Code Shootout - opionions asked

[wiz]

I just finished looking through the newest codec comparison (nice work), and I have one question to all regarding the particular shot with the Matrix Electric-lightning-shocked Guard on the ground, in the normal bandwidth encoding mode.
There xvid was chosen by doom9 to be the codec with the best detail. As i personally favor xvid, being free and all, I'm glad about this.
But as i compared the shots myself (nice feature there, the immediate switching gives a much better comparison possibillity as the differences are much easier to see, at least for me) I could only come to think that divx5 was definitely much more detailed than xvid in this particular shot.

Now I'm curious if other people also see this my way, and if not, which aspects of the sample picture makes you think xvid is nearer to the original?

Greets
wiz

PS: Doom9 did point out that other ppl could see things differently, and I don't mean to nag or make a big fuss about this at all. I'd just like to know why I can't come to the same conclusion as doom9, and if its just me who'd give divx the leading position in this case or if others see this as I do.

[fccHandler]

My opinion is, to realize the full potential of DivX5 multipass you must use the EKG utility. More work for Doom9, though... :p

[Doom9]

PS: Doom9 did point out that other ppl could see things differently, and I don't mean to nag or make a big fuss about this at all. I'd just like to know why I can't come to the same conclusion as doom9, and if its just me who'd give divx the leading position in this case or if others see this as I do.
Because my conclusions are not based on the screenshots but on watching the encoded video. I think I've written that in the article. A single frame is not necessarily representative of a scene's quality.

@update: here are the exact words I have used: Then my usual disclaimer: Screenshots are not necessarily representative of the video quality. It might be that a screenshot of codec A just happens to fall onto an I-frame which is the least compressed (and thus looks pretty good), whereas quality quickly degrades after the frame shown in the screenshot. And a codec B might have a heavily compressed B-frame at the same position, so comparing the two would be inherently unfair. Bottom line: Take screenshots with a grain of salt, make sure you read all my comments and perform your own tests when in doubt. Every human being perceives visual quality differently and you might come to completely different conclusions watching the same clips as I did.

@fccHandler: Seems DXn doesn't agree with that, or else they'd had me use it, would they not? They have complete liberty in the codec setup.

[fccHandler]

It's been suggested elsewhere that DXN's recomendations for your latest tests were not the best (if so, then that's their fault). But if they had suggested you use the EKG, would they also need to suggest which scenes to tweak? Basically you're fine tuning the codec by hand for some particular content, and if you've ever used the EKG, you know what a tedious and highly subjective process it is.


P.S. I forgot to say, thank you very much for your tests! It's great that someone cares enough to do this, so the rest of us don't need to.

[Doom9]

come to think of it, using the EKG would be inheritently unfair as other codecs don't offer that ability. Plus obviously it would be very easy to cheat because I'm only looking at a limited portion of the entire movie. Just turn down quality to zero in the rest and you'll end up having a really good looking test clip.

Plus, there is only handful of people who really bother to manually edit statsfiles (you can do that for xvid and divx3 as well).

[wiz]

Because my conclusions are not based on the screenshots but on watching the encoded video. I think I've written that in the article. A single frame is not necessarily representative of a scene's quality.


Sorry, I now remember that you also already stated this in all the previous codec comparisons, but I guess I'm getting old and just forgot that. In that the case the particular screenshot differences surely don't matter.

Thanks for your time anyway, and great job you did there (again) comparing the codecs. Personally I'd love to see anime instead of futurama, but that's quite off-topic here, and I really don't mind you using a source you prefer :D.

Whatever, happy new year to all doom9 forum users!
wiz