Is XVID still used?

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by rwill

Configuration was:

./xvid_encraw.exe -i tos_720x300_8b.yuv -type 0 -csp i420 -w 720 -h 300 -framerate 24.0 -bitrate 900 -pass1 \
-full1pass -max_key_interval 300 -quality 6 -vhqmode 4 -bvhq -masking 2
./xvid_encraw.exe -i tos_720x300_8b.yuv -type 0 -csp i420 -w 720 -h 300 -framerate 24.0 -bitrate 900 -pass2 \
-max_key_interval 300 -quality 6 -vhqmode 4 -bvhq -masking 2 -o mpeg4.m4v

./y262.exe -in tos_720x300_8b.yuv -size 720 300 -threads 1 2 -profile main -level high -chromaf 420 -rcmode 1 \
-mpout stats.p1 -bitrate 900 -vbvrate 2000 -vbv 600 -quant 3 -quality 100 -frcode 2 -arinfo 1 -nump 18 -numb 2 \
-flatmat -videoformat 709
./y262.exe -in tos_720x300_8b.yuv -size 720 300 -threads 1 2 -profile main -level high -chromaf 420 -rcmode 2 \
-mpin stats.p1 -mpout stats.p2 -bitrate 900 -vbvrate 2000 -vbv 600 -quant 3 -quality 100 -frcode 2 -arinfo 1 \
-nump 18 -numb 2 -flatmat -videoformat 709
./y262.exe -in tos_720x300_8b.yuv -size 720 300 -threads 1 2 -profile main -level high -chromaf 420 -rcmode 2 \
-mpin stats.p2 -mpout stats.p3 -bitrate 900 -vbvrate 2000 -vbv 600 -quant 3 -quality 100 -frcode 2 -arinfo 1 \
-nump 18 -numb 2 -flatmat -videoformat 709 -out mpeg2.m2v

I was surprised by how good your MPEG-2 video looks for the bitrate, so I decided to analyse it, and I noticed that you used a 57-frame GOP on average. You can't do this on DVD-Video, DVD-Video uses a max GOP length of 18 for NTSC and 15 for PAL. This gave your encode a major efficiency boost that you won't get when encoding DVD-Video compliant MPEG-2.

So, to recap, the space-efficiency advantages of using Divx avi over DVD-Video are:
1. Ability to use widescreen at the low resolution of 640x360 (DVD-Video forces you to use a relatively high 720x576/480 resolution if you want widescreen)
2. Whatever efficiency gains MPEG4 ASP offers over MPEG2 due to the better coding tools
3. Further efficiency gains due to using a max I-frame distance of up to 240 (instead of 15 or 18 for DVD-Video)

Also, you can ship either an avi file or an ISO for Divx avi, with DVD-Video you must always ship an ISO (a pet-peeve of mine).

So, back to the original question: Is XVID still used? Answer: Yes, it is still used to make Divx avi files to upload to the internet, because most people don't want to download a 4GB file for SD content (when downloading video for their non-H264 devices).

I know, necroposting (don't care), but I was bored the other day at work and was browsing for car DVD players, and I noticed that they still sell car DVD players that don't support H.264 but do support Divx avi. Yes, in 2022!! And someone bought this player on 30 December 2021 according to Amazon reviews. So, the installed base of car DVD players that don't do H.264 but can do Divx avi is not diminishing but actually expanding! Why can't they support H.264? I guess H.264 needs a more powerful chip while MPEG4 ASP decoding is a standard feature on all DVD chips made for the past decade. Also, MPEG4 ASP royalties are lower or non-existent.

So, my point is, MPEG4 ASP in avi files is not going away. Good or evil, learn to love it. This means Xvid is not going away for quite a while either.

[rwill]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

I was surprised by how good your MPEG-2 video looks for the bitrate, so I decided to analyse it, and I noticed that you used a 57-second GOP on average. You can't do this on DVD-Video, DVD-Video uses a max GOP length of 18 for NTSC and 15 for PAL. This gave your encode a major efficiency boost that you won't get when encoding DVD-Video compliant MPEG-2.

But no one is talking about DVD but you? This is like saying the default -keyint of 250 of x264 is not BD compliant? Keep it mind that the intent was a comparison between a a good Mpeg-2 and a good Mpeg-4 encoder and not between distribution standards.

And its 57 frames and not seconds. You might have also noticed while analyzing the stream that y262 is laking a scenecut detection and as such does not place keyframes on shot changes - giving XVID an advantage.

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

So, to recap, the space-efficiency advantages of using Divx avi over DVD-Video are:

And there you are talking about DVD again. No one talked about DVD compliance, we talked about video compression standards and their implementation.

This is it then. People here make less sense every day. I am taking a time out from Doom9.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by rwill

And its 57 frames and not seconds.

The 57-second thing was a typo (sorry, originally meant to express it in seconds). Fixed now.

Originally Posted by rwill

But no one is talking about DVD but you? This is like saying the default -keyint of 250 of x264 is not BD compliant? Keep it mind that the intent was a comparison between a a good Mpeg-2 and a good Mpeg-4 encoder and not between distribution standards.

And there you are talking about DVD again. No one talked about DVD compliance, we talked about video compression standards and their implementation.

For consumer electronics backwards compatibility (which is the only reason you should use anything older than H.264), MPEG2 is DVD or SVCD, and both restrict max distance between I-frames:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en...t-vcd-dvd.html

So, for pre-H264 hardware, realisticaly it's either DVD, SVCD, or Divx Home Theater profile, and I answered why Divx Home Theater holds a space-efficiency advantage over DVD. SVCD doesn't do widescreen so I didn't even consider it, but points #2 and #3 in my previous post still apply. And point #2 applies to MPEG2 vs MPEG4 ASP in general.

I know the thread veered off a bit, that's why I realigned it with the original question ("Is XVID still used?") in my previous post. The answer is: XVID is still used to encode Divx Home Theater-compliant files. And Divx Home Theater is still used where small sizes are needed and compatibility with pre-H264 hardware is also needed, due to its space-efficiency advantage over DVD.

Originally Posted by rwill

This is it then. People here make less sense every day. I am taking a time out from Doom9.

[Katie Boundary]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

For consumer electronics backwards compatibility

No one is talking about consumer electronics.

[rwill]

Hey nice plane in the picture.

It is taking off like XVID compatible consumer electronics in underdeveloped countries in the year 2022 of our lord.

Speaking of airplanes, Mpeg-1/2 Video is still used in In-flight Entertainment Systems (IFEs). I even was approached in 2020 by people still doing Mpeg-1 Video encodings for IFEs because of my Mpeg-1/2 encoder as commercial solutions have been largely abandoned and the ffmpeg encoder is crappy and apparently not specification compliant.

In Really Modern IFEs Mpeg-4 ASP