When should we move to MPEG4 AVC?

[travisbell]

Hey guys, just seeking out opinions. Is AVC ready for primetime? If not, about how far off do you guys feel it will be ready to start using instead of Xvid?

Thanks!

[jggimi]

Regarding AVC, not GK/AGK. Moved to New Codecs forum.

[Selur]

"how far off do you guys feel it will be ready to start using instead of Xvid?"
I already use it instead of Xvid if the hardware, the clip should be playable on, allows it.

[Teegedeck]

Hm; we had such a question coming, hadn't we.

First of all, that depends on you. You needn't switch at all, strictly speaking. As for the 'right moment' ATM AVC codecs only give an advantage for backups at very strong compression; i.e. for example 1 CD backups. In the high-quality arena we're still waiting for any efficiency surpluses of AVC (Nero AVC, x264) over ASP (XviD). When I don't manage to downsize something quite enough with XviD at quant=4 (h.263), I use x264. Mainly for intermediate storage of stuff from DVB-T that I don't intend to keep for long. Above that, there's nothing to gain. Especially for transparent backups XviD is tried and tested to deliver what I want.

So if your aim are 1 CD backups you could perhaps be well-advised to try Nero Digital AVC. x264 perhaps hasn't been tested long enough to call it stable.

If you do HQ backups with XviD you can relax and wait; the time of higher efficiency of AVC in that area hasn't come, yet. If you do anime backups AVC should more easily handle that genre. If you compress HDTV AVC would be a good choice if your PC is fast enough to play back the results.

If standalone playback is what you're after, right now the situation looks better for ASP (XviD) than for AVC (Nero, x264); it should turn around some day.

[temporance]

Originally posted by Teegedeck
If you compress HDTV AVC would be a good choice if your PC is fast enough to play back the results.I agreed with every word of your post, Teegedeck, until this part. Yes, AVC could be useful for low bitrates (where you know that there will be artifacts whatever the codec). Yes, it is better for Anime where texture is not important. Its true forte is CIF resolution anime at 50kbit/s ;)

But HDTV?

In my opinion Main Profile AVC with its 4x4 transform has its niche in lower resolutions. Even the guys that developed AVC acknowlege their codec has weaknesses in HDTV: this is why they are introducing a 8x8 transform.

When encoding HDTV at relatively low bitrates, cleaner, sharper looking video can be achieved by downsampling (e.g. going from 1920x1080 to 1280x720) and encoding with an ASP codec than by encoding with AVC at native resolution. This is because AVC will stomp over all the fine texture that comes with HDTV.

[Teegedeck]

OK, how about this: I assume AVC is a good solution if you aim at encoding 2 hours of HDTV content to 2 CD-R size, while ASP is better if you want to encode 2 hours of HDTV content to 1 DVD-R size. Is that correct? My own experience with HDTV is verrry limited...

[Sharktooth]

Well, most 1080i/p encodes can't be played back by ANY actual CPU if they're encoded with AVC and all options are used...

[*.mp4 guy]

Currently for me the real letdown, or weakness of avc is how artificial it looks. Things that i've encoded with avc in the medium bitrate arena always look too artificial for me to enjoy the lack of artifacts. As many people have already stated the strength of H.264 is imo the low bitrate arena, and even there (imo again ;)) Xvid with the right post processing is very competitive (I like the look that using ffdshow with Xsharpen set to strength 40 followed by spb deblocking with soft threshould at strenth 64 gives.).

[temporance]

Originally posted by *.mp4 guy
Currently for me the real letdown, or weakness of avc is how artificial it looks.Here here. My thoughts exactly. I couldn't contemplate using AVC when I want good quality. Maybe there will more more decoder options / enhancements that improve this situation, but I think the artificial look is built right into the codec along with the in-loop deblocking.

On HDTV: My logic for dissing AVC as an HDTV codec is that AVC shines at low bitrate / low quality. If I have the choice of:
- ASP at 1280x720@24fps
- AVC at 1920x1280@24fps
and both would be "moderately" compressed, I would chose the former. Even projected onto the largest screen it's going to look better than the over-processed high quantizer AVC encode.

I guess my point is that there is no point doing HDTV in the quantizer range where AVC shows an advantage. What use are more pixels if they are over compressed, over smoothed and look over-processed?

[travisbell]

Wow guys, great responses!

I have yet to encode a single thing with AVC which is the main point to my asking.

The only thing I encode to date is HDTV. I typically do an Xvid encode @ 1280x720 so I can fit a few eps of TV on DVD. If what I understand is right, I am probably better off with Xvid for now.

