what is xvid's niche?

[lexor]

Back in the day when things were just getting started I though that mpeg4 will be the base for future DVD movies, and it looks like it will, but it's gonna be mpeg4 avc (h.264) and xvid is not based on that.

So is xvid function and purpose going to be pigeon holed into being "rip" codec for back up and computer (possibly HTPC) viewing? I know there are some Stand Alones there that support mpeg4, or rather DivX but can also play XViD, but there still doesn't seem to be much use for that since once h.264 gets up there, we'll just make 1cd backups using that, and we gonna have normal Stand Alone DVD players that would natively play that back (kinda like VCD and DVD playback now, I hope)

What is the motivation benind Ahead pushing for stand alone support for their codec (non h.264 one)? What is XViD's niche?

[malkion]

What subjective queries!

So is xvid function and purpose going to be pigeon holed into being "rip" codec for back up and computer (possibly HTPC) viewing?

Totally subjective, hardly answerable. XviD is alive and well, and only getting better. The future is just that, it all remains to be seen.

What is the motivation benind Ahead pushing for stand alone support for their codec (non h.264 one)?

I think any commercial based application's motivation is money, no?

What is XViD's niche?

Open-sourced, educational video codec. What more could you ask for? It's a dream! I use it almost exlcusively, with no worries.

My worthless 2 cents.

[lexor]

Originally posted by malkion
What subjective queries!

So is xvid function and purpose going to be pigeon holed into being "rip" codec for back up and computer (possibly HTPC) viewing?

Totally subjective, hardly answerable. XviD is alive and well, and only getting better. The future is just that, it all remains to be seen.


What's subjective? We know it's not even considered for HD-DVD. So it's not going anywhere in mainstream stand alones.


What is the motivation benind Ahead pushing for stand alone support for their codec (non h.264 one)?

I think any commercial based application's motivation is money, no?


Money from what? Look above.


What is XViD's niche?

Open-sourced, educational video codec. What more could you ask for? It's a dream! I use it almost exlcusively, with no worries.

My worthless 2 cents.

Educational? :D :p dude you should be on ComedyChannel! I use XViD too, but when h.264 comes (and make no mistake it will come fairly soon) why would I or anyone use XViD? Considering smaller size for same quality, compatibility with both computer and stand alone of that time, scalability from video phone to HD-DVD!

So I ask you, what subjectiveness? I made no judgement of anything, I simply see no niche for XViD to fill based on recent news/announcements, and I'm asking what it might be.

Plese do not turn this thread into a flame war on how it's the best codec (read rules about such statements) or how it can kick h.264's a$$.

[malkion]

Heh, I've already stated my views, does it matter to me what XviD means to you now or in the afterwards?

Best wishes on your intentions.

[chilledoutuk]

I have tried a few H.264 codecs and I can tell you that it far from blows XVID out of the water. The H.264 codecs that I have tested dont come close to the compresability of XVID with VHQ on bframes or even without.

H.264 is MPEG-4 AVC and the natural progression of XVID is to MPEG-4 AVC
when they have finished optomising there superiour XVID codec.

One hopes they apply there superiour skills and experiance to getting the best out of this new standard as they have done to MPEG-4 ASP.

I suspect that H.264 has a lot of potential but only in the hands of the right video engineers as at the moment I am not impressed with it at all in its current incarnations.

[celtic_druid]

I would have imagined that any h.264 compatible hardware player would be backwards comatibile, so you could still play your XviD encodes.

I would have also thought that the only people's interest that really matters is the developers. As long as they are still interested in working on XviD, then the work goes on, whether the masses use it or not.

[Manao]

H264 is hard to decode, especially on stand alone. For the moment, HD-DVD in H264 are a dream, and it will stay so at least one year, imho. So Ahead motivation seems understandable.the natural progression of XVID is to MPEG-4 AVCNo, the only parts of XviD that can be kept are the rate control and the motion estimation, all the other parts have to be rewritten.

