Sample HD MPEG-1 Clip...

[digigami]

but you have very strange and not objectif judgement : "If my prefered player is not able to play the stream then stream is bad" ... :confused:

Fine, you tell me what decoder to use and I will use yours.

[bobololo]

? What is the problem, I have a Mac, I have a PC.

According to this thread, Ateme HP is 'publicly unavailable'.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99402

In my books, this says "Unobtanium" and should not be allowed to compete.
That leaves us the version of Ateme included in Nero.

Does the Nero version support interlaced encoding?

Ok to make things clear about the availability of our codecs. The main profile encoder is available from Nero Digital Pro bundle. This latter aims "mass" market. The retail price is 30 euros. And in this version, the interlaced encoding isn't supported.

The high profile encoder is currently only available from our pc encoder suite (which includes much more than the avc encoder). It aims professional market. The indicative price for a single seat license is 9k euros. It supports interlaced encoding. This high profile encoder is expected to be integrated into Nero Digital in the near future.

Beside those official products, a few testers from doom9 forums had the chance to get both main & high profile codecs during semi-public beta test.

[Sagittaire]

Sagittaire, he was looking for an example from Hollywood that cared about video quality.

But it's really simple to find that because DVD MPEG2 MP@ML are unable to make good quality because vbv limitation are too high in most situation.

Try to encode my example. There are no MPEG2 encoder in the world able to encode this scene with good quality for MPEG2 DVD compliant stream.

[Doom9]

Can you give me an example?My codec comparison sources. Look at my review scenes of Matrix3.. the source simply isn't good enough.

You have complained that the QuickTime AVC encoder is crap, so I would think you would like an opportunity to demonstrate that another encoder can produce a file to the exact same H.264 profile that QT supports, but at a vastly reduced file size.Codec comparison again.. at the same bitrate, other AVC encoders (ateme, x264, elecard, xvid avc to put some names.. you can download and try x264 on your own so just that we have the availability issue sorted, and you can buy the mainconcept encoder or the ateme encoder which both contain essentially the engines I've tested) provide significantly better looking picture. Personally, I find the comparison of same bitrate more productive than trying to find corresponding bitrates that yield the same quality.. you may not be able to see the effect of small bitrate changes on the output..

And if you want x264 output that is compatible with QuickTime, head over to the AVC forum.. there's plenty of threads on that particular subject. We have a rule here: it's read up first (and that includes making forum searches), ask questions later.

The problem occurs when the big closeup of the 'eyeballs' comes on screen, and immediately after, the playback freezes for 2-3 seconds before continuing.No problems here, with either DirectShow based players or VideoLan using either my custom 0.84 build with Dirac support or the release 0.84a version.

[IgorC]

If you want to be a scientist/engineer, please describe your playback environment, IDCT precision, and qualify your criticisms with screenshots. I know for a fact that what you have said is not true

Yes, it's true.
http://digigami.in-long-beach-ca.com/megapeg/Doom9/ice_age_2-tlrD_720p.010.m1v

Player Videolan. It's impossible to see clearly ringing on screenshots. But it's obvious during playback. It's defeneatly not HD-DVD quality.
Maybe somebody can play with some zones of video samples to improve rate control. I think it's not fair.



Ringing.
http://www.bilder-hosting.de/uploads/10e7094ac2.png

Artefacts
http://www.bilder-hosting.de/uploads/fd91b42ded.png

Artefacts
http://www.bilder-hosting.de/uploads/c71ecf9901.png

There was also a MPEG2 test. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101735. Where mencoder has shown very good results at low bitrate. Maybe it is will be usefull to see. There's nothing new that MPEG-2 can provide acceptable quality at low bitrates as 3.6-5 mbps for 720p but it's still not on par with H.264.

[digigami]

No problem for me ... VLC 0.8.2)

Are you sure? Have you auditioned the file in QuickTime to see what it is supposed to look like?