Here's a question for all of you. I am a Mac user and have been anxiously awaiting Quicktime 7 since I saw Jobs showcase H.264 last year at WWDC. When he showcased it, he said that the codec is capable of delivering HD (7-9mbps) with a much lesser file size. I think he was comparing it to H.263.

What are talking in regards to quality and file size if we compare these 3 codecs? H.264, H.263 & Xvid?

Thanks!

[Leo 69]

Originally posted by *.mp4 guy
Currently for me the real letdown, or weakness of avc is how artificial it looks. Things that i've encoded with avc in the medium bitrate arena always look too artificial for me to enjoy the lack of artifacts. As many people have already stated the strength of H.264 is imo the low bitrate arena, and even there (imo again ;)) Xvid with the right post processing is very competitive (I like the look that using ffdshow with Xsharpen set to strength 40 followed by spb deblocking with soft threshould at strenth 64 gives.).

I think with such right postprocessing Xvid looks more artificial :D
And no, Xvid isn't a competitor to AVC with any kind of postprocessing IMO.It smoothes much, adds mosquitos, squares, whereas AVC looks awesome. Well, AVC slightly changes the colors, and that's all, and it's unnoticable, when you haven't seen the source. :rolleyes:

[*.mp4 guy]

Search for intel i263 codec yourself on google, it is the only working h.263 encoder I know of. On a side note H.263 is little better, most times worse then mpeg 2 at reasonable bitrates and resolutions due to it's intended purpose being teleconferencing etc.

[*.mp4 guy]

Originally posted by Leo 69
I think with such right postprocessing Xvid looks more artificial :D
And no, Xvid isn't a competitor to AVC with any kind of postprocessing IMO.It smoothes much, adds mosquitos, squares, whereas AVC looks awesome. Well, AVC slightly changes the colors, and that's all, and it's unnoticable, when you haven't seen the source. :rolleyes:

Eyes are different and because of this what you say is quite possible. However it is equally possible that you have never even tried watching an Xvid encode with those settings and therefore are not qualified to even state your opinion on the matter. :p

[Leo 69]

When should we move to MPEG4 AVC?

Well, I have moved already (evermore, probably), because there is nothing better ATM and in the nearest future either.

[CruNcher]

imho every codec has it's own purpose for Anime i would use AVC or VP7 even if the Source is Mpeg-2 (DVD,HDTV or DV). For uncompressed sources like those from a Film scanner i would use AVC,VC-1 (Hollywoods choice) or VP7 and for Mpeg-2 Real footage (DVD,HDTV or DV) i'm still for ASP XviD,DivX and company finaly for HD-DVD backup (if anyone will ever be able to backup it) i would use AVC, VC-1 or VP7. But it's all a matter of personal taste ;)

[DeathTheSheep]

I actually agree with Leo. Xvid with postprocessing, while it does have its strong points, doesn't truly make the content look any more real than AVC in my eyes. As a matter of fact, the postprocessing washes over the details quite a bit and leaves the crisper outlines (especially if Xsharpen is used initially). X264, if you reduce the in-loop deblocker for more detail gain, delivers optimized encoding without the unnecessary washing, etc.

Although I agree that extended 8x8 transformation capabilities are needed before AVC-encoding HDTV content (if you're into this kind of detail).

[pest]

you said it right cruncher

looking at the audio-side people are still using
lame, not instead but with aac...

avc's core transform is really simple
it try's to compensate through clever block based
predictions but there's always a
compromise between local edge adaptivity and
good texture reproduction

the future are wavelets imo

[Elias]

Seriously, I'm most likely never to use AVC. Why? I don't see the benefit with it. Sure, it looks a bit better than ASP, but the quality isn't really that different. If you know ASP in and out, if you're a mastery of settings and quantizer stuff, you can make ASP looks just as good as AVC, or even better. ASP is underestimated when it comes to quality. It's actually a really powerful codec. And it has much higher compatibility and takes less CPU when it comes to decoding/encoding.

[Manao]

> avc's core transform is really simple

It's more efficient than a 8x8 DCT

> compromise between local edge adaptivity and good texture reproduction

Indeed. Luckily, Frext / High Profile brings back a 8x8 transform and let the encoder choose the more efficient transform for each block. You get both edge & texture, without wavelet.

> you can make ASP looks just as good as AVC, or even better

You can't make ASP looks like AVC ( I washed out the 'good' part ), that's the whole issue. At high bitrate, some might prefer ASP's look, but in a 'classic' encoding ( let's say, DVD Ripp on 1 CD, like Doom9's test ), AVC's look is imho better.

