Some new questions about Ateme H.264

[acidsex]

Ok, I ahve played with this extensively since its release and I must say the quality is awesome. However, there are some things that I am quite confused on. Is it normal that the bit rate used in the Standard profile is half that when using Standard AVC? I encoded one file and under standard profile it was 4MB stream where as under AVC it was a 2MB stream. Also the file size seems to be cut in half as well. Will I still get better quality with the AVC at a lower file size?

Second, I have some training tutorials that were encoded using Sorenson Pro for Quicktime 880x600 5fps resolution. Can I safely upsize it to 1280x720 and retain the present quality? The reason I ask is that I can burn a DVD of them and they look amazing.

Last, with regards to the Nero players that are making their way out, if I dont yet have a HD TV but I encode my films in HD resolution (1080i/720), will these players still play these videos on a standard def TV and downscale it to 480? I understand that AVC isnt yet supported for the new nero players. But what I am trying to do is spare having to encode my films now at 480 so that they can be played back in the current Nero players and then have to re-encode them later on when I finally do get an HDTV. I thought I once read that with H.264 you could encode one time and play everywhere.

Thanks and sorry for being long winded.

[acidsex]

I was hoping eomeone from Ateme would chime in on this but it dont appear as if its going to happen. Anyone else have any ideas?

[thegeby]

I understand that AVC isnt yet supported for the new nero players. But what I am trying to do is spare having to encode my films now at 480 so that they can be played back in the current Nero players and then have to re-encode them later on when I finally do get an HDTV

I am definitely not from Ateme/Ahead, but from your remark about 480 I assume you are in North America. The ATSC are said to be "looking" at new codecs, but given that the inclusion of MPEG2 tuners in TV sets has been made mandatory, it is unlikely that there is going to be much movement there.

Why does this matter for DVD's? A DVD player outputs a video signal, not a compressed bitstream. One, DVD recorders will be built based on actual broadcast streams. Two, prices for decoder chips will be lower if they have applications both in TVs and in DVD players.

However don't give up yet. I believe that H.264 (but not AAC)is specified for HD-DVD/Bluray. This is admittedly a halfa$$ed solution.

Even more DON'T GIVE UP yet. The DVB consortium has standardised both H.264 and AAC for their DTV receivers, Main Profile for SDTV and Extended Profile for HDTV. Provided your new HDTV accepts DVI/HDMI, it is quite likely that you can use a future Rest-of-the-world (i.e. DVB) spec DVD player to play your Recode MP-4 in glorious HD.

[babayaga]

Originally posted by acidsex
I was hoping eomeone from Ateme would chime in on this but it dont appear as if its going to happen. Anyone else have any ideas?
Sorry, we are quite busy those days.

Originally posted by acidsex
Standard profile is half that when using Standard AVC? I encoded one file and under standard profile it was 4MB stream where as under AVC it was a 2MB stream. Also the file size seems to be cut in half as well. Will I still get better quality with the AVC at a lower file size?
The maximum bitrates are defined only to ensure that a file is played smoothly on a power-limited decoders (for instance NeroDigital players).
So the profiles were solely defined looking at the actual capabilities of the chipsets. If all hardware decoders were strictly compliant to profiles/levels as defined in the MPEG standards, it would be much easier :(

Originally posted by acidsex
Last, with regards to the Nero players that are making their way out, if I dont yet have a HD TV but I encode my films in HD resolution (1080i/720), will these players still play these videos on a standard def TV and downscale it to 480?
They should and I cannot imagine that it does not work, but since no AVC/H.264 HD chipset is out by now; it's difficult to be absolutly sure.

[Doom9]

Second, I have some training tutorials that were encoded using Sorenson Pro for Quicktime 880x600 5fps resolution. Can I safely upsize it to 1280x720 and retain the present quality? The reason I ask is that I can burn a DVD of them and they look amazing.What do you mean by upsize? Resize prior to encoding, then encode in AVC? Then definitely not. Every re-encodig process lowers quality unless the codec used is lossless. Consider that a law of nature because that's how video compression works.

[acidsex]

Thansk for the replies guys. My main concern with purchasing the ND players is having to re-encode my films (i.e. one for use on SDTV and then again on HDTV when i finally break down and purchase one.)

WRT to upsizing, I dont expect to gain quality but isnt it possible to supersample the pixels where the lets say if I were double the size that basically during the resizing process it doubles the pixels? Again no additional quality would be maintained but at the very least current quality chould be maintained. Im sure my thoughts are flawed but it just seems as if that is the way it should work.

[DeathTheSheep]

If you encode with a quantizer of 0 (in anything), you shouldnt loose any quality... Hope that helps.

[Manao]

H264 Main profile isn't lossless, even at quantizer 0. You have to use the FRext profile for quantizer 0 to be lossless.

[DeathTheSheep]

Hm... what an intriguing codec... And this is what's inside NeroDigital? How do you get a seperate one? Or do you mean you did use NeroDigital itself?