UPDATE: Ok I have downloaded the only Nero AVC sample from the Nero movie trailers gallery. I also downloaded Nero showtime 30 day trial.
I bought Nero Digital, but am still waiting for an email with my download/license.

Machine specs: Dell XPS 3.4 Ghz HT P4. High end gaming laptop.

In trying to play the H.264 AVC with Nero Showtime I get continous frame dropping. Am I missing something here? You can call QT crap if you want, but at least their HD files give you a HD experience.

[digigami]

Player Videolan. It's impossible to see clearly ringing on screenshots. But it's obvious during playback. It's defeneatly not HD-DVD quality.

This is a ridiculous statement. When dealing with compressed video the reverse is true: when choosing single frames it is usually quite easy to see artifacts, but at 24fps (or 25fps) it is difficult.

The human eye uses something called foveation to scan the visual field. The eye is always moving and has a response time for adjusting to changes in content. 100ms, which is usually approx 1 or 2 frames, depending on the base framerate. So an artifact in a single frame will generally never be seen. (The H.264 clip has artifacts as well. Demonstrate objective analysis and go find them).

Usually, the eye will never catch a single video artifact unless it is the most interesting thing in the visual field. http://lists.apple.com/archives/Dvdlist/2005/Jun/msg00015.html

You say there are artifacts. Show the H.264 frame and the same MPEG-1 frame side by side, or better yet, find the artifacts in the H.264 file.

If you need an example of 'ringing', I will show you one. What you are showing is very minor block artifacts. I already said there was minor block artifacts in my stream (see the original post). Ringing occurs near sharp edges (like titles) and is a result of the inverse quantization process.

[IgorC]

You obligated me to provide some screenshots if I want to do serios statements and now saying that's it's ridiculuos to judje quality looking at sreenshots. Have I understood you correctly?

So I can't say my opinion about what I've seen and also I can't post sreecshot. SO What can I do.

My visual percepcion and my screenshots are here. If you don't beleive them let's do some syntethic test like SSIM and OPSNR.

[IgorC]

What you are showing is very minor block artifacts.

Minor? I can see them perfectly during playback.

[IgorC]

Ringing occurs near sharp edges (like titles) and is a result of the inverse quantization process.

I know what you want to say. But ringing is still here.

[digigami]

Minor? I can see them perfectly during playback.

Go look at the H.264 Clip of the same trailer that Sagittaire has produced as an example of perfect quality at 1250.

In the last 2/3rd of the movie the one character is standing in a cave. Look to the left of the character in the darker area. In the Apple version, there is banding here, but in the Sagittaire version blocking is highly evident.

It is a fact of video compression that block artifacts are difficult to hide in low-contrast areas. Such is the case here, which is why I have asked for a second encoding at the bitrate required to eliminate the blocks. My clip also exhibits blocking in certain areas.

Yes?

[digigami]

You obligated me to provide some screenshots if I want to do serios statements and now saying that's it's ridiculuos to judje quality looking at sreenshots. Have I understood you correctly?

No, you did not understand. You said that you could see artifacts that could not be seen in the screenshots. I said the reverse. I said that artifacts could be present that would be hard to detect with the eyes, but easy to find with screenshots.

I would say that the block artifacts in your screenshot would be difficult to see under normal viewing conditions, but the artifacts in the cave, which are present both in the MPEG-1 and H.264 by Sagittaire would be easy to see.

[digigami]

And if you want x264 output that is compatible with QuickTime, head over to the AVC forum.. there's plenty of threads on that particular subject. We have a rule here: it's read up first (and that includes making forum searches), ask questions later.

Noted.


No problems here, with either DirectShow based players or VideoLan using either my custom 0.84 build with Dirac support or the release 0.84a version.
No problems here with Nero Showtime. I am now going to audition my MPEG-1 VBR on Nero Showtime.

[IgorC]

I would say that the block artifacts in your screenshot would be difficult to see under normal viewing conditions

You're saying to me that I don't see them while I'm saying you that I see them easily.

