Xvid and standalone Divx/Xvid players

[Alexander Maxim]

A little question for the Xvid developers:
Could you make this codec a little more compatible with these machines?
'Cause there are a lot of unhappy users out there (me included)...
Thank you,
Alexander

[Teegedeck]

Nothing for XviD developers to do, I'm afraid. The codec is alright, it is only the users that have to configure it correctly. Please have a search (http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?s=) on how to configure XviD for standalone players.

If you'd like to ask for easier configuration of XviD, I'm all for it but I don't think it will come.

[celtic_druid]

I actually did a version with a MTK profile, basically a as point to people who believe that changing the default packed bitstream setting screwed everything up for everybody.

I agree, it is an ASP MPEG4 video codec, not a works with ESS chipsets or whatever codec. If the chipset manufactures can't get it right, then that is their problem and anyone who doesn't want to doesn't have to use XviD.

[ObiKenobi]

Originally posted by Alexander Maxim
A little question for the Xvid developers:
Could you make this codec a little more compatible with these machines?
'Cause there are a lot of unhappy users out there (me included)...

Well you shouldn't be unhappy at the XviD developers because it's not their fault that hardware player manufacturers don't want to build good enough players to support ASP fully, but would rather support a crippled version based on the crappy DivX certifications. If you want to use a hardware player, just make sure to disable features like QPEL, GMC and be careful not to go over 2 consecutive b-frames and your XviD file should play back just fine on your hardware player. The only way that XviD could become more compatible with these DivX profiles would be to seriously cripple the more advanced features of Mpeg-4's Advanced Simple profile, which IMO would be completely ridiculous.

[Alexander Maxim]

OK, you're all right from your point of view, but try to put yourselves in the shoes of the standalone player users. That's why I think that the idea of an MTK profile included in the codec presets would be great. Besides, the trend is clearly towards the standalone players, because everybody prefers to watch their movies in the livingroom on TV and with a remote in the hand, than in front of a PC monitor in the bedroom. At least that's what I'm thinking.
Alexander

[celtic_druid]

Actually I have a standalone player. It really isn't that hard to do some research and if encoding for a given player/chipset to limit the settings that you use accordingly.

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by Alexander Maxim
Besides, the trend is clearly towards the standalone players, because everybody prefers to watch their movies in the livingroom on TV and with a remote in the hand, than in front of a PC monitor in the bedroom.

Actually, the trend sadly still is to trick customers into buying unfit hardware at steep prices too early. The industry started marketing MPEG4 before they were ready, sold non-conforming players or players lacking features to trusting customers, and now these customers are a bit left out in the cold as the first fully-capable players start shipping only now. Remember the first DVD-R or even CD-RW devices? Utterly unreliable crap sold at high prices. Now you are supposed to toss them away and buy new ones... :mad: Due to prior experience I guess that is exactly what will happen.

[Alexander Maxim]

Originally posted by celtic_druid
Actually I have a standalone player. It really isn't that hard to do some research and if encoding for a given player/chipset to limit the settings that you use accordingly. I do my enccodings just fine :D But there's a problem with the ones found you know where :D or borrowed from friends, because they often have things like packed bitstream and 3-point GMC :( So in this case the only solution is reencoding the material. Not much of a problem if you know what you're doing, but if you don't... Anyway, thank you for your answers.
Alexander
P.S. Teegedeck, you're so right... unfortunately :(

[Alexander Maxim]

Originally posted by Teegedeck
...the first fully-capable players start shipping only now.
Can you give some examples?
thanks

[Doom9]

But there's a problem with the ones found on the neAhem.. you know those are off limits here.

And even with DivX you can perfectly well create stuff that a crappy standalone can't handle. All it takes is set the profile to unrestricted. And if you have a reasonable chipset, the only stopgap should be 3point GMC, and the benefit of that is somewhat doubtful.. I've yet to note actual improvement by that feature, and it was dropped in the AVC profiles.

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by Alexander Maxim
Can you give some examples?
thanks
I take that back. I was referring to the very promising Sigma chipset DVD8620LNET, but looking at the thread in the hardware player forum, the performance doesn't seem to keep what the specs promised...

[Alexander Maxim]

:)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Teegedeck
I take that back. I was referring to the very promising Sigma chipset DVD8620LNET, but looking at the thread in the hardware player forum, the performance doesn't seem to keep what the specs promised... As chip-sets go, it promises to be quite good!

It does not handle 3WP GMC, but as Doom9 mentioned, GMC isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It seems to handle other ASP features such as Qpel and many custom matricies.... Which is nice :D

An AVS forum member has even reported that Mpeg4 encodes containing more than 1280x720 pixels (ie: up to 1440x1080), can be played.

Of course more testing needs to be done, but as yet, it appears only Tom (trbarry) has parted with his cash and bought a player with this chip-set.


Cheers

[junglemike]

Sorry guys, maybe not exactly on the issue, but i have similair question.
I'm trying to find out what features are supported on PalmOS5 there are currently 2 mpeg-4 players: MMplayer and SmartMovie. Neighter of them has a list of supported and unsupported features. Probably developers don't know themselves. Anyway, So far i've been endoding with Stable release of Xvod 1.0, using almost default settings. now i downloaded Latest unstable version in order to try to acheieve better quality/size at low bitrates (100-300kbits/sec) and trying to find out what is working with on palm and what's not. I tried to enable qpel,gmc, reduced resolution ,3 bframes, trellis.(well, i'm sure what they do, but i guess it must be something good since these settings are there :D :D :D ) REsulted file played perfectly on Pc, but immediately crashed both palm os5 players,leading to soft reset of palm.
So my question is: What xvid settings are transparent to the player, i mean, what settigs doesnt' change the video type, but only help to compress better. I almost sure that palm players have no problems with b-frames, at least they didn't crash adn played good (only slower)
So what do you say? What settins is safe to use in my case?