> And it has much higher compatibility

Not for much longer. And compatibility isn't the right word for ASP ( look at the mess it is, with qpel & gmc & co ).

> and takes less CPU when it comes to decoding/encoding.

There we agree ( though when it comes to HD, it's the memory bandwidth which becomes the limiting factor )

[Elias]

Originally posted by Manao
>Not for much longer. And compatibility isn't the right word for ASP ( look at the mess it is, with qpel & gmc & co ).Well, I don't know about you, but I never use those anymore :) But when I did, didn't notice any problem at all. Worked pretty solid.

[Manao]

In that case, you're not playing your clips on a standalone, am i wrong ? So for you avc is as compatible as asp : thanks to ffmpeg / ffdshow, everybody can play avc's videos.

[Elias]

Originally posted by Manao
In that case, you're not playing your clips on a standalone, am i wrong ? So for you avc is as compatible as asp : thanks to ffmpeg / ffdshow, everybody can play avc's videos. No, I don't play 'em on standalones.

[*.mp4 guy]

Right now none of the avc implementations come anywhere close to having motion estimation as polished as Xvids, none of the implementations offer rdo optimisations either. When those two Facts (opinions?) change then Xvid will most likely become obsolete along with the rest of the asp implementations and other aging codecs as to the postprocessing etc., its all personal preference.

It's more efficient than a 8x8 DCT

In metrics? Or is it supperior in some other way? If it is simply more "eficient" with encoding the information, Thats of little use if the human eye always views it as untrue to the source.

[huang_ch]

Though here is not Real forum, but I just wonder why RV10 is mostly ignored in the competition. Most of you are thinking of using AVC codec replace the ASP. But in my opinion, RV10 is also a good codec, and visually it plays better than all ASP and even x264 in low bitrate (I'm a fan of Animes, so I always compare in about 4xxkbps-5xxKbps of Anime sources:D) And I found even Nero AVC doesn't play considerable stronger than RV10 in that bps, and least I can't tell who is better in the same bps to my eyes(I'm not good at doing visual test:o) But the encoding time of Nero AVC is much more than RV10, and the decode cost is also too much. So to me, I'll just keep my attention to Nero AVC & x264, but still using RV10 for my Anime backup. But I'm think of using Nero HE-AAC to replace the RA10 at first.:D

[Manao]

*.mp4 guy :

> none of the implementations offer rdo optimisations either

??? : the reference encoder has it, recode has it, the other professionals might have it, and x264 has patches for it.

4x4 transform removes ringing which is an annoying aritfact. 4x4 transform however doesn't succeed in reproducing quantification noise of an mpeg2 source, that is true, but i'll never consider that it's a drawback.

Bear in mind that that transform was chosen amongs others, which included 8x8 DCT-like transforms

[Andrey]

To: huang_ch
There is a big chance that any standalone will play avc after HDDVD will be in the market. Compartibility is a big deal, to be honest...
Will see.

[huang_ch]

Originally posted by Andrey
To: huang_ch
There is a big chance that any standalone will play avc after HDDVD will be in the market. Compartibility is a big deal, to be honest...
Will see.
Do you mean that HDDVD is using AVC ? I'm not quite familiar with these standards.:o

[Elias]

Originally posted by huang_ch
Do you mean that HDDVD is using AVC ? I'm not quite familiar with these standards.:o Yes.

[huang_ch]

Perfect, another evolution will come. :D

[temporance]

Originally posted by DeathTheSheep
I actually agree with Leo. Xvid with postprocessing, while it does have its strong points, doesn't truly make the content look any more real than AVC in my eyes. As a matter of fact, the postprocessing washes over the details quite a bit and leaves the crisper outlines (especially if Xsharpen is used initially). X264, if you reduce the in-loop deblocker for more detail gain, delivers optimized encoding without the unnecessary washing, etc.One point not mentioned so far is that the appearance of ASP codecs can be fine-tuned at the decoder by adjusting postprocessing strength and algorithm. With H.264 we are forced to enjoy the in-loop settings imposed by the person doing the encoding (may be too soft or too sharp for our liking).

[Manao]

temporance : as well as you would have to bear an encode made with a custom matrice which you don't like. Of course, each codec imposes encoder's choice to the viewer. Choices aren't always the same ( QPel / GMC / Custom matrices in one hand, deblocking strength in the other one ), but each strongly affect the psychovisual look of the encoding.

Moreover, FFDShow / ffmpeg allows you to use the same postprocessing which is used for ASP codecs.

Finally, you shouldn't see inloop as a built-in & forced postprocessing. It's an _encoding_ tool, not a decoding one.