[digigami]

I know what you want to say. But ringing is still here.

In your 3 screenshots there is no ringing. But there is light block artifacting. I think if you inspect the H.264 version more closely you will see similar artifacts - not necessarily in the same places. I already told you where to look for one example. However, you might have trouble finding them with VLC, because I believe VLC only allows random access to key-frames, which almost never have artifacts.

I wish to see an example of H.264 Ice Age (Kung Fu) that does not exhibit block artifacts in the cave sequence. In the Apple trailer there is banding, so banding is AOK.

I myself am having difficulty taking snapshots with VLC. Does anyone know if this features is broken in 084a?

Also, recommend screen grabber that works with ATI cards. I believe VLC, InterVideo, and ShowTime are using the video overlay, either impossible or hardware specific to grab frames. Have not been using PC much so...

[digigami]

Minor? I can see them perfectly during playback.

Yes, as can I see the H.264 artifacts in the cave clearly. It is a function of bitrate, which is why I would like to see what bitrate H.264 requires to encode this trailer without artifacts.

[Doom9]

This is a ridiculous statement. When dealing with compressed video the reverse is true: when choosing single frames it is usually quite easy to see artifacts, but at 24fps (or 25fps) it is difficult.Actually, it's not so ridiculous at all. On the one hand, it's true, a picture is no true representation of what you percieve while watching the video, but that can go both ways. On the one hand, you are likely to miss individual artifacts in moving video, on the other hand, screenshots cannot show you changes over time. Take what I like to call the "keyframe readjustment" issue. While the term isn't technically correct, the phenomenon is that from one frame to another there's a significant change between two frames. So, while a screenshot from frame X and frame X+1 may look just fine, if played after another, you'll notice something is off.
Another example would be smearing. You can't spot that in individual screenshots, it's an effect you only see when watching the video.
Yet another example is wobbling, or texture movements.. scenes where you feel that an area is moving that should not be in movement. This usually happens when there's a lot of noise in the source. Individual screenshots may not bad and you'll certainly never get the idea that anything is off unless you watch the video at full speed.

These two kinds of problems make a video review with screenshots and without sample video really hard.. one the one hand you try to pick screenshots that are representative of what you see when watching the video, on the other hand you have to write about phenomenon you only see in the video, not the screenshot.

Go look at the H.264 Clip of the same trailer that Sagittaire has produced as an example of perfect quality at 1250.I wouldn't call that perfect by a long shot ;)

[digigami]

The high profile encoder is currently only available from our pc encoder suite (which includes much more than the avc encoder). It aims professional market. The indicative price for a single seat license is 9k euros. It supports interlaced encoding. This high profile encoder is expected to be integrated into Nero Digital in the near future.

OK, your pro version looks quite nice. GUI etc.

Our "Pro HD" encoder which can do HD MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, is $299.

So for 20x the price, you can have files 1/3 the size with a sharper picture (my opinion after looking at the files). I think this is a fair trade. Our 299 package also handles interlaced video and provides a wide range of filtering options, a very nice GUI etc.

Given the vast storage space of next gen optical discs, I think we have demonstrated that MPEG-2 is viable, and that H.264 is a better performer. But is also clear that the price for that performance is Ateme.

I have not auditioned JohnV's Main Profile streams yet, but I am sure they are very good.

So for professionals, at this time, Ateme Pro is the only real choice. Any opinions on Squeeze and some of the other H.264? My guess is they are commercializing open source compressors. Sorenson took H.263 and called it "Sorenson". Also what DiVX is doing I understand. May these companies die an ugly death at the hand of universal standards!

[Sharktooth]

I wish to see an example of H.264 Ice Age (Kung Fu) that does not exhibit block artifacts in the cave sequence. In the Apple trailer there is banding, so banding is AOK.
If the source is flawed the encoder cant to miracles. However reducing or turning off the psychovisual enhancements should lower the artifacts on dark areas.
Using a more "sensible" AVC quantization matrix for low luma should reduce the artifacts as well (AVC matrices are much more complex than mpeg2 quant matrices).
H.264 default quantization is far from perfect... it's a general purpouse quantization (as h.263 in MPEG-4 ASP).
But i feel we'll fall in an infinite discussion if we start to talk about custom quant matrices...

