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bond
19th February 2004, 14:33
i just stumbled over yet another h.264 dshow decoder set from moonlight:
http://www.moonlight.co.il/cons_h264player.php

evaluation download (http://www.moonlight.co.il/download/h264player1_0.zip)

it is able to decode the files from the reference encoder but not the ones produced with the mainconcept encoder (seems there is still a way to go for reaching interoperability)...

edit:
checkout samples of moonlight's h.264 encoder here (http://www.moonlight.co.il/down_video_compare.php)

rhayman
23rd February 2004, 01:32
watched the h264 sample of basic, quality is better than i expected it to be, and it also played better than i expected it to :)

bond
23rd February 2004, 17:56
moonlights h.264 encoder seems to be available via their sdk (http://www.moonlight.co.il/sdk.php) (which is not freely available)

SeeMoreDigital
28th February 2004, 18:20
I wonder why Moonlight insists on installing an Mpeg2dmx.ax file in order to play back their H264 demo video encodes!

Anybody interested in just installing the basic DS filters (and not Moonlight player) please click here (http://82.2.167.24/Uploaded_Files/Doom9_Forum_files/Moonlight_H264_Decoder.zip).

Cheers

Sirber
28th February 2004, 18:56
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
I wonder why Moonlight insists on installing an Mpeg2dmx.ax file in order to play back their H264 demo video encodes!

Anybody interested in just installing the basic DS filters (and not Moonlight player) please click here (http://82.2.167.24/Uploaded_Files/Doom9_Forum_files/Moonlight_H264_Decoder.zip).

Cheers Thanks for the link, greatly appreciated :D

SeeMoreDigital
28th February 2004, 21:43
Originally posted by Sirber
Thanks for the link, greatly appreciated :D Thanks.

I couldn't see the point of letting people download that crappy 2,043KB player, when just a couple of .ax files (totalling 410KB) would do!

I don't know about you guys but the H.264 encodes don't look that good - they remind me of a water colour painting.. albeit moving!

I think it would have been much better for Moonlight to have matched the file sizes of each of the three (H.264, WMV9 and DivX5) encodes!

Cheers

Tommy Carrot
28th February 2004, 22:23
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital

I don't know about you guys but the H.264 encodes don't look that good - they remind me of a water colour painting.. albeit moving!


In-loop filtering destroys the fine details of the encoding (just like postfiltering), that's why it's not so impressive. Without it h.264 kicks ass. :D

I would also like to thank the separated DS, it's nice to watch my h264 encodings in mpc. :)

SeeMoreDigital
28th February 2004, 22:37
Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
...I would also like to thank the separated DS, it's nice to watch my h264 encodings in mpc. :) My pleasure.

I quite enjoyed figuring it out! And thanks for the info regarding the washed out look.

Cheers

Prettz
1st March 2004, 03:36
I wonder do the h.264 sample clips use wavelet quantization? It would be interesting to know, although the in-loop deblocker makes it not really matter for trying to compare the quality of the two methods.

Sirber
1st March 2004, 03:48
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
I don't know about you guys but the H.264 encodes don't look that good - they remind me of a water colour painting.. albeit moving!Same thing. I wasn't impressed by the 850kbps clip. Reminded me of old RV9 whitout EHQ at 600kbps... Even VP6 could have provided better results at the same bitrate... IMHO H264 is just wasting CPU...

BoNz1
1st March 2004, 04:04
Yes these clips were not at all impressive. But when I encoded with the reference encoder and the mainconcept encoder on my computer the results were very good. Anyway, I wouldn't judge h.264 by these encodes frankly I'm not sure why a company would put such poor quality junk on their website. I don't know where the motivation to do that comes from :confused:

bond
10th April 2004, 22:50
Originally posted by bond
checkout samples of moonlight's h.264 encoder here (http://www.moonlight.co.il/down_video_compare.php)i recently sniffed a little bit deeper into the moonlight samples, which all have the .h264 extension
they dont seem to be plain bitstreams as i first expected (.264), but mpeg-2 program files (.mpg) with the changed .h264 extension (for whatever reason)

if you change the extension to .mpg you can also use the decoder filter set coming from mainconcept (the moonlight ones have a 30days limit)
funny but you cant play mainconcept files with the moonlight filter set...

just for completeness :)

SeeMoreDigital
10th April 2004, 23:08
Originally posted by bond
...if you change the extension to .mpg you can also use the decoder filter set coming from mainconcept (the moonlight ones have a 30days limit)
funny but you cant play mainconcept files with the moonlight filter set... Yep, it's a bit weird.

I noticed something along these lines when I was trying to work out which DS filter did what!

That said I don't think I tried changing the .H264 extension to .mpg, despite the fact I noticed that all of Moonlight's encodes required an MPEG-2 De-multiplexer to make them work... doh!

It's still a real shame that 'none' of these H.263 encoders place the video streams in an .MP4 container... It's probably due to AAC audio constraints.

Cheers