On2 VP7

[Sirber]

I prefer more efforts on the codec than on marketing. You need marketing when you sell crap ;)

[AlexeyS]

Originally posted by Sirber
I prefer more efforts on the codec than on marketing. You need marketing when you sell crap ;)
Yes, and 99% users watch movies in this 'crap'. I don't think it's right.

[Sirber]

Life is not perfect. :(

[Sagittaire]

Originally posted by virus
yeah, the first beta was much slower than the current trial version. But the problem in VP7 is not that the codec is "slow". The problem is that the GUI currently only offers a couple of presets, and they're both oriented to high quality (and thus most of the time-consuming options are enabled).

It's clear to me that the problem is that VP7 doesn't currently offer to the user the ability to turn off some flags and get higher speeds (at the expense of quality of course, like it happens with all codecs). The solution imho is not to reduce the complexity of Best and Good modes (unless you can do it through pure code optimization, i.e. without any quality loss - that kind of speedup is always welcome :)), but the adoption of a proper speed/quality slider with 4 or 5 presets that allows the usual tradeoff between encoding times and output quality.

There has been a lot of talk here about the design of a "n00b-friendly" GUI for XviD some time ago. Several people outlined how the most simple design was the adoption of such a slider, with the codec choosing appropriate parameters internally for each preset. This is the way to go.

BTW for those who think that VP7 is "painfully slow", I can reveal that time ago On2Tech talked about an internal version capable of encoding D1 in realtime. So it's really just a matter of missing speed scalability in the user interface, *not* of On2's devs being unable of writing a codec with decent speed ;)

cheers :)
virus

very good post ... agree, agree, agree and agree ...

like standard, better, extreme or insame for DivX ... or normal, good, best, extra or full for H264 Nero

[Gannjunior]

I agree with Virus too. " Saggie parole! " ;) Moreover: VP gui, in general, really has a very little tuning interface ( in particular if u compare it with xvid tuning possibilities...).

ciao!

[Sirber]

Yeah, I have to agree too :(.

[DeathTheSheep]

I think 3ivx is the champion at "Quality Slider" technology. 3ivx 5, yes... One could learn a lot from it, I s'pose.

[Sirber]

It's cool to have a quick quality slider, but to have access to advanced stuff is cool too. Beginner vs Expert :rolleyes:

[DeathTheSheep]

3. Decoding speed is also problem for me. It's little slower than H.264, and much slower than VP6... I even can't play 1280x720p video without lags on my Athlon FX-55 CPU.

My suggestion is to lower postprocessing. The default value is 2. In the registry, you can change strPostprocessingvalue= to 0-4, 0 being the lowest. Try it if you have lags--it just might help!


Oh, and On2Tech, I'm exteremely satisfied with VP7. Is the VP6/7 Pocket PC decoder coming out soon?

PS: Nero just made its Showtime Mobile's debut.

Good luck to On2, VP7, us, me, and the world. Cheerio lads.

[DeathTheSheep]

Originally posted by Sirber
It's cool to have a quick quality slider, but to have access to advanced stuff is cool too. Beginner vs Expert :rolleyes:

Very true. Tabs->
1st tab (Basic/Beginner's tab)=Beginner settings with slider.
2nd tab (Advanced User's tab)=the super advanced stuff with the nitty gritty junk that the sliders actually do.
3rd tab (Advanced features and settings)= to enable optional tags and settings in any arbritraty order to acheive either excellent or terrible results, depending on how they're set.

[Sirber]

Seems good to me :)

[edit]
"You know what programmers need: helping hands that write code.. not people asking for this and that (that's just annoying and kills your motivation faster than anyone can say please)." -Doom9True, but I don't mind feature request if they are realist :)

[webwonk]

Will Macromedia's SWF8 version of their player decode VP7 or will it just be VP6.2?

When will this be available to us?

Will it use Flix Pro or some such encoder? or will there be a DirectX version of the SWF8 video encoder?

Any info you can share would be most appreciated. Thanks and keep up the good work.

[webwonk]

Has anyone heard whether Macromedia (now Adobe) is using On2's VP6 or VP7 in SWF8?

[Sharktooth]

@ On2tech: im testing the new 7.0.6.0 release with the usual spiderman 2 trailer (PAL DVD source).
The first round is a very low bitrate test @ 400kbps (without audio).
If you have any suggestions on VP7 settings please let me know asap.
However my first impressions are good even if the "best quality" profile is still slower than Nero Recode slowest settings...

