips.

cu,monty

[Doom9]

actually, I got some information regarding the chipset. It only seems to support GMC with 2 warp points. DivX uses 1, XviD uses 3 (soe does libavcodec/ffmpeg/ffvfw). I just got confirmation from elta that their player wouldn't do XviD GMC either, which is a real shame, as the Mediatek chipset otherwise seems to rule.

[monty0815]

Just wanted to give a short overview of what the chipset is capable of, no guarantee given of course:

-Divx 3.11 - 5.11 in standard avi container, even at high bitrates (all pro features included)
-Xvid (all features except GMC)
-mp3 of course, but didn't test that too well, because I'm not really interested
-avi with 2 soundstreams
-XCD, but of course depends on the files contained within

What it can't do:
-OGM and ogg
-subs
-most other mpeg4 codecs and containers

These things might change with firmware upgrades, but I wouldn't trust on it.
Maybe CruNcher would be so nice as to add some other features, which it support, as he has more insight into what we actually tested ;-)

cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks for the update.

And thanks for taking the time and the effort to carry out all the tests.

Shame it can't handle anything to do with the MP4 container.

Even so, for the price, it represents great value for money!

Cheers

[seewen]

I think I would throw my kiss dp-450 at once, if only those Mediatek based players were able to use subs.


But I'm quite sure that their will be a firmware upgrade (it took 5-7 month to kiss-technology to make such a firmware).


Is this player able to FF/FR with DivX/XviD ?

[monty0815]

Yes you can up to 16x

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by monty0815
Yes you can up to 16x Well if it can fast rewind properly, then that's yet another thing it's got over the Sigma/Kiss players and Sigma Xcard!

My Xcard sucks with all Mpeg4 streams when fast rewinding, regardless of the container used.

Sigma has very poor driver support.

Cheers

[The Edge]

Keeping an close eye on this tread. Thanks for the feedback monty;)

Edge

[monty0815]

some more information on what the player doesn't like:

- divx audio (yep the old one that came with 3.11)
- also seems to have some problems with avimux files, eventhough it worked with an avimuxed clip that had vbr mp3 sound

[Doom9]

btw, talking about wma, the elta supports it as external files and work is being done to support wma inside an AVI. But who cares about DivX audio anyway.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Doom9
btw, talking about wma, the elta supports it as external files and work is being done to support wma inside an AVI. But who cares about DivX audio anyway. Jeez, wma in an AVI container... I suppose it makes sense when you consider you can already have wmv in an AVI container (but sadly without AR flagging)!

M$ are determined to take over the world, one way or another!

Cheers

[monty0815]

The Gran Prix also supports external wma.
But I don't really care about it anyway...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by monty0815
The Gran Prix also supports external wma.
But I don't really care about it anyway... I find this interesting!

I don't suppose you've tested the player with 6Ch WMA encodes. I'm just wondering whether or not a separate channel is allocated to each one of the 6Ch analog outputs?

Cheers

[monty0815]

Can't really check that because I don't have a surround system, or is there another way?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by monty0815
Can't really check that because I don't have a surround system, or is there another way? You could connect a set of PC speakers to each pair of the players analog outputs.

But unless you have some 3.5mm stereo to phono adaptors, it will be a bit of a 'ball ache'.

And you will also require an 6Ch wma encode ofcourse. Nothing too fancy, just something that says... left channel, right channel, centre channel, etc.

Cheers

[CruNcher]

Originally posted by monty0815
Hi!
I've been testing quite a bit with CruNcher, who sent me a lot of files over the past 2 days, most of them worked fine, but the Player seems to have problems with GMC in Xvid, but all the other features work fine, even at very high bitrates and high resolutions.
I guess CruNcher can give better judgement, since he was the one who encoded all those clips.

cu,monty

The MediaTek Chip seems the be the best available Mpeg-4 Decoding solution @ the moment here are the Results that where run so far.
thx monty takeing the time todo this :)


XviD Aloha Gran/Prix MediaTek 1389 Chip Results

ASP features:

B-frames <- WORKS Perfect
Qpel <- WORKS Perfect
GMC 3 Warp Point <- Problems (slow playback see below)

Matrices:
H263 <- WORKS Perfect
MPEG <- WORKS Perfect (little slower ?)
HVS <- WORKS Perfect (little slower ?)

