H.264 News from VSS - free AVC decoder and claims to offer realtime encoding

[Selur]

since it seems that one needs to set all the settings if one wants to use the 'advanced mode', could e.g. cruNcher post a link to a description of the available settings?

I'm able to figure out some of them by myself, but some of them are still a mystery to me. ;)

Cu Selur

[Andrey]

>>GolovachLena: Anyways, i'm very pleased by results, quality is nearly awesome. Sometimes it's hard to predict correct bitrate,...
Heh. It is my IMHO, of course, but if something gives unpredicable results it is not usable :D
Only as a test, demo, development version and so on...

BTW, explanations for adv settings will help a lot, really.

[Tommy Carrot]

I've made some high bitrate tests with disabled in-loop filter. Although the image is not so smooth and clean, it's amazingly more detailed, clearly beats xvid (and any other codec i know) in this regard. And this codec is not even really tuned for quality, so there are huge room for improvements.

[CruNcher]

@Tommy Carrot

agree :)

[GolovachLena]

Originally posted by Andrey
It is my IMHO, of course, but if something gives unpredicable results it is not usable :D


This is merely the question of expirience, imho. I've figured out that lowering bitrate by some magic value is useful in this way, and now i'm getting less troubles with under/overshoot. Will see...

[APF_Gandalf]

Originally posted by Doom9
Well.. behind that signup page you still get the same donwload options - clips and the encoder evaluation, but no playback filter only download.

http://www.videosoftinc.com/pub/

why do they hide it? If they don't want it to be downloaded, they should remove it ;)

[CruNcher]

http://www.videosoftinc.com/pub/user_manual-2_0.pdf

page 8 description of the advanced options :)

[Selur]

thx ;)

Cu Selur

[slavickas]

for those who prefer ffdshow for decoding, newer libavcodec.dll with cabac support (libavcodec newest checkout), still crash on b frames

http://merkys.ktu.lt/~vitslav/belekas/

[CruNcher]

you should check your build it crashes with cabac here (gray picture)
Encoder= Reference Encoder 7.6
Cabac = Cabac fixed

[slavickas]

Originally posted by CruNcher
you should check your build it crashes with cabac here (gray picture)
Encoder= Reference Encoder 7.6
Cabac = Cabac fixed
SORRY haven't tested much
i tried it with vss codec "good quality" mode with small res it works ok, but at higher _sometimes_ there problems :( , maybe coz i leaved some lines unchanged (was unable to compile):

original
*(uint64_t*)(p + 3*stride)= size==4 ? val*uint64_t_C(0x0100000001) : val*uint64_t_C(0x0101010101010101);
in ffmpeg cvs
*(uint64_t*)(p + 3*stride)= size==4 ? val*0x0100000001ULL : val*0x0101010101010101ULL;

[plonk420]

30 day trial my ass... installed on the 10th, did a few encodes and watched them, and it just expired today. is the decoder tied to # of encodes? i got one playback today, but no more...

@GolovachLena: *this* encoder, at least, gives me strange flickering artifacts, whereas VP6 just stays nice and mushy (i encoded at waaaay too low a bitrate)

[Musaran]

Greetings @All

I could not find the H264 codec trial anywhere on their website...

But I found it there (1.0 beta 2, 1.6 Mb):
http://www.codec-download.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=10

The Direct Show decoder is separate (4.1 Mb :confused: ) :
http://www.videosoftinc.com/decoders.html

I haven't yet goten to try these downloads.

Edit: 1.0/2.0 ? Ooops, is this an old version ?

[Tommy Carrot]

The 1.0 beta 2 codec is more than 1 year old. The new codec is much more advanced, i don't know why did they remove it from their site, perhaps they reconsidered their policy to make the codec available for the masses.

[billou2k]

Yes I sent them an email and they replied that they only provide evaluation version for companies at the moment,
and that evaluation version for consumers will be available in a couple of weeks.

[chilledoutuk]

erm i would like to evaluate but the codec is no longer vailable for download could someone please put the codec online so that i and others can download it much appreciated.

also has anyone tried the mainconcept h.264 offering?
TIA

[IgorC]

If your email support atachments of 5-6 mb iºll send you this trial version

[chilledoutuk]

igorc i have pm'ed you my e-mail address thank you for offering to send me the trial.

[unmei]

i know this is going to sound like ranty cheese, but it's just something i wanted to say aloud once :)

I did some tests with the old (was it 1.0 rc2?) encoder from VSS and also with the new version. While the new version runs 60+ times faster on my comp it also provided clearly lower quality. I admit i did not treak the settings much, just what was needed to get it to encode 640x480 and a very low bitrate. I also encoded xvid, wmv9 and vp6.2 clip to about the same size and resolution.

I'm looking forward to the possibilities the AVC tools offers to encoders being implemented in a more and more intelligent way ..much like it was soo exciting to see xvid's quality improve incredibly from build to build for some time (about a year ago).
BUT in my experience the h.264 encoders we see today are interesting to see where it starts out, but the results i get are clearly inferior quality to xvid (or vp6.2 at low bitrates) - not by a tiny bit, by a huge chunk. This should not be read as i were against or diappointed by h.264, it just means i have a hard time understanding how people can put it on a line with the codecs that are matured _today_.