[bond]

Originally posted by temporance
One point not mentioned so far is that the appearance of ASP codecs can be fine-tuned at the decoder by adjusting postprocessing strength and algorithm. With H.264 we are forced to enjoy the in-loop settings imposed by the person doing the encoding (may be too soft or too sharp for our liking). i wouldnt think of loop "in your mind" as something comparable to postprocessing (done during decoding), but on something comparable with other settings used during encoding
from that point of view you realise that you of course always have to "enjoy" the settings used by the one who encoded the stream during encoding (b-frames, qpel, loop or whatever...) :)

of course you can use postprocessing on avc too, but thats a different story

hum, actually pretty obvious, but this "depends on how you look at a setting" thingie, just came through my mind ;)
edit: seems as manao wrote this more nicely now too :D

[rushin_911]

I've switched to AVC from ASP a while ago (I mainly encode anime at low bitrates), and I like the results. The only problem is with the decoding since AVC uses alot of CPU power, but that will probably change in the future with newer decoder implementations.

If anyeone truly believes ASP is better than AVC at low bitrates then please encode Princess Mononoke with both... I'm sure you'll notice the difference :)

[Sharktooth]

ASP is better than actual AVC implementations at mid-high/high bitrates coz of the 8x8 transform but at low bitrates there's no choice... AVC is clearly the winner.
If someone says the contrary then he's a "heretic" or choosen the wrong settings.

[video]

I think the major issue is playback. For PC it's mainly nero showtime, but unfortunately nero doesn't released yet the standalone player. For MAC users, Tiger will come with fully featured avc playback. for linux mplayer supports it barely via ffmpeg. Issues - subtitles. vobsub vs ttxt. I Haven't seen a player for any platform what is supporting vobsub and ttxt both.

If you'd like beautiful one cd backups in 720x576 or 720x480 including anamorphic ones with 192kbps audio and one subtitle channel then avc is your friend. However the hard isssue is the playback.

Sharktooth I feel that ASP is not better than AVC. You may like xvid's output because
a) your vision already have accustomed to the artifacts produced by xvid
b) xvid's shining comes through serious dynamic compression of the movie.

So, my point is that I'm just getting bored seeing sunshine on the movie presented in the twilight zone by xvid. AVC has it's own notable way distorting the material. It's slighly differenet what xvid does. AVC is little more blocky today, but more deatil and contrast is preserved.

[nightrhyme]

Hmm when I try to play Recode output using MPC and FFDSHOW 2005-03-12 I get a really stuttering video/audio out of sync playback.

It's not that CPU is maxed out. CPU Usage about 12%

[Sharktooth]

Originally posted by nightrhyme
Hmm when I try to play Recode output using MPC and FFDSHOW 2005-03-12 I get a really stuttering video/audio out of sync playback.

It's not that CPU is maxed out. CPU Usage about 12%
libavcodec in that build is screwed.
Revert to the milan's 2005-03-03 build (and if you want to playback encodes with b-pyramid apply the ffdshow libavcodec patch -> x264 daily builds sticky).

[Sharktooth]

I'm building my own low budget pc based media center box based on geexbox (mplayer).
You can build it by yourself for as low as 150€ and it will playback almost everything (including HD content) except vobsubs and chapters in MP4 made with nero.
What you need:
1 AMD Sempron 3000+
1 Motherboard with geexbox compatible 5.1 integrated audiocard
1 cheap ATI videocard with TV out
1 16Mb USB key
1 DVD reader unit
1 256MB DDR module (64 is enaugh though)
1 IR receiver and remote control (you can make them by yourself following the lirc guide)

Put geexbox on the USB key (remember to configure the TV out -> enable it by default...). Configure the system bios to boot from USB and startup the system.
Enjoy.

EDIT: The sempron 3000+ ensures HD playback... :)

[*.mp4 guy]

@Manao

Heh...sorry, I wasn't aware that there were any implementations of avc with rdo capabilities similar to Xvid's. Are we are all agreed on the fact(?) that avc still has some maturing to do?

[video]

Originally posted by Sharktooth
EDIT: The sempron 3000+ ensures HD playback... :)
Sharktooth do you mean HD pb of mpeg2 or mpeg-4 ASP/AVC inclusive? If the latter, then it's very much promising.

[Yong]

I think this should be a right topic to post the question about h264/AVC.
h264 how much percent better than MPEG4 ASP at the same bitrate?

[Manao]

It's 'the' question which shouldn't be asked.