Upsampling (Bleeding Colors) <- No Problems

Test Videos:

b-frames(2).avi (640x272) 550 kbps <- WORKS Perfect
extreme1.avi (640x346 Qpel B-frames 1/1.50/1 no Sound) 2.7 Mbit CBR <- WORKS Perfect
extreme1.avi (640x346 Qpel B-frames 1/1.50/1 Mp3 128 Abr) 2.7 Mbit CBR <- WORKS Perfect
level5.avi (640x346 Qpel B-frames 1/1.50/1 no Sound) ~1.5 Mbit VBR <- WORKS Perfect
fullresvbr.avi (720x304 Qpel B-frames 1/1.50/1 no Sound) ~1.5 Mbit VBR <- WORKS Perfect
rmdfullres.avi (704x576 Qpel B-frames 1/1.50/1 no Sound) 4.8 Mbit CBR <- WORKS Perfect

gmc-h263.avi (640x272) <- slideshow
gmc-qpel-hvs.avi (640x272) <- jerky all the way picture every 5seconds
gmc-qpel-h263.avi (640x272) <- better then the one before still slideshow

used Source:

640x272 = Pearl Harbour Test Sequence Low Motion-High Motion (DVD)
640x346 = Matrix Reloaded Trailer (Sorenson 3 Ultra Trailer Resized) (Matroska Techdemo)
720x304 = Pearl Harbour Test Sequence Low Motion-High Motion (DVD)
704x576 = Romeo Must Die Trailer (DVD)

DivX 3.11 Gran/Prix MediaTek 1389 Chip Results

smart bitrate controll intro (DivX 3.11 SBC 640x272 Mp3 160 kbps CBR) 1 Mbit <- WORKS Perfect
shaggy.avi (DivX 3.11 SBC 576x416 Mp3 192 kbps ABR) 1.3 Mbit <- WORKS Perfect
lenya.avi (DivX 3.11 SBC 512x304) Mp3 192 kbps VBR) 2.7 Mbit <- WORKS Perfect

[SeeMoreDigital]

Very nice results....

I notice you did not try any 720x480/576 anamorhic encodes!

I just wondered what would happen and if you are able to pull the image down manually.

Cheers

[seewen]

Originally posted by monty0815

- also seems to have some problems with avimux files, eventhough it worked with an avimuxed clip that had vbr mp3 sound

I think the problem comes from the "Rec List" feature. If you disable it, it would maybe work.

[colinhunt]

Hiya folks!

Very interesting, this Gran Prix player. Now, can someone help me to buy one of them? Any webstores selling it yet?

cheerio,
colin

[Doom9]

I don't think you can buy 'em anywhere right now. It was a special offer at an Austrian retail store that ended last Friday (and the players were probably sold out even before that). Maybe one will show up on ebay. I've already seen elta 8883, which is a very similar player (based on the same chipset) on ebay so at the moment this might be your best shot.

[monty0815]

@ seween
what is that "Rec. list" feature you are talking about?

btw. CruNcher thanks for your time and the nice review

cu, monty

[straycat]

For those who search for the Player on eBay: The device was sold under 2 different names in Austria. In some 'Hofer'-stores they were sold as 'Gran Prix DVD-404', in others they were sold as 'Silva DVD-404'. The players are _exactly_ the same, the only difference is the label on the device itself and a different background-logo when you enter the settings.

The distributor of the player is a company called 'Silva-Schneider'. They have a webpage (www.silva-schneider.at), but there is absolutely nothing of value to see there.

[Doom9]

I finally got to test my player yesterday and I noted that the divx/xvid output is in 4:3 mode even if the player is set to 16:9. I find that a good thing since now you can use your TV to adjust the AR just like you do it with DVD. So, if somebody would want to encode an AVI anamorphically, all you need to do is set your TV to 16:9 and the movie will be properly stretched. And for 1:1 AR AVIs, you can use the regular 4:3 letterboxed stretching mode to fill the 16:9 TV. So, you don't really need AR flagging as you can do it with your TV remote (provided you can spot an improper AR.. my parents are notoriously bad at).

I love the fast forward/backward and fast jumping to a certain point in the movie.. that's much better than on the elta 8882. But I noted that using pause and ff/fb can lead to some asynch problems from time to time (audio keeps going, video speeds up for a couple of seconds, then slows down to slow-mo, until after some 5-10 seconds everything is back to normal again). This only happened with VBR MP3, the AVI-AC3 file I tried didn't have that problem. I also didn't spot a playlist feature, but if you have multiple AVIs in the same directory, the player simply loads the next one if it's done playing one so your 2 CD rips on a DVD-R won't be a problem.
What I missed (I had that on the elta) was some useful information about the source.. the elta showed the total play time and the codec used).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Doom9
So, if somebody would want to encode an AVI anamorphically, all you need to do is set your TV to 16:9 and the movie will be properly stretched. And for 1:1 AR AVIs, you can use the regular 4:3 letterboxed stretching mode to fill the 16:9 TV. So, you don't really need AR flagging as you can do it with your TV remote (provided you can spot an improper AR.. my parents are notoriously bad at). I mark the PAR positions on all our 4:3 PC and 16:9 plasma monitors both at work and at home!

I too hate visiting my parents and being forced into watching what are obvious 4:3 images, stretched to 16:9!

Panasonic TV are notorious for doing this, regardless of setup.

Cheers

[monty0815]

I couldn`t find a way to make it show the codec, but there is a display button which shows you the length of the clip, when it is played.