[Selur]

Manao is right the difference between Mpeg4 ASP and AVC is quite large.

For me, it's like mpeg1 and mpeg2, when mpeg2 emerged mpeg1 didn't disapear. (Though the difference between mpeg1 and mpeg2 isn't as big as between avc and asp.) Even now some people use mpeg1 and in the future not all people will use h.264 and Xvid/Mpeg4 ASP will still be used.

And even if xvid won't be used, (as I see it) it doesn't really matter, iirc the main purpose was to learn something from writing an mpeg asp codec. ;)
(and as far as I can see, a bunch of people not only the developers learned a lot of stuff, e.g. how mpeg video compression works)

Cu Selur

[gldblade]

I don't think that there is a real answer to the niche that XviD is designed for. People simply use the codec as they see fit. Right now people mainly use it for DVD ripping, but let's face it, there really isn't too much else you can use a high-quality codec for. Content streaming is unlikely as there exist other codec which will work much better at lower bitrates. Professional usage is unlikely as Mpeg4 has not yet necessarily been widely accepted as a reliable standard. The other two realistic purposes I can think of include personal and pornographics (also personal :P)

h.264 will take a helluva lot more time than you think to arrive. If you can correct me by pointing to active projects that are producing some form of realistic production results, then by all means do so, it would be awesome :P

And XviD is definitely very much a learning experience. I can say that nearly every active member of the XviD community has learned a great deal about Mpeg4. I don't even need to mention the actual developers themselves. Throughout the entire timeline of the project, I have only made actual use of the codec twice. Yet I still continue to follow the development of the project because I find it to be fun and interesting.

[RadicalEd]

There are still tons of profiles worth of features that we haven't even begun to explore left in Mpeg 4 part 2. As AVC and MPEG-4 in general is MPEG's current magnum opus of sorts, I don't anticipate any revolutions in compression technology from the group itself for a long while. They should have their hands busy with 7 and 21 anyway. With that in mind, there's plenty of time to work with Mpeg 4 aside from AVC and certainly plenty to work on.

[Teegedeck]

Ho-humm. For starters, XviD as an MPEG-4 codec enables me to put two movies at transparent quality onto one DVD-R. ATM, the only other option to reach transparency would be using CCE, QuEnc or the like but that would need double the space. (Other codecs that would come to mind are not really transparent for me.)

Should in a year or two AVC let me put three or four movies onto one DVD-R at transparent quality, will I be sorry about the waste of a several hundred megs? Simple answer: No, I won't. As I am not sorry about wasting space with MPEG-2 from time to time. The main thing is, the copy is true to the original.

Thing is, ATM AVC doesn't reach transparency at a lower filesize than MPEG-4 ASP (i.e. XviD) and if XviD development continues like that, it will stay that way for a looong time.

So I guess I'm rather not gonna sit here and wait till this changes but use whatever MPEG standard gives me what I want.

[lexor]

Originally posted by Teegedeck
Thing is, ATM AVC doesn't reach transparency at a lower filesize than MPEG-4 ASP (i.e. XviD) and if XviD development continues like that, it will stay that way for a looong time.

Despite appearing skeptical in my original post, I do very much share that point of view. What motivated me to start this topic is that AVC doesn't need to outshine ASP right now or in the near future. If powers that be do decide to use AVC for HD-DVD and AVC will offer just the same quality as XViD right now, then you have a format that is both computer and stand-alone compatible, future proof as future proof can be, with farther improvements coming up.

My concern about ASP vs AVC was never with space, it was about feasibility and usefulness. Especially for stand alones, where you have a mess that DivX created and support for many features that make XViD great varies, and sketchy. Whereas we would have a definitive h.264 playback "profile" if you wish, so we get guaranteed interoperability.

