Quicktime 7 MPEG-4 ASP/AVC encoding?

[plonk420]

Originally posted by LordRPI
It certainly doesn't like ASP in .avi

i wouldn't have expected it to, not being "official" and all... :\


as for Nero, it IS 3.1.0.0 (not d)... the application (Recode) just reads 2.2.6.11. i thought it would have matched up with the 3.x of the NVE release package version.

[keel]

You probably all know this, and it's a bit OT, but QuickTime 7 will not natively support ASP, only MPEG4 Simple Profile and H.264 (AVC). Or at least that's what Apple has publicly stated so far.
It will probably support ASP with third-party components.

[plonk420]

i think Apple did things to take steps towards compatibility...


now here's something weird (and i wish i knew exactly which settings i used)

i did these three movies: Dreamcatcher, Finding Nemo, and The Cell; and i did them in Xvid and muxed them to mp4.

Dreamcatcher, because it was so long, i used all of MPEG-4 ASP's resources (3WP GMC, QPel, B-VOP) to make a watchable 1CD copy.

Finding Nemo, i think i ended up using H.263 quantization on the 2CD rip but still kept all ASP functions on (altho i experimented with MPEG Quantization for the first time).

The Cell i turned off a few functions in hopes of Quicktime functionality.

result, Finding Nemo and Dreamcatcher would case Quicktime 6.x to complain, but it would open. the picture would stutter on playback (play frame 1, 2, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, etc). The Cell would cause QT6 to complain, but no stuttering on playback.

on QT7, no complaints anywhere; but Finding Nemo and Dreamcather playback as if at half framerate (12fps, as if it's dropping half the frames). The Cell plays back perfectly smoothly. i just wish i could remember what i enabled on encoding!

edit2: just finished a quick encode using MPEG Quantization and it looks like QT7 doesn't support it (still).

[keel]

Originally posted by plonk420
i think Apple did things to take steps towards compatibility...
edit2: just finished a quick encode using MPEG Quantization and it looks like QT7 doesn't support it (still). How were you able to get a copy of QT7 and talk about it? I thought everyone was under NDA.
Not trying to scare you or worry you, just wondering, as Apple has come down hard on people breaking NDA.
Or is it OK to publicly talk about QT7 now? Some people have claimed to have already gotten Tiger today, so it's probalby a moot point now.
Just wondering....no criticism meant

[xmltok]

Originally posted by keel
How were you able to get a copy of QT7 and talk about it? I thought everyone was under NDA.
Not trying to scare you or worry you, just wondering, as Apple has come down hard on people breaking NDA.
Or is it OK to publicly talk about QT7 now? Some people have claimed to have already gotten Tiger today, so it's probalby a moot point now.
Just wondering....no criticism meant

Seeing as some people who ordered Tiger from other retailers had received theirs a few days ago I believe it is ok to talk about now.

[LordRPI]

Originally posted by xmltok
Seeing as some people who ordered Tiger from other retailers had received theirs a few days ago I believe it is ok to talk about now.

They have :confused:

[xmltok]

Originally posted by LordRPI
They have :confused:

Yep
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000777041145/

[keel]

Originally posted by xmltok
Seeing as some people who ordered Tiger from other retailers had received theirs a few days ago I believe it is ok to talk about now. Yes, You can talk about QT7 on Tiger. Sounds like a few shippers got a bit too eager! The cat is out of the bag...
But, if there is a seed of QT7 for OSX 10.3 (Panther) or/and a seed for Windows, the members of the seeding program would still be under NDA for those versions.

[plonk420]

never underestimate the power of underpaid minimum wage workers :)


so beta testers' hands are really that tied?

[plonk420]

not sure if this is a bug or what, but QT7 also plays both audio tracks at the same time (created as a two audio track file in Nero)...

[bond]

Originally posted by plonk420
not sure if this is a bug or what, but QT7 also plays both audio tracks at the same time (created as a two audio track file in Nero)... you have to en/disable tracks you (dont) want to play, cause otherwise all tracks are played at the same time of course, its the same in qt6 already

[FXsan]

Quicktime guys told me last week (NAB show - Las Vegas) that
- QT 7 will be released 29th April, with Tiger 10.4 (surely, you knew, or consult http://www.apple.com/)
- QT 7 for windows should come ~september (they do as fast as they can ...)
- QT 7 won't include MPEG-4 ASP as I previously read ;-( keep on SP...
- QT 7 will include baseline & main profiles AVC (which options ? TBD)

to be followed in some days after unleashing...

