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.