Let's say that, visually, at low / midlow bitrates, AVC should deliver roughly the same quality as ASP with roughly 20-30% less in size ( more or less, depending on the ASP encoder and the AVC encoder ). At mid high / high bitrates ( ie Q2 for ASP ), visually, the difference is thinner ( some would even say ASP is better ), though metrics ( PSNR for example ) say otherwise.

[Yong]

Originally posted by Manao
It's 'the' question which shouldn't be asked.
Why? newbies always have alot of question to ask :D

Let's say that, visually, at low / midlow bitrates, AVC should deliver roughly the same quality as ASP with roughly 20-30% less in size ( more or less, depending on the ASP encoder and the AVC encoder ). At mid high / high bitrates ( ie Q2 for ASP ), visually, the difference is thinner ( some would even say ASP is better ), though metrics ( PSNR for example ) say otherwise.
Thanks for reply:)

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by Yong
I think this should be a right topic to post the question about h264/AVC.
h264 how much percent better than MPEG4 ASP at the same bitrate? Well, in my experience the lower the bitrate, the bigger the advantage for AVC. At very low bitrate (100-400 kbps), the difference is huge, it's not unusual that x264 at 100 kbps has better quality than xvid at 200. The only problem is: encoding at such low bitrates is pointless. At medium bitrate (1cd rips), AVC is usually clearly better, but not by that much. For transparent quality, AVC has no advantage, hopefully high profile will help in this regard.

Edit: obviously the current AVC implementations are not that mature than for example xvid, so there is a big room for improvements even for main profile.

[Yong]

x264 belong to which profile? Main profile?

[bond]

Originally posted by Yong
x264 belong to which profile? Main profile? an encoder can offer multiple profiles, x264 can output streams compliant to baseline and main profile :)

[Yong]

Originally posted by bond
an encoder can offer multiple profiles, x264 can output streams compliant to baseline and main profile :)
Thanks for the info:)

[Manao]

But it doesn't exploit fully neither baseline ( missing features are however useless to dvd ripp ) nor main ( interlaced, longterm, ... missing )

[Didée]

Answer to the topic's question: Somewhen. Perhaps sooner, perhaps later. Perhaps now.

For me, the story is a not too bad analogy to the old Nandub/DivX war. At latest with the 4.xx version (the 3.9x wasn't that popular), many people hopped onto the DivX train, because it was newer, "better" and simply more l33t technology. But without doubt, a well done (a *well* done!) Nandub rip could easily kick DivX's ass at that time. At least in most cases. If I look today at some of my early 1CD-Rips done with DivX 4.xx, I have a good laugh.
With time, DivX evolved, and the XviD twin evolved even more. Today, XviD is about there where DivX 4.xx would have liked to be. And today, an XviD encoding for sure looks better than a Nandub rip would do. And as we all know, there were some "Nandub nerds", that for all the time refused to switch over to the new technology. (Assumingly there are some left over even today ;) ) In the beginning, they were right. Later on, they were wrong.

But, when was the point in time when this change occured? It was ... somewhen.

And a little bit of this I foresee for the ASP/AVC situation, too. We know the scenarios where AVC does better than ASP already today. However for "general usage", I still tend absolutely to the ASP (speak: XviD) side.

At some point during development, AVC will fully surpass ASP for sure (at least it *should* do so). But right now, we're not yet there.

And by that time, whenever it might be, eventually it could happen that I become an "ancient XviD nerd", like the Nandubbers formerly were ;)

[TheResonator]

You won't need a blue-laser burner or discs to make HD-DVD titles.

By the end of this year, programs like Nero will author and burn a HD-DVD format title on a physical DVD-5 or DVD-9 disc, using ordinary DVD burners, with AVC (H.264) streams. This is one of the features of HD-DVD: HD-rate AVC on red-laser discs. Too bad there's no AAC or AAC+ in either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

The subset of the file structure and navigation information needed to do this in HD-DVD is almost identical to DVD.

These discs will play on future HD-DVD players. It seems unlikely that future HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players will support ASP at HD-rates (or even SD-rates).

The 8x8 transform extension (FREXT) in H.264 is also a requirement in all HD-DVD and Blu_Ray players. With that tool, H.264 is generally more efficient than ASP for HDTV content at all rates or ratios.

[Andrey]

>>Too bad there's no AAC or AAC+ in either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.
Hmm ?
AAC+ was officially anounced as "must be supported" by HDDVD.
Is something changed ?
Am I missed something ? :)

[bond]

Originally posted by TheResonator
This is one of the features of HD-DVD: HD-rate AVC on red-laser discs.
The subset of the file structure and navigation information needed to do this in HD-DVD is almost identical to DVD.
These discs will play on future HD-DVD players.where do you know this from? any links?