[plonk420]

Originally posted by bond
you have to en/disable tracks you (dont) want to play, cause otherwise all tracks are played at the same time of course, its the same in qt6 already

they kindly remove that option for you. command/apple-j has been disabled "pro version only" as they gently remind you...

http://s91855708.onlinehome.us/proonly.png

[bond]

Originally posted by FXsan
- QT 7 for windows should come ~september (they do as fast as they can ...)what the...? :devil:

[bond]

some nice screenshots of qt7's h.264 encoding options have been posted on hydrogenaudio (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=33535)

http://medina.homeunix.org/hydrogenaudio/MOV_export_options.png
http://medina.homeunix.org/hydrogenaudio/MP4_export_options.png

http://medina.homeunix.org/hydrogenaudio/MP4_export_options2.png

so qt7 supports
- encoding with avc to .mp4 and .mov :)
- main and baseline profile (altough it isnt shown what options get used actually)
- arbitrary frame coding orders (i guess b-pyramid), only with .mov output?
- multipass

[bond]

a mp4 sample is available (harry potter trailer), which is said to use the max possible quality (900kbps):
http://rapidshare.de/files/1445177/vts_01_8_900k.mp4.html

my findings on this sample:
- the mp4 file uses slightly a variable framerate
- every frame consists of 5 slices
- max 1 b-frame in a row is used
- b-frames are set adaptively
- there are no multiple reference frames used
- no cabac used
- no loop used
- no weigthed prediction used
- no frame reordering (in the sense of b-pyramid) used
- buffering period seis are used

featurewise this stream is a baseline profile stream + b-frames, pretty poor imho...
qualitywise a lower bitrate needs to be used for testing, cause 900kbps is too high to really stress a codec imho, still i got the impression that the codec tends to blur, but this has to be tested more

problems:
- the file crashes mplayer, videolan and ateme's mp4toolbox, which normally handle avc mp4 files fine
- the filebrand of the mp4 file is "mp42", it should be "avc1" i think
- there is a strange sdtp atom written, which isnt needed in mp4 and only consists of 00 08 00 08s
- the cts values are not correct, for neither directly created mp4 files, nor passed through from mov .mp4 files (different behaviour for both cases: a more detailed description is written in a later post)

apart from that the file is played fine in directshow with ffdshow and the haali or nero mp4 parser

[Drachir]

Originally posted by bond
a mp4 sample is available (harry potter trailer), which is said to use the max possible quality (900kbps):
http://rapidshare.de/files/1445177/vts_01_8_900k.mp4.html


The file play too with Osmo4 2005.04.19(libffmpeg 2005.04.14) with some errors in the picture.

I updated today my xine-lib. With xine-lib CVS (come with a newer libffmpeg version) the QT7 file play without a problem). Should be the same with VLC and mplayer if they use a recent libffmpeg.

[neo_anderson]

so does that means qt7 will support avc encoding, without any third-part tool?

[bond]

Originally posted by neo_anderson
so does that means qt7 will support avc encoding, without any third-part tool? sure

[Stacey Melissa]

QT7 for Panther is available from the QT site now. Has anyone been able to get it to work with x264 in .mp4? On my machine, it only plays back the sound. There's no video window. On the plus side, it properly downmixes 5.1 HE-AAC so it sounds good coming out of two speakers. Well, at least as good as two PowerBook speakers can sound. :p

I also tried the Batman Begins 720p trailer (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/hdgallery/batmanbegins.html), which almost manages to play back without dropping frames on my G4 867. Looks incredible, too. :)

[plonk420]

Serenity in 1080p (http://images.apple.com/movies/us/hd_gallery/gl1800/serenity_1080p.zip)...!!!!

[LordRPI]

I seem to remember that 1080p required at least a 2x2ghz g5 to play. Are you guys having any problems?

[Stacey Melissa]

I finally found an x264 encode that plays in QT7. It plays frames out of order, though, so I'm guessing it's some kind of B-frame issue.

@LordRPI - my G4 867 looks like it gets about 2 fps when trying to play back the 1080p Batman slideshow, err... trailer.