[digigami]

I wouldn't call that perfect by a long shot ;)

Yes, now that we have gone over the "my bitrate is lower than yours", I am interested to find out what the bitrate cost is for 720p with no artifacts. And it looks like the only one standing is Ateme, so whoever has access to that, perhaps they could encode the Ice Age trailer without artifacts and post it.

Thank you. In the meantime, I will give Recode a try while I am waiting for Nero to send me a license key.

[JohnV]

Imo you can discuss until the world ends if some encode has artifacts or not and how visible those are, unless you do lossless... It quite subjective. Some people might not see all artifacts, some are very sensitive and have huge LCD HDTV screens.
I agree with Doom9 that it's better to use one bitrate for both codecs and then judge the quality.

[digigami]

Actually, it's not so ridiculous at all. On the one hand, it's true, a picture is no true representation of what you percieve while watching the video, but that can go both ways. On the one hand, you are likely to miss individual artifacts in moving video, on the other hand, screenshots cannot show you changes over time. Take what I like to call the "keyframe readjustment" issue. While the term isn't technically correct, the phenomenon is that from one frame to another there's a significant change between two frames. So, while a screenshot from frame X and frame X+1 may look just fine, if played after another, you'll notice something is off.

I totally agree with you. He was talking about ringing and pointing to block artifacts. For what you are talking about, auditioning our MPEG-1 on Windows Media will make the phenomenon you describe very noticeable. This is related to IDCT performance, which is why it's harder to see in VLC.

If it were an encoder wart, it would be bitrate control. In fact, if you use the QT MPEG-4 encoder at low bitrates you will see strobing related to rate control problems.

While I agree with you that there can exist such temporal artifacts, I dont' see anything significant in our clip. Aside from what I am doing right now, my primary time is spent looking for artifacts produced by our encoder, and I have a pretty good eye for them, spatial, temporal. I just watched our Ice Age .m1v stream in VLC at a distance of 2.5 feet on my powerbook and I saw some slight blocking in the cave sequence and some slight strobing out of the Region of Interest in the final credits. And I can see artifacting in the H.264 sequence in the cave. But the assertion that it doesn't look HD is just ridiculous. At the top of the thread there are posters who think our HD streams look just fine.

I think the H.264 shown to me looks great, as well. It has a bitrate advantage, it has a detail advantage at those bitrates. But in the 15-27 mbits/s range afforded by next-gen optical discs, I think these advantages diminish. I also fielded an email from someone who believes at the higher bitrate MPEG-2 has the visual advantage. I have no comment on this, but the writer demonstrated a fine knowledge of compression.

And I very much would like to see how Ateme performs on interlaced material. Like football(soccer) and american football/basketball. 1920x1080x60i would be a nice test.

Anyone aware of such a sample or can make one?

[IgorC]

I totally agree with you. He was talking about ringing and pointing to block artifacts. For what you are talking about, auditioning our MPEG-1 on Windows Media will make the phenomenon you describe very noticeable. This is related to IDCT performance, which is why it's harder to see in VLC.


I said it was VLC player.

[CruNcher]

@digigami
Sorry but you can't say every time if someone sees standard Artifacts coused by the compression mathematics itself that IDCT in their player is allways @ fault that is scientific nonsense their will allways be such problems visible in close inspection of the compressed material thats why it's lossy compression. The difference between Mpeg-2 and H.264 is just how much not that one of them completly eliminates them that is as we all know impossible with lossy compression and in that regards even ASP is better then Mpeg-2.