[TheResonator]

I talked with HD-DVD and Nero people at their CES exhibits this year.

HE-AAC was added to the ROM section of DVD Audio. The list of audio coedcs for the HD-DVD Video part are here:

http://www.dvdforum.org/27scmtg-resolution.htm

..it's possible that Blu-Ray and/or DVD Forum could add HE-AAC before the final this-time-for-sure closure of the spec.

[IgorC]

Will H.264 be potentially improved in future? There is no garanty to obtain better quality folowing partiton DCT 4x2 2x4 2x2 since number of motion vectors will increse and this will require more space to store information.

In last comparing test Doom9 it´s hard to spote difference between AVC main and high profiles. Will Custom matrix, 8x8 DCT etc. resolve this situation? Maybe it only resolves the problem of jumping blocks wich sometimes appear on video.

[TheResonator]

The 8x8 transform shape helps both a low bitrates (less overhead) and high rates with film grain. The 4x4 transform shape has a critical quantization effect with film grain. 8x8 was therefore a fix to the standard -- should have been included in the original Main Profile. Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, DVB, and other standards now require this fix.

As far as picking different shapes, a good encoder will estimate the costs of coding all mode permutations and pick the one that gives the best quality for the lowest rate. Sending 4x4 motion vectors is often cheaper than packing lots of transform coefficients.

[Yong]

Now i already have more info's about baseline and main profile, but the info still not detail.
Where can i find the info's about h264 profile?
Especially extended, high profile.

[Manao]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73022 ( that's the sticky thread on this forum... )

Extended profile doesn't concern dvd ripp ( it adds data partitionning and SI / SP slices, which concern either diffusion or multiprogram ).

[Yong]

@Manao:
Oh, i'm forget the sticky:p
thanks:D

[Sharktooth]

Mpeg4 ASP HD (like DivX HD etc.).
AVC is still too complex to be played back. But eventually you can upgrade the CPU with a more powerfull one.

[aeternitas]

I'm personally not too worried about this. If youre doing this for backup, well in the next couple of codec generations lossy compression will be replaced by lossless. From the digitally recorded 60FPS+ progressive movie source to the 500GB+ mini-disc size multilayered future optical disk.

Lossy compression will have its last breaths of life in online content. Fansubs etc, where size of each episode is dictated directly by the mainstream optical single layer storage medium and average online download speed from bittorent. Right now 175MB for 24 min~ was a dication due to CD storage. Youll start to see that go down to 149 due to AVC and DVD single layer and faster download speeds.

[TheResonator]

Nearly all new PC graphics cards will accelerate AVC by 2007.
720p/1080i AVC playback won't be a problem.

It's possible now to playback 720p 30fps content on a single 3 GHz Pentium CPU with no hardware video decompression acceleration:

http://www.fastvdo.com/fastvdoinit.html

For lossy: don't be silly :-) There is no such thing as "enough storage". It's an endless cycle. (I still spend most of my video time with half-D1). UHDTV comes after HDTV. The 4K era is already starting with Digital Cinema. 24p 1920x1080 needs at least 400 GB/hour. ~$10 per terabyte-class removable storage is several years away. Movies on solid state is the "in thing" too.

[aeternitas]

Originally posted by TheResonator
Nearly all new PC graphics cards will accelerate AVC by 2007.
720p/1080i AVC playback won't be a problem.

It's possible now to playback 720p 30fps content on a single 3 GHz Pentium CPU with no hardware video decompression acceleration:

http://www.fastvdo.com/fastvdoinit.html

For lossy: don't be silly :-) There is no such thing as "enough storage". It's an endless cycle. (I still spend most of my video time with half-D1). UHDTV comes after HDTV. The 4K era is already starting with Digital Cinema. 24p 1920x1080 needs at least 400 GB/hour. ~$10 per terabyte-class removable storage is several years away. Movies on solid state is the "in thing" too.

Is that 400GB/h with current lossless compression? Actually with todays lossless compressions that is less than 300GB/h. 1920x1080 losslessly compressed will be less than 2MB typically, and in my tests was 1.66MB average. Lossless compression five and ten years from now will have a better results.

Also understand that next generation optical media will be multi layered with each layer being many tens of GB. A 3 hour losslessly compressed movie can surely fit on two generations from now in optical storage and compression technology. Lossy compression was never meant to always be here.