[bond]

did anyone check whether cabac and loop are played back correctly in qt7?

i assume qt doesnt support b-pyramid, which might explain the out of order frames...

[Stacey Melissa]

Originally posted by bond
did anyone check whether cabac and loop are played back correctly in qt7?
both work

i assume qt doesnt support b-pyramid, which might explain the out of order frames...
I never use b-pyramid. I'm still exploring the b-frames issue. So far, I've found QT7 doesn't have problems playing back AVC with 0, 1, or 5 b-frames, but it might have problems with the 8 I normally use. I'm not entirely sure about that, though, as the stuttering might have more to do with the CPU maxing out.

QT7 doesn't support the PAR setting that the x264 CLI sets.

I also figured out why some x264 encodes don't show video in QT7. It's because of the 4cc (or whatever it's called in .mp4). The x264 CLI doesn't set it to something QT7 recognizes when outputting to .mp4. Muxing raw video into .mp4 with mp4box works, though.

[bond]

Originally posted by Stacey Melissa
I also figured out why some x264 encodes don't show video in QT7. It's because of the 4cc (or whatever it's called in .mp4). The x264 CLI doesn't set it to something QT7 recognizes when outputting to .mp4. Muxing raw video into .mp4 with mp4box works, though. [/B] there is no 4cc in mp4, so thats not the cause
must be another issue,

propably because the moov is not placed at the beginning of the file, which is spec compliant tough...
you might want to grab a compile of r214 and encode with this to .mp4 and test the resulting file, cause this one places the moov at the beginning
or simply add an audio stream to your cli .mp4, cause this will also move the moov to the start

edit: seems as if the apple avc .mov files also have the moov at the end, so this might also not be the cause...

[Stacey Melissa]

Originally posted by bond
there is no 4cc in mp4, so thats not the cause
must be another issue,
What I mean is the thing that marks the video track as "avc1". I don't remember what it's called.

propably because the moov is not placed at the beginning of the file, which is spec compliant tough...
you might want to grab a compile of r214 and encode with this to .mp4 and test the resulting file, cause this one places the moov at the beginning
or simply add an audio stream to your cli .mp4, cause this will also move the moov to the start

edit: seems as if the apple avc .mov files also have the moov at the end, so this might also not be the cause...
I always mux audio in, so it must not be the moov thing causing problems.

[nexx]

Has anybody had any luck playing the Apple H.264 HD trailers in anything other than Quicktime 7?
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/hdgallery/
Some of them have direct link to a .zip containing a 1080p .mov file

I only managed to get any results at all with CelticDruid's latest MPlayer CVS [here (http://www.aziendeassociate.it/cd//mplayer/mplayer2005.04.26.Athlon-XP.7z)].
However they play back with a lot of video artifacts in the bottom half of the frame.
screenshot: http://img184.echo.cx/my.php?image=untitled17dz.jpg

[Yong]

Yaeh, i also have problem same with nexx,
i tried 2 hd video clip, both have same problem.
libavcodec h264 decoding broked???

[plonk420]

damn, is anyone able to grab the link of the 1280x544 version of Serenity? yes, the 1080 chokes my 1.25ghz up something fierce and my mac doesn't have net connectivity (windows net connection sharing is borked) at the moment.. :(

[planet1]

I tried the zip version of this sample:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/hdgallery/bbcmotiongalleryreel.html


mplayer & ffplay show a distorted picture (bottom half)

Trying to demux to AVC-RAW first and then muxing to MP4 was pretty much unsuccessful (VLC,mplayer,ffmpeg) - mp4box rejected all avc streams, mp4creator muxed like a weirdo with no useful results.

(VLC's raw output was playable though.)


What "kind" of AVC is apple using anyway ? (profile?, level?)

Is AAC-Main or AAC-LC used ?

[Sagittaire]

it's possible to demux h264 - mov -> h264 - raw ... !!?

[bond]

from my tests neither ffmpeg, vlc nor mplayer seem to be able to demux to raw avc from mov correctly atm, maybe thats also the reason why they bork during playback?

you will have to passthrough the .mov to .mp4 in qt7 to get something useable

What "kind" of AVC is apple using anyway ? (profile?, level?)