[AVmaniac]

Hi ...
i've tested tested the latest release of On2's VP7 codec and when compared with NERO-AVC and the latest x264(b216) it produced the best picture at 632kbps (tested for fitting simple cd with dualHEAAC5.1stream )on "Finding Nemo"
It seems as if the 1st pass is a bit faster but the 2nd pass is nearly equal to earlier releases, it's quite slow [ from 1-6 fps @ 720x400 avs-script VirtualDub ]

My maschine configuration:
Athlon64-3400+(So754)
1024MB-DDR400
normal process priority

[Sharktooth]

Here are the 400kbps encodes...
VP7.0.6: http://www.aziendeassociate.com/test/vp7.0.6-400.avi
x264 rev216vfw: http://www.aziendeassociate.com/test/x264_rev216-400.avi

Results could have been slightly better but since no one wants to encode at 1-2fps i tried to choose the most common settings for both codecs.

EDIT: Fixed links...

[Sirber]

* Pass 1/1: Frame 20515/181560, 49.35 MB, 0.65 FPS, ETA 69:16:54

:rolleyes:

[Sirber]

Originally posted by Sharktooth
Here are the 400kbps encodes...
VP7.0.6: http://www.aziendeassociate.com/test/vp7.0.6-400.avi
x264 rev216vfw: http://www.aziendeassociate.com/test/x264_rev216-400.avi

Results could have been slightly better but since no one wants to encode at 1-2fps i tried to choose the most common settings for both codecs.

EDIT: Fixed links...
I don't know... x264 tends to smooth but keep "constant details". VP7 have blocks and variable details (second part is blurier than x264). VP7 seems to have difficulties with scene change. Overall I'd go for x264.

[IgorC]

I noticed that VP7.06 has a very hard chroma optimization. May be codec trying to trade off between chroma(color)/luma(details).
I also tried to compare H.264 Nero, x264 cls rev216, VP7.06
Color is handled better by H.264 and x264 , but VP7.06 insignifically has better details. I can´t said what is better.

[Sirber]

I did SteamBoy for 1CD (712kbps), DVD rez and I'm not sure of the results. I have blinking squares in plain color. I'll make it with RV10 or x264 to compare. Took 2 days of encoding though...

[Sharktooth]

Dont use the "2-pass Best quality"...
Good quality mode is far more convenient, more configurable and a lot faster (even with the Encode speed = 0).

[Sharktooth]

Dont use the "2-pass Best quality"...
Good quality mode is far more convenient, more configurable and a lot faster (even with the Encode speed = 0) without loosing too much...

[Sirber]

ok.

PAR don't work with MKV, set 1.78, got 1.50 on playback.

[Sharktooth]

Matroska has PAR stored directly in the header, so it should work... unless the VP7 decoder doesnt support resizing.

[Sagittaire]

Originally posted by Sharktooth
Dont use the "2-pass Best quality"...
Good quality mode is far more convenient, more configurable and a lot faster (even with the Encode speed = 0) without loosing too much...

yes ... IMO good 1 or good 2 are certainely the best quality/speed in real encoding conditions (150 000 frames and more)


Mode Speed Mins fps OPSNR SSIM
---- ----- ----- ---- ------- -----------
Best n/a 13:29 3.8 40.7703 69.60783207
Good 0 8:5 6.3 40.6787 69.26216614
Good 1 5:39 9.1 40.6234 69.15486557
Good 2 5:20 9.6 40.5712 68.97606882
Good 3 4:17 12.0 40.2839 67.55805933
Good 4 2:14 23.0 40.1687 67.18458972
Good 5 1:30 34.2 39.9335 65.64112115

[IgorC]

It was mentioned that in VP7.06 RC control was improved and the dependence from min. quant is smaller now.
I did some encoding here at 700-710 kbit/s mixed motion ( high/low motion 50/50%). During high motion frames received very high quant. while during low motion very low. difference of quality between low/high motion is easy noticeble;
Settings : Min Q - 4, VBR - 75, Min 25%, Max 200 (as a default)
Should it better to force min. quant (6?) or adjust RC settings (min,max)?
There is no problem with RC of Xvid and Nero AVC.I can upload video.
Thanks.

[Leo 69]

When will be the v7.07 available ?

[On2Tech]

When will be the v7.07 available ?