[IgorC]

Guys, what we are discussing about?
just look at digigami's video. http://digigami.in-long-beach-ca.com/megapeg/Doom9/ice_age_2-tlrD_720p.010.m1v. He said there is no visual artefacts.

just look . There are obvious artefacts that I can see during playback via VLC. And don't say me that those artefacts were here in QT 1080p source.

[digigami]

I agree with Doom9 that it's better to use one bitrate for both codecs and then judge the quality.

At this point, since I've already described what I have seen as being superior at low bitrates, I am most interested in seeing H.264 at lossless quality, and how much extra bitrate is required to get there.

Also, in the Apple HD content derived from CG (like Ice Age), there is noticeable aliasing on edges. I am sure this is not from the sources, since the pure CG animation folks like to make things look organic. Anyone know if this is a by-product of one of the coding transforms?

So we are clear about the cost of the superior quality and bitrate: from the compatibility matrix it is evident that the support for all H.264 AVC features is spotty across the board, which suggests a fair comparison is an H.264 file which can play across all the PC decoders (excluding QT) without playback glitches. Because if there are glitches, I say it's not yet standardized.

And I re-iterate this especially for the commandN sample, which was aimed at broad distribution, cross-platform to ordinary readership. I think the QT H.264 profile should be the baseline comparison for that clip.

Gen

[digigami]

Guys, what we are discussing about?
just look at digigami's video. http://digigami.in-long-beach-ca.com/megapeg/Doom9/ice_age_2-tlrD_720p.010.m1v. He said there is no visual artefacts.

Go back and read my first post about our MPEG-1 clip. I said there were block artifacts from the onset. However, I do not believe they detract from the presentation.

just look . There are obvious artefacts that I can see during playback via VLC.

At what distance from the monitor are your eyes? You do understand that your eye has a limited ability to perceive spatial resolution which diminishes with distance?

[digigami]

@digigami
Sorry but you can't say every time if someone sees standard Artifacts coused by the compression mathematics itself that IDCT in their player is allways @ fault that is scientific nonsense their will allways be such problems visible in close inspection of the compressed material thats why it's lossy compression.

I did not say this. I said that temporal artifacts due to IDCT accuracy would be much more evident on Windows Media Player due to (what I believe) is decreased IDCT accuracy.

I also said that such artifacts can be the result of bitrate control problems.

I think I have a grasp of the science here. I'm not sure that all of the H.264 advocates have a grasp of their emotions.

[IvS]

The aliasing may in fact be the CG people's fault. Rendering such complex 3D at such a huge bitrate takes a huge amount of time. So maybe they chose to have low antialiasing like 4x or 8x, and not 16x which is of course by far the most optimal (as far as quality goes) and best for video codecs as well.
Or maybe the HD movie's source was a higher resolution completely non antialiased source, who knows?

[Doom9]

Mainconcept's encoder also does a good job, at $599. And x264 is free of charge. Just because there's no GUI and whatnot, shouldn't it be about quality first and the rest second? I'm still working on the final of my codec comparison but the final call on whether ateme or x264 does better is not in yet.. so I'd say it's fair to say there's one publicly available encoder that works on different platforms and delivers excellent quality.

Also what DiVX is doing I understand.Huh? DXN implements MPEG-4 level2, simple and advanced simple profile. QuickTime includes another implementation of that standard, just offering Apple's usual exceptional quality ;) (sarcasm turned all the way on..)

And I would be very careful before alleging that any company is selling open source products and violate open source licenses, because not only do you completely disqualify yourself, but you bring potential legal problems my way.. I don't want companies starting slander lawsuit and send subpoenas my way to get access records.

[digigami]

I said it was VLC player.

At what distance from VLC player's display are you sitting. Is the playback enlarged to the full screen? And what is the dimension of the screen in inches?

If you're going to say there are obvious artifacts in my clip, please qualify it.

I have 4 machines here to look at this stuff on, have a good eye for artifacting, and have no trouble reporting it for both MY clip and the H.264 clip. You have only demonstrated a willingness to look at mine. Look at the H.264 clip. Or say you lack objectivity. Either is fine with me.