Is AAC-Main or AAC-LC used ? [/B] dont mix up avc and aac, these are different things!

apple uses lc-aac and main profile avc

[Yong]

i've tried transmuxing to MKV via MKVToolnix, the distorted picture problem still persist...:rolleyes:

[bond]

Originally posted by Stacey Melissa
[B]What I mean is the thing that marks the video track as "avc1". I don't remember what it's called. avc is always marked as avc1, in the x264 cli and mp4box

[bond]

i dont have a problem playing the, in qt7 passed through mov -> mp4, serenity_1080p file with haalis parser and ffdshow

i also dont have a problem playing directly in qt7 encoded .mp4 files with ffdshow

[bond]

ok i now merged the two qt7 asp/avc threads, cause they were about the same things anyways

[Sagittaire]

mux in mkv + haalis parser + Nero Digital Filter play fine (at 10 or 12 fps whit 1920*816) on my PC ... :D

[bond]

Originally posted by bond
problems:
- the file crashes mplayer, videolan and ateme's mp4toolbox, which normally handle avc mp4 files fine
- the filebrand of the mp4 file is "mp42", it should be "avc1" i think
- there is a strange sdtp atom written, which isnt needed in mp4 and only consists of 00 08 00 08sok i have to add one more item to that bug list:

- the cts values are not correct, for neither directly created mp4 files, nor passed through from mov .mp4 files

1) when encoding directly into .mp4 with quicktime the cts values get a "1" added:
correct would be:
Sample 1 - DTS 0 - CTS 3600
Sample 2 - DTS 3600 - CTS 10800
Sample 3 - DTS 7200 - CTS 7200qt7 writes tough:
Sample 1 - DTS 0 - CTS 3600
Sample 2 - DTS 3601 - CTS 10801
Sample 3 - DTS 7201 - CTS 7201
2) when transmuxing from mov to mp4 in qt7 the cts gets totally borked too:
the correct way would be
Sample 1 - DTS 0 - CTS 1024
Sample 2 - DTS 1024 - CTS 2048
Sample 3 - DTS 2048 - CTS 4096but qt7 writes
Sample 1 - DTS 0 - CTS 0
Sample 2 - DTS 1024 - CTS 1024
Sample 3 - DTS 2048 - CTS 2048
Sample 4 - DTS 3072 - CTS 3072which means that qt7 doesnt recognize that the stream has b-frames when transmuxing (there shouldnt be a problem when no b-frames are used)


Originally posted by Sagittaire
mux in mkv + haalis parser + Nero Digital Filter play fine (at 10 or 12 fps whit 1920*816) on my PC ... :D mux into mkv from mov or mp4?

but even if muxed from mov, who knows maybe your mkv muxing tool writes the mkv in some way it circumvents the problem


to sum it up: i dont trust quicktimes output to be correct at all :D

[planet1]

Originally posted by bond


dont mix up avc and aac, these are different things!



I wasn't mixing them up :) - its just that mplayer kind of alters the AAC profile setting when demuxing AAC from mpeg or mov (AAC-Main instead of AAC-LC). Though this wont introduce playback problems - some muxing tools get irritated e.g. mp4box.


VLC doesnt seem to do its job when demuxing to raw if more than 1 track is present (merges everything to one single output file).


ffmpeg also has some problems e.g.:
ffmpeg -i someclip.mpg -acodec copy -f aac -vn raw-output.aac


But above all there seems to be a bigger problem - the aac-dump is often "totally" raw (without ADTS headers).
I guess there is no tool which can add these headers afterwards ... (at least foobar2000 can play this stuff)

[bond]

btw i totally forgot that ffmpeg/libavcodec indeed has problems playing multiple sliced frames, which look very similar to the screenshots someone posted in this thread (apples samples all use multiple slices)

this was already seeable on such multiple sliced frames samples from moonlight and vss

stupid me forgot it :D


Originally posted by planet1
I wasn't mixing them up :) - its just that mplayer kind of alters the AAC profile setting when demuxing AAC from mpeg or mov (AAC-Main instead of AAC-LC). Though this wont introduce playback problems - some muxing tools get irritated e.g. mp4box. hm ic, thats not good, still you might want to know that aac-lc = aac main profile @ level 2

VLC doesnt seem to do its job when demuxing to raw if more than 1 track is present (merges everything to one single output file).
ffmpeg also has some problems e.g.:
ffmpeg -i someclip.mpg -acodec copy -f aac -vn raw-output.aaci werent able to extract an aac out of mov with neither ffmpeg, mplayer nor videolan. they output some files tough, but i doubt that they are correct