1920x1080 is a bit over 2MP

[TheResonator]

Wasn't thinking about lossless or near-lossless -- just raw 4:2:2 video I get from an HD D-5 dumped to disk. There are too many variables such as 4:2:0, 4:2:2, 8-bit and 10-bit. It's in the hundreds of billions of bytes per hour. Film grain and noise mess it up. Don't tell certain unmentionable digital cinema buffs that film grain should be removed --- it's part of the artistic experience! :-)

I'm not sure content holders would ever release lossless HD content anyway.

We've been living with companding, subsampling, coring, bandlimiting, sub-nyquisting, .. basically some form of lossy compression since the beginning.

Many-layered discs, like holographic laser crystal storage, have been promised for years. They work to some degree, but have had cost and lifetime issues. Maybe 3D storage will finally become practical as hinted by Sony around the year 2015.

The point of all this is: now (well, around July 2005) is a good time to switch to AVC. It's just the next ubiquitous codec after MPEG-2. ASP might become a footnote in history as far as the average consumer is concerned. Industy can only absorb new codecs every 10 years or so. And the patent police have made it practically impossible to build products that don't use standard codecs. At least there's some consolation in that AVC and HE-AAC are the best in their class, though somewhat forced down our throats.

[aeternitas]

Originally posted by TheResonator
Wasn't thinking about lossless or near-lossless -- just raw 4:2:2 video I get from an HD D-5 dumped to disk. There are too many variables such as 4:2:0, 4:2:2, 8-bit and 10-bit. It's in the hundreds of billions of bytes per hour. Film grain and noise mess it up. Don't tell certain unmentionable digital cinema buffs that film grain should be removed --- it's part of the artistic experience! :-)

I'm not sure content holders would ever release lossless HD content anyway.

We've been living with companding, subsampling, coring, bandlimiting, sub-nyquisting, .. basically some form of lossy compression since the beginning.

Many-layered discs, like holographic laser crystal storage, have been promised for years. They work to some degree, but have had cost and lifetime issues. Maybe 3D storage will finally become practical as hinted by Sony around the year 2015.

The point of all this is: now (well, around July 2005) is a good time to switch to AVC. It's just the next ubiquitous codec after MPEG-2. ASP might become a footnote in history as far as the average consumer is concerned. Industy can only absorb new codecs every 10 years or so. And the patent police have made it practically impossible to build products that don't use standard codecs. At least there's some consolation in that AVC and HE-AAC are the best in their class, though somewhat forced down our throats.

Compression will always be around so Im not even thinking about uncompressed data. Its impratical. Im simply stateing that the practicality of lossy media slowly declines everytime the internet gets faster and optical storage becomes more able to hold massive amounts of bits.

Im not reffering to holo crystal. This next generation of optical storage (the better version of the two) can hold 25GB per layer upto 200GB. This is a very good indication of the future of compression and what types youll be useing in several years. H.26X will be mainly used in cell phones and other internet connected media devices that share a home connection where bandwidth is limited and retaining the full detail of the original media is negligable. lossy will have its place, and those who realize where it is tomarrow, can compress today with a clearer mind, no matter what they choose.

[DaveId]

even when it is totally possible for people to have terrabytes of storage in their homes, how long do you think it will be before it is mainstream? how many people here are close to a terrabyte in their system? and if you are, how full of compressed data is it? i know i have 600GB and like 550GB used! no space for lossless video, more concerned with lossless audio as my ears are better than my eyes at percieving compression..
dave

[aeternitas]

Originally posted by DaveId
even when it is totally possible for people to have terrabytes of storage in their homes, how long do you think it will be before it is mainstream? how many people here are close to a terrabyte in their system? and if you are, how full of compressed data is it? i know i have 600GB and like 550GB used! no space for lossless video, more concerned with lossless audio as my ears are better than my eyes at percieving compression..
dave

I'll try and make a simple summery of what I already said for you.

1. Lossless compression becomes more relevent ever new evolution in optical storage.
2. Who said anything about hard drives? Optical storage. In case you forgot.. we are talking about optical storage.

Optical storage.

You make my point for me with your mention of lossless audio. Lossless audio will be here 5 - 10 years before lossless video takes the vast majority of optical storage space when talking about media.

One is already seeing this in digital photography. Photographers that care about their images do not use jpeg. Its laughable on anything but online, and so will be every other media type in the future. and once again, I remind you that that point is driven home a step more by every advance in optical storage.

[DaveId]

Originally posted by aeternitas
I'll try and make a simple summery of what I already said for you.

1. Lossless compression becomes more relevent ever new evolution in optical storage.
2. Who said anything about hard drives? Optical storage. In case you forgot.. we are talking about optical storage.

Optical storage.

You make my point for me with your mention of lossless audio. Lossless audio will be here 5 - 10 years before lossless video takes the vast majority of optical storage space when talking about media.