And finally I am aware that DivX/Mpeg4 sertified stand-alones were available for sometime, but non of them are sold anywhere I can drive to. HD-DVD codec is bound to hit main stream. And unlike XViD money will be poured into development/improvement of an HD-DVD codec, since it's a big business, so I do believe that equal quality is going to be obtainable in under a year.

P.S. I'm rambling, aren't I? Sorry :(

[Tommy Carrot]

Well, my main concern about a codec is the quality, everything else is secondary to me, and (sorry WMV and VP6 fans) no other codec could convince me that it has better quality than xvid. So for me the reason to use xvid is that simple: it's the best for my purposes. :D

BTW, i'm sure h.264 will take over quite soon (perhaps NERO will be the first pioneer, but many will follow), and since it has much more powerful toolset than mpeg4 ASP, i'm sure it will offer significantly better quality than xvid. And as i said, that superior quality is the most important advantage to me, the compatibility with the new DVD standard is secondary.

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
i'm sure it will offer significantly better quality than xvid. And as i said, that superior quality is the most important advantage to me, the compatibility with the new DVD standard is secondary.
Ahh, well; a bit beside the point - MPEG-1 couldn't deliver transparency; MPEG-2 delivers it at about (say) 5 Mbps, MPEG-4 ASP delivers it at about 2 Mbps - if MPEG-4 AVC delivers transparency at maybe even 1 Mbps that's great; more space saved - but nothing more than that. And we are no longer forced to put our encodings on 700MB-CDRs today so why worry.

The only persons who should be concerned about such things are those who absolutely want to watch their stuff on standalone-players and are now unsure whether future models will be backwards/downwards-compatible.

Backing-up HD-DVDs will be a completely different task but that's still a while ahead.

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by Teegedeck
And we are no longer forced to put our encodings on 700MB-CDRs today so why worry.


That might be true, but the filesize is still important, and i like my encodings to have reasonable size, so a better codec is always welcomed. And the HD contents will even magnify the need for a more efficient codec.

[Teegedeck]

Very correct; we are always in the need for more efficient codecs. But I just don't think AVC will already be what we need.

Until now the industy has always produced recordable media with less capacity than those media which hold movies. I think this will continue. So when we'll one day want to back-up HD-DVDs we'll have a déjà vu: Either resize (downsize) it or recompress it and get degraded quality; and wait for an even more advanced codec in order to do proper back-ups...

I believe AVC won't really help us with HD-DVDs. At the moment we are still in the lucky situation that we can use more advanced codecs for back-ups than those which were used for the original. When HD-DVDs will eventually come out, this may change once more.

[*.mp4 guy]

Well (correct me if im wrong here) but i beleive mp4 avc is to mp4 asp as he aac with ps is to lc aac... er right.

Avc is definately more advanced coding technology then asp but, i think it is mostly designed for low bitrates at moderate quality vs. mp4 asp which is designed for high-transparent quality at moderate to high bitrates.

With hd content mp4 asp may yeild superior results in the quality department.

[edit] and as far as backups are concerned i rarely transfer a backup to recordable media, most of the time it just goes from my desktop to my laptop so i can take it with me places. Anyway physical media such as cds and dvds are becoming dated and a less viable form of communication than in hous networks.

[edit2] well it looks like i was wrong, anyway i wasnt around for open divx but i take it that if it was any worse than say msmpeg4 v2 you have a very good point.

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by *.mp4 guy
Well (correct me if im wrong here) but i beleive mp4 avc is to mp4 asp as he aac with ps is to lc aac... er right.


No, i would say it is to Advanced Simple Profile what AAC is to MP3. H.264 is supposed to be better at all bitrates, according to the MPEG statement it should deliver similar quality at 25-50% lower bitrate than mpeg-4 ASP.

The current implementations are still very crude, you shouldn't make any conclusion based on them about the potential of the standard. Don't forget, it has taken years of developing and tweaking before the mpeg4 SP/ASP implementations finally became as good as they are now, the first ones (opendivx, momusys) were quite horrible compared to xvid.