Test Report: Siemssen(Nero)SCO5000ND

[SeeMoreDigital]

Some of you guys may have already found the following, on the VideoHelp.com web site: -Region code hack posted by Matthew Brett, March 09 2005:
1670 with no disc in the player

Cheers

[Assault]

Hi folks!

I have that DVD-Player for a few days now and I have a question concerning XviD mp4 encodes done with a custom quantization matrix. I know that the player can only play such encodes if the file is muxed with Nero. Mp4box/mp4UI muxes don't work. But I don't want to use Nero for encoding but XviD.
Does anyone know if it is possible to use Nero only for muxing the video/audio? Can you use Nero's muxer outside Recode?
I've already tried Nero's AVC Muxer in Graphedit but I wasn't able to connect the AVI-Splitter with it.Am I doing something wrong or is that just not possible? If it isn't possible is there any other way I can encode my video with XviD but mux it with Recode?

Thanks for your help! :)

Regards,
Assault

P.S.: I hope that question wasn't asked before but I used search and didn't find anything.

[bond]

Originally posted by Assault
I have that DVD-Player for a few days now and I have a question concerning XviD mp4 encodes done with a custom quantization matrix. I know that the player can only play such encodes if the file is muxed with Nero. Mp4box/mp4UI muxes don't work. But I don't want to use Nero for encoding but XviD.first of all its wrong that mp4ui/mp4box muxes dont work!
.mp4 files are .mp4 files, it doesnt matter what muxer/encoder or whatever was used to create them (unless that tool is buggy of course, which definitely isnt the case for mp4box)

you are right, someone else already reported that the custom matrix, hvs-best, doesnt work on a sample encoded with xvid
you can read such reports here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88680&perpage=20&pagenumber=1) and here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88680&perpage=20&pagenumber=3), which also show that files created with mp4box/mp4ui indeed work


so the only important question is:
are you sure that a nero encode with the hvs-best matrix works inside .mp4 on the siemmssen?
i think its more likely that the siemmsen doesnt support custom matrices in mp4 at all

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
so the only important question is:
are you sure that a nero encode with the hvs-best matrix works inside .mp4 on the siemmssen?
i think its more likely that the siemmsen doesnt support custom matrices in mp4 at all This is my feeling about the custom matrix situation too!

On a different note. Does anybody have any contact details for Siemssen and know were their firmware updates will be available from?

I think it might be time to contact Siemssen with some firmware requests!


Cheers

[Soulhunter]

-> E-Mail Support (http://tw.teknihall.de/taskwatcher/servlet/taskwatcher/template/Indexsiemssen.vm/action/LocaleAction)

-> Firmware (http://www.siemssen.de/working/layout_4/php/service_2.php?content=downloads)


Bye

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks Soulhunter,

I visited Siemssen's firmware page... but could not find anything referring to the SCO5000ND player.

Is it just me?


Cheers

[Latexxx]

Choose System: Firmware and then click Anzeigen.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Latexxx
Choose System: Firmware and then click Anzeigen. Thanks Latexxx,

I can see now that Siemssen refer to the player as "SCO 5000 ND", rather than "SCO5000ND"

EDIT:
I can also see that the latest firmware offers the following: -Feb, 04 2005
new Release which fixes or adds following points:

- improved Support of add. DVD+RW
- Jpeg Display now optional in Original Size or "Fit to screen"
- New Skin Design of Setup Menu
- New Data Menu Design
- AUTOPLAY for ISO File-CD or -DVD
- Improved Nero-Digital Playback
- Detection of not supported Nero Digital Profiles.
Supported are: Mobile-, Portable-, Standard- and Cinema*-Profiles
- Detection of Nero-Digital (DRM) protected Files
- Display of File extension Icon as AVI, JPEG etc.
- improved Xvid GMC Playback (not 100% now)
- improved external Subtitle and AV-Synchronisation on DivX and Xvid Files
Cheers

[Sagittaire]

Originally posted by Assault
I have that DVD-Player for a few days now and I have a question concerning XviD mp4 encodes done with a custom quantization matrix. I know that the player can only play such encodes if the file is muxed with Nero. Mp4box/mp4UI muxes don't work. But I don't want to use Nero for encoding but XviD.
Does anyone know if it is possible to use Nero only for muxing the video/audio? Can you use Nero's muxer outside Recode?
I've already tried Nero's AVC Muxer in Graphedit but I wasn't able to connect the AVI-Splitter with it.Am I doing something wrong or is that just not possible? If it isn't possible is there any other way I can encode my video with XviD but mux it with Recode?


xvid + CM + mp4box -> don't work with Siemssen
Nero ASP + CM + neromux -> work with Siemssen
MPEG4 ASP (NDASP or XviD) + avimux -> work with Siemssen

conclusion: problem with mp4box or special mux with neromux and MPEG4 ASP + CM for Siemssen ... ??!