One is already seeing this in digital photography. Photographers that care about their images do not use jpeg. Its laughable on anything but online, and so will be every other media type in the future. and once again, I remind you that that point is driven home a step more by every advance in optical storage.

i guess i missed the point of optical storage. however, if optical storage is the intended format... is not 4.37GB dvd the standard now?
as far as archving losslessly compressed audio, i just make regular audio-cds out of the decompressed wav's, and the COMPRESSED data is for storage on my internal hard drives, where they will be listened to, etc. and a long time ago i stopped using optical storage as a deciding factor in compressing movies, as i realized how much easier it is to copy the file to another computer, rather than putting them on cds or dvds. it takes just as long to copy over a network as it does to burn a dvd these days.. and the only thing i really use dvds for is to make dvds, and as far as that is concerned, why would i want to compress or change the format of the video if i can make it fit on a 4.37gb disk?
perhaps i missed the point of this topic 'When should we move to MPEG4 AVC?'........ and i only see the use of losslessly compressed video for an intermediary step in processing video. simply because, though my ears may be able to determine a song that has been compressed over one that has not (and not terribly so with Autov's Beta3 ogg encoder), my eyes can not tell the difference between a dvd source, and a high bitrate MPEG4 ASP compression.
also, lossless compressed audio (and i am assuming video) takes a higher amount of processing power to be played back on-the-fly. which decreases it's ability to be ported to stand-alone players. most of the people who compress movies and cds do it so they can watch them (easily and conveniently) stored on their pc. and that may be a broad statement, but i believe it to be so. it is only now becoming possible to play MPEG4 on a standalone player, which makes it a good all around choice for compression. i have heard of NO standalones that playback any type of lossless video, especially considereing MPEG2 (the dvd standard) is lossy.
the standalone player support is only a hassle to me because i use monkeys audio for my music. i know that there are players now that support FLAC, but the other distracting thing is this; when you want something to be portable, you usually want to bring as much of it with you as possible. with a lossless audio compression (60-70%) you can only save yourself 1/3rd as many cds as you would keeping the originals (which is what i do). with a lossy (ogg AUTOV beta3), you have almost the same audio quality, yet at less than 1/10th the original size. that is a savings of 90% of storage space.
until losless compression reaches the 70-90% compression stage, it will not be applicable as an consumer standard for audio OR video storage.
and if we as consumers are just now getting 8.4GB DL DVD media, how long do you think it will be before we see something ranging in the 100-200GB? years... and in those years, the lossy compression will reach a stage that will make us look at these high-volume optical storage units as strictly backups. because when AVC reaches a developmental stage that allows for higher compression with less artifacts, we will be able to fit any movie onto a single CD-Rom, and imagine how cheap a 750MB cd will be when there is a 200GB disc on the market!!!! they will be giving blank cds away like floppy discs today..
so, to summarize, when should we move to mpeg4 AVC?, whenever you are ready. if more people had moved to OGG years ago, perhaps it could have edged MP3 out of the market. i know my cd player will play ogg files, and mp3, and wma, and audio cds. if i had known how good ogg was going to be, i would have tried to acquire more over the years, however since it was almost ignored in the trading community, mp3 prevailed, and i have tons of mp3s on my system (that i hardly listen to).. so maybe if more people support AVC it will grow faster, and gain the popularity that is required for something to become 'mainstream'.
i myself go for higher bitrate compressions, so i still use an ASP codec. the final size not being as important to me as the quality, and the quality of the motion. and even if i back up to cds or dvds (not yet) i do not play the files off them, and i usually put video part one on a cd video part two on another, and the audio/chapters/subs on a third disc, which means i have to then re-mux it all to restore, or copy to another computer from the cds.
wow, this got long.. and off topic. but perhaps i made myself clear this time. lossless compression is good for certain applications where we can distinguish between the two. however, take a RAW image recorded from my camera, it looks great. but, if i take that image into photoshop, sharpen the edges, adjust the contrast & color balances, save it as a COMPRESSED jpeg, it just may end up looking better, with a smaller footprint, than the original.
dave

[video]

DaveId streamin video on demand applications and services are approaching all across the world. generally speaking, nowadays 1Mbps sustained rate for video is feasible almost everywhere where dsl services are provided. Meaning, providers are setting up PPV services. Customers wolud like, the best quality for their money, so it's an important question: which compression technology gives the best audiovisual quality through an 1Mbps transmission 'line'. A same applies for european DVB vs HDTV. The channel is approx. 5MBps wide and we would like to have 1080p transmitted over...