But above all there seems to be a bigger problem - the aac-dump is often "totally" raw (without ADTS headers).
I guess there is no tool which can add these headers afterwards ... (at least foobar2000 can play this stuff)there is indeed no tool, which can add the adts header afterwards, i am also not sure whether any other container muxing tool, which handle such files
apart from that i dont think that the "aac" files outputted by ffmpeg, vlc, mplayer are real raw aac files

[Yong]

Originally posted by bond
...i werent able to extract an aac out of mov with neither ffmpeg, mplayer nor videolan. they output some files tough, but i doubt that they are correct

there is indeed no tool, which can add the adts header afterwards, i am also not sure whether any other container muxing tool, which handle such files
apart from that i dont think that the "aac" files outputted by ffmpeg, vlc, mplayer are real raw aac files
Why not using MKVToolnix?
extract the AAC from mov to MKA, then use MKVextract to extract aac out of MKA;)

[planet1]

@bond

isnt AAC-MAIN more "advanced" than AAC-LC ?

http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/?page=Main




Originally posted by Yong
Why not using MKVToolnix?
extract the AAC from mov to MKA, then use MKVextract to extract aac out of MKA;)

excellent idea - thats easier/better than using quicktime to transmux the aac to mp4 ;-)

btw Sagittaire is right - remuxing the movs to mkv will indeed make them playable through dshow - ffdshow's h.264 decoder should be avoided though (see bonds reference to that libavcodec bug)

demuxing the mkv (to raw avc) is also useless - though VLC produces a playable result (maybe the mp4 muxers dont support 1080p yet :rolleyes: :confused: )

[bond]

did anyone already make an avc encode with nerodigital or x264 with everything enabled and tried to play it in quicktime7? did it play correctly?

Originally posted by Yong
Why not using MKVToolnix?
extract the AAC from mov to MKA, then use MKVextract to extract aac out of MKA;) hm, i am not that interested in mov files with aac streams, i just wanted to test whether the three opensource tools handle it already :)

[Sagittaire]

Well it's very complex but here HD QT7 mov remux in mp4
http://multimediacom.free.fr/Video/Batman_cut.mp4

Video:
MPEG4 AVC
1920*816
~8 000 Kbps VBR with I,P,B frame

Audio;
MPEG4 AAC Main
48 000 Hz
192 Kbps CBR

Video use [18-28] interval for QPframe ... in fact quality in high motion don't impressive me (perhabs because quant is too high). 8 Mbps for 1920*816 is perhabs not high enough for this source. I think that WMV-HD trailer use better quality level for example. WMV-HD use 8 mbps for 1440*816 and 1117040 pel and QT7-HD use 8 Mbps for 1920*816 and 1566720 pel. QTAVC is certainely a better codec than WMV9 but not enough good for these resolution/bitrate ...

[MuTeK]

mplayer & ffplay show a distorted picture (bottom half)

Now the Elecard Player supports the Apple QuickTime file format with AVC/H.264 video.

http://www.elecard.com/ftp/pub/mpeg/player/player3_0_1.zip

[Stacey Melissa]

I'm getting the idea that QT7 is rather crippled when it comes to AVC playback. I can get 1000 frame x264 clips to work just fine in it, even with multiple reference frames, multiple adaptive b frames, cabac, in-loop filter, 4x4..., but full movies just display a white screen. Soooo annoying.

[saratoga]

Originally posted by MuTeK
Now the Elecard Player supports the Apple QuickTime file format with AVC/H.264 video.

http://www.elecard.com/ftp/pub/mpeg/player/player3_0_1.zip

ffdshow seems to break horribly on the samples Apple posted. The top 75% of the video is fine, but the bottom quarter is blurry and filled with blocks and occasionally skips. I'm using the lastest build from the ffdshow thread.

Moonlight decodes the video fine, so its not a big deal, just wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

[bond]

Originally posted by saratoga
[B]ffdshow seems to break horribly on the samples Apple posted. The top 75% of the video is fine, but the bottom quarter is blurry and filled with blocks and occasionally skips. I'm using the lastest build from the ffdshow threadread the whole thread, this has been reported already

[MuTeK]

Bond
Yes, player support of AVC streams multiplexed into MP4.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10497