IMO the problem is mp4box + mpeg4 asp + CM

[bond]

sagittaire, can you plz also mux the xvid.avi into .mp4 with mp4creator and try this one
its important that you first demux to raw .m4v with the avi2raw tool from mpeg4ip and than feed mp4creator the raw .m4v (and not the .avi)

[Assault]

Hi Bond!

first of all its wrong that mp4ui/mp4box muxes dont work!
.mp4 files are .mp4 files, it doesnt matter what muxer/encoder or whatever was used to create them (unless that tool is buggy of course, which definitely isnt the case for mp4box)

I know that both mp4ui and mp4box produce spec compliant mp4 files. I just supposed that Nero does anything special when muxing mp4 files (anything not related to the mp4 specifications but in coorperation with Siemssen)to make them work on the Siemssen.

so the only important question is:
are you sure that a nero encode with the hvs-best matrix works inside .mp4 on the siemmssen?
i think its more likely that the siemmsen doesnt support custom matrices in mp4 at all

I've never tried Nero Recode. I just tried different custom matrices in avi which all worked on the Siemssen. Furthermore I read in Sagittaire's posts that Nero Recode ASP encodes done with a custom matrix work on the Siemssen as well. So I wondered if there isn't the possibility to use Recode just for muxing the mp4 file.

sagittaire, can you plz also mux the xvid.avi into .mp4 with mp4creator and try this one
its important that you first demux to raw .m4v with the avi2raw tool from mpeg4ip and than feed mp4creator the raw .m4v (and not the .avi)

I'm going to try that today. I'll post the results later.

Regards

[bond]

Originally posted by Assault
I just supposed that Nero does anything special when muxing mp4 files (anything not related to the mp4 specifications but in coorperation with Siemssen)to make them work on the Siemssen.no, i doubt thats the case, from my point of view the nero files are totally normal. why should nero produce always spec compliant files and only do some strange things with custom matrices, this makes no sense

i think there is more a bug somewhere, either in the siemssen firmware or in mp4box, thats why i asked sagittaire to check whether mp4creator .mp4 files work, cause this will tell us whether its likely to be mp4box' fault or not

[Assault]

Hi bond!

As you proposed I muxed my Xvid HVS-best encode with mp4creator. I first demuxed the the video stream with avi2raw to m4v and then used mp4creator with that command line: mp4creator -create=input.m4v -rate=25 output.mp4
The result was the same as with mp4box. The Siemssen Player can't play it.
But perhaps there's also something wrong with my command line because my test video has 99 frames but when muxed with mp4creator it plays very jerky and the length is 5(!) seconds. When muxed with mp4box playback is good(on the PC).

Regards

[bond]

make sure you use the latest version of mp4creator: 1.2.12 (http://www.aziendeassociate.it/cd.asp?dir=/mpeg4iptools)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Assault
But perhaps there's also something wrong with my command line because my test video has 99 frames but when muxed with mp4creator it plays very jerky and the length is 5(!) seconds. When muxed with mp4box playback is good(on the PC). Have you tried using Mezzanine's latest version of MP4BoxGUI v0.14... Which is available here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=617798#post617798) - but marked as v0.13!

You will also need Micro$oft .NET installed.

It might not make any difference to the muxing... but you never know!


Cheers

[bond]

mp4boxgui is simply a gui for mp4box, so if mp4box works there is no need to waste time on testing mp4boxgui too ;)

[BoNz1]

Hi, I'm having problems getting video encoded by the latest XviD 1.1 beta 2 builds to play in my Siemssen. In short they will not play at all, or will just play the first couple seconds. I assume the reason for this behavior is this (http://list.xvid.org/pipermail/xvid-devel/2005-April/004960.html) but does anyone know how to fix one of these streams? Once my encodes were done, I deleted all the sources and I don't want to encode them again if I can just fix something in the user data.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Can you explain a little more about your XviD encodes (for us non code understanding types)?

Are you having problems playing XviD encodes generated in Simple Profile only. Or encodes containing B-VOP, or other ASP implementations?

For instance, a few weeks ago I noticed that one of my hardware playback devices did not like XviD encodes containing B-VOP, Adaptive Quantization and VHQ... As soon as VHQ was unchecked, they played fine!


Cheers

[BoNz1]

Hi, the encodes were all generated using the latest build from the XviD cvs. Most of them used 2 bframes (unpacked), qpel, vhq4, bframe vhq, turbo, chroma motion, and trellis quantization. I also used the DXN HT NTSC profile because I wanted to use the VBV. I changed some of the code in the vfw to allow me to use qpel along with the DXN HT profile (otherwise I can't use the VBV). Maybe that is the problem? I'm not sure.

[bond]

bonzi, you used a dxn profile together with unpacked b-frames? if yes, than i think i know whats causing your problem:
i assume when using b-frames together with a dxn profile that xvid writes still the "DivX503b1393p" line into the userdata. the "p" at the end signals that the stream is packed. now if xvid isnt smart enough to check whether the you ticked packed bitstream or not but simply always write "DivX503b1393p" than your player will think the streams is packed and handle it as if it where packed (but still of course it isnt packed and therefore borks)

try changing the "p" at the end of the user data to "n" and/or try deleting the divx entry at all with mpeg4modifier

i have posted this already on the xvid maillist and pointed to this thread, so some xvid devs hopefully read this and fix it, as if its the case, its definitely a xvid bug

[SeeMoreDigital]

All darn good points bond ;)

[BoNz1]

Originally posted by bond

try changing the "p" at the end of the user data to "n" and/or try deleting the divx entry at all with mpeg4modifier

i have posted this already on the xvid maillist and pointed to this thread, so some xvid devs hopefully read this and fix it, as if its the case, its definitely a xvid bug

Hmm. Yes, thats what I thought. However, the only thing in the user data is XviD0038. Which must mean that the build I used was before these changes from suxen_drol for DXN compatibility were checked into the cvs. Which is really peculiar since, there must be something else wrong with these files. I guess I could try to add DivX503b1393n to the user data and see if that helps.

[bond]

i found that its very likely that the custom matrix streams nerodigital produces in reality dont use custom matrices, but simply mpeg quantisation
thats why the players played the nerodigital "custom matrix streams", but not the ones created with xvid in mp4

read more here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=93513

[BoNz1]

Hi, I created a file yesterday to play in my player. Here are the features I used:

Cinema Plus NTSC (Uses VBV)
H.263
B-frames 2
Qpel
VHQ 4 + Bframe VHQ
Trellis
Stereo LC AAC audio
Muxed with YAMP w/ chapters and soft subs

Anyway, the stream does not play in my player properly. I suspect the reason for this is that the Cinema Plus Profile does not allow you to not use packed bitstream. I have requested in the past for XviD to allow setting VBV values in the unrestricted profile. It stutters. Perhaps I'll try unpacking the bitstream and trying again. I will also make a feature request for VBV in unrestricted profile in XviD.

[BoNz1]

Update. I extracted the video from the mp4 and it seems it is not packed. Does mp4box detect that the avi is packed and unpacks it? So I dunno what is wrong. Everything I used should be compatible.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Update. I extracted the video from the mp4 and it seems it is not packed. Does mp4box detect that the avi is packed and unpacks it? So I dunno what is wrong. Everything I used should be compatible.Yes, MP4Box/YAMB is able to detect packed bitstream in AVI and remove it before muxing into MP4...

Are you ableto generate a 10MB (or less) sample an e-mail it to me please?


Cheers

[BoNz1]

Yes, MP4Box/YAMB is able to detect packed bitstream in AVI and remove it before muxing into MP4...

Are you ableto generate a 10MB (or less) sample an e-mail it to me please?


Cheers

Yes, I can do that. I should be able to get you a 3-4MB file.

Update: Ok sent :).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi BoNz1,

When I tried playing your sample in the my Zensonic Z500 it would not play either!

However, after de-muxing the streams with YAMB I was able to individually play the "video" and "audio" streams without any issues. So this would suggest it's the TTTX subtitles that are causing the problems.

By design NeroDigital Certified players support VOBsubs ;)


Cheers

[BoNz1]

SMD, yep that sounds quite possible. I will remove the TTTX subs and try again today.
EDIT: Yeah that was the problem. Thanks it works now.