[digigami]

And I would be very careful before alleging that any company is selling open source products and violate open source licenses, because not only do you completely disqualify yourself, but you bring potential legal problems my way.. I don't want companies starting slander lawsuit and send subpoenas my way to get access records.

This is a public record, just google it. UPDATE: I did for you:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2004/04/30/123529.aspx

Also I did not say they were in violation of an open source license. Rather, the history of the company was codec development/invention. I just found it interesting that they chose to adopt a standard rather than continuing to improve their own.

[IgorC]

Distance between my eyes and monitor 15' 1024x768 fullscreen mode is full lenght arm (from sholder untill fingers). I evaluted whole picture and not each marcoblock separatly. I can see obvious visual macroblocks. If you don't see them I don't know what to tell you.

[Sagittaire]

There was also a MPEG2 test. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101735. Where mencoder has shown very good results at low bitrate. Maybe it is will be usefull to see. There's nothing new that MPEG-2 can provide acceptable quality at low bitrates as 3.6-5 mbps for 720p but it's still not on par with H.264.

Be carefull ... it's always challenge for 720*576 DVD MPEG2 MP@ML stream. I use HD source for to have best possible source ... :readrule:


Go look at the H.264 Clip of the same trailer that Sagittaire has produced as an example of perfect quality at 1250.

certainely not ... IMO perfect is only lossless. It's an example for you. H264 can make good HD encoding in 1-2 Mbps interval.

I wait always the encoding with MPEG1/2 with the same source and the same bitrate (it's useless to try ... MPEG1/2 are unable to make that)

I think that it is useless to continue the discution. We proved what we want : H264 is by far better than MPEG2

I think that you should satisfy to prove that your codec is best MPEG2 codecs and only that. That would be a great achievement for you and your encoder.

[JohnV]

Guys, what we are discussing about?
just look at digigami's video. http://digigami.in-long-beach-ca.com/megapeg/Doom9/ice_age_2-tlrD_720p.010.m1v. He said there is no visual artefacts.

just look . There are obvious artefacts that I can see during playback via VLC. And don't say me that those artefacts were here in QT 1080p source.
Imo more artifacting than in the 1.25Mb AVC streams, and I don't know if it's just me, but imo it also looks slightly more blurry.

[digigami]

there will allways be such problems visible in close inspection of the compressed material thats why it's lossy compression.

I agree with you there. At this point, I am interested in seeing an Ateme encoded version of Ice Age (Kung Fu) at lossless quality.

Now that I know Nero is using Ateme and have purchased it, I can learn the rest for myself.

I have found this discussion to be quite informative. And as I said before, I am looking for the right h.264 encoder for:
http://www.digigami.com/moviesformypod/

Before this thread, I didn't really have an idea of who to ask about what was good. Now I know who to ask and have a clue.

[IgorC]

Distance between my eyes and monitor 15' 1024x768 fullscreen mode is full lenght arm (from sholder untill fingers). I evaluted whole picture and not each marcoblock separatly. I can see obvious visual macroblocks. If you don't see them I don't know what to tell you.

I understand what you are talking about some people evaluate quality of video by each macroblock and imo it's not correct. But it's not the case.

[digigami]

Distance between my eyes and monitor 15' 1024x768 fullscreen mode is full lenght arm (from sholder untill fingers). I evaluted whole picture and not each marcoblock separatly. I can see obvious visual macroblocks. If you don't see them I don't know what to tell you.

I understand what you are talking about some people evaluate quality of video by each macroblock and imo it's not correct. But it's not the case.

Thank you. Now please evaluate the H.264 stream and tell me if you see the artifacts in the cave sequence (1-2s duration) near the last 3/4 of the running time.

[bond]

so yeah there has been a lot of talk till now, but i still dont see one single independant sample encoded with both digigami and a good h.264 encoder! or did i miss something?

i saw some clips proposed for such a comparison but i never saw digigami actually making an encode with them! why?