Whilst I cannot give you an exact date, as there are still a couple of improvments we are working on, I suspect it will be one or two weeks rather than days or months.

[SpaceV]

any speed benchmarks?

[Leo 69]

any speed benchmarks?

Yes, ~1 FPS for best quality mode on Athlon 3200+. Decoding of such 720x512 video takes 35-40% of CPU. I didn't try other modes.

[Sharktooth]

"Other" modes are much faster. Depends on the speed slider.
However avoid "Best Quality" mode if you're a speed freak. Take into consideration that the difference between best quality and good quality at "0" is not so evident but the fps gain is something like 3x.

[Inventive Software]

I have something that may interest you.

When doing the 1st Pass in VDubMod, I set my settings accordingly, and I tell it where I want to put the 1st Pass Information File. I prefer to put it in a separate directory to where the output file is going. Only problem is that the file I specified to go in the separate directory isn't in there, and there is a file called vp7.fpf in the directory where the output file is. What's going on?

When trying to get the 2nd Pass going, I can't because VDubMod crashes with a kernel32.dll error. I assume this is because it can't find the 2nd Pass file.#

This is kinda bad practise, because if I specify where I want the 1st Pass file to go, I expect it to go there, and not elsewhere where I don't want it.

[On2Tech]

I have something that may interest you.

When doing the 1st Pass in VDubMod, I set my settings accordingly, and I tell it where I want to put the 1st Pass Information File. I prefer to put it in a separate directory to where the output file is going. Only problem is that the file I specified to go in the separate directory isn't in there, and there is a file called vp7.fpf in the directory where the output file is. What's going on?

When trying to get the 2nd Pass going, I can't because VDubMod crashes with a kernel32.dll error. I assume this is because it can't find the 2nd Pass file.#

This is kinda bad practise, because if I specify where I want the 1st Pass file to go, I expect it to go there, and not elsewhere where I don't want it.
We've duplicated the problem and will resolve it. Thanks for catching this problem.

[On2Tech]

any speed benchmarks?


The compression speeds for each of the different settings are similar to 7.06. There are some numbers for Sagittaire's HPII test clip in our release notes thread (also see his posting above).

These tests were run on a 3.2 Ghz P4 at 446 Kbits/sec. Note, however, that speed is somewhat material and data rate dependent (especially for best quality).

For this clip the approximate range is 3fps best to 30+ fps for good quality speed 5.

The biggest improvements in this release have been at the higher speed settings (SSIM 2 for speed 5) which is now on a par with speed 3 in the previous release.

As Sharktooth points out, the loss in quality when moving from best quality to good quality (especially at speeds speeds 0-2) is generally quite small, but they are much faster. We recognize that most people will prefer to run using these faster speed modes, which is why they have been the main focus of attention for this release.

On2Tech

[Inventive Software]

Thanks On2Tech. In the meantime, is there anyway to get around this problem? If not, I can wait fairly patiently for a newer version.

[On2Tech]

Thanks On2Tech. In the meantime, is there anyway to get around this problem? If not, I can wait fairly patiently for a newer version.

I guess you are currently stuck with running both passes from a directory you can write too. Other than that I have no suggestions.

I'm sorry about that.

[IgorC]

There are positive statements about new version Vp7.07 on some sites. VP7 was improved in continious form since the first preview version. Last VP7.07 has a good decoding speed and quality on par with H.264.
There are some comparisons on 400-700 kbps on official site. But how is well VP7 for HD content?
VP6 has a profiles. VP6.2 (sharpness profile) brings better result, especially on high bitrates, comparing with VP6.0 (stream profile). Is there any plan to create profiles for VP7.

[Sirber]

Gonna make a little comparaison at 400kbps, adding VP7 and ateme to my "x246 vs RV10" comp.

[Sirber]

VP7 did not hit correct filesize.

http://www.detritus.qc.ca/files/comp400/

[Sharktooth]

The clip is too short.

[Atamido]

1:49 @ 25fps = 2725 frames.

So, in 2700 frames, with many many scene changes, this codec couldn't figure out where to spend more or less bits? I guess I just expect algorithms to be a little better than that.

[Sirber]

keyframes are too high Q, P frames then gets ugly.

[Sirber]

Is there a way to make the codec hit correct filesize always? WHatever the bitrate I set, I get 6.9MB.

[Sharktooth]

Try tweaking the overflow...