[digigami]

Imo more artifacting than in the 1.25Mb AVC streams, and I don't know if it's just me, but imo it also looks slightly more blurry.

It is definitely less sharp than the H.264.

Downstairs my friends have a large plasma TV (5' across) with HDTV service and sitting on their viewing couch I do not believe these artifacts would be visible. But from 15" this is another matter altogether. I do not watch movies this close unless I am on a plane.

[digigami]

so yeah there has been a lot of talk till now, but i still dont see one single independant sample encoded with both digigami and a good h.264 encoder! or did i miss something?

i saw some clips proposed for such a comparison but i never saw digigami actually making an encode with them! why?

The Ice Age sample chosen by Sagittaire was encode by him with Ateme ($9K) and by me with MegaPEG.

[IgorC]

Thank you. Now please evaluate the H.264 stream and tell me if you see the artifacts in the cave sequence (1-2s duration) near the last 3/4 of the running time.

yes. QT7 h.264 isn't ideal source but there aren't so obvious artefacts like on frame 560 where appears blue sky. It's most annoying artefactas I've seen on mpeg-2 video and there aren't on Qt7 1080p source.

[CruNcher]

Sorry but Quicktime as it is now doesn't use the full Potential of H.264 yet sooner or later it has to be HD-DVD and Blue-Ray compatible as both require High Profile and that's what Hollywood is gonna use. Quicktime as it is used now is just a Lower Base for Online Distributeing Trailer and TV Shows (and one of the badest solutions) and im not gonna wait for Apple till they Advance if they don't sooner or later Show High Profile support and a more Advanced Encoder they will be out of the Game for Professionals. I don't understand how they can Advertise with HD-DVD support for DVD Studio Pro 4 if they don't meet the Full Criteria for it and Frext is definatly one.

And now encode the Tractor source Gen it is loosless source coming from a Professional HD Cam and was made especialy for Testing Efficiency of Compression standards. The clips from TUM where also used in the H.264 verfication process.

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/papers/IBC-Paper-AVC%20VerifTestResults.pdf

[digigami]

We proved what we want : H264 is by far better than MPEG2

Good for you. But even better for the designers of the codec.

My request for a lossless version of Ice Age H.264 AVC is to establish the true bitrate that will be used to encode HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I do not believe anyone will professionally encode for those formats at 1250.

Is there anyone here who can answer this using Ateme? How about the Ateme guy...

[digigami]

And now encode the Tractor source Gen it is loosless source coming from a Professional HD Cam and was made especialy for Testing Efficiency of Compression standards. The clips from TUM where also used in the H.264 verfication process.]

What PC program will allow me to transcode this to a YUV format readable by QT?

[Sagittaire]

My request for a lossless version of Ice Age H.264 AVC is to establish the true bitrate that will be used to encode HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I do not believe anyone will professionally encode for those formats at 1250.

Transparant quality is subjective ... try yourself with Nero Recode or MeGui (Gui for x264 ... free and 0€).

MeGui can encode with special QT7 profil ... QT7 player is simply not compliant with the complete norme. It's not a H264 problem but only Apple problem ...

[digigami]

I don't understand how they can Advertise with HD-DVD support for DVD Studio Pro 4 if they don't meet the Full Criteria for it and Frext is definatly one.

Are you saying that HD-DVD will not play the streams currently produced by QT H.264? Or that HD-DVD supports a superset? It would seem normal that HP decoders also play less featured profiles.

Gen

[digigami]

Transparant quality is subjective ... try yourself with Nero Recode or MeGui (Gui for x264 ... free and 0€).

OK, I have Nero now and was only asking because Ateme HP is not available.

[Sagittaire]

H264 MP is very good too ... try and see yourself.

[IgorC]

Ateme HP encoder will be enable in Nero7 (approx. less than 100$ ) package in 2006 , while your MPEG-2 codec cost 300$ . I would prefer 0$ mencoder another excelent MPEG-2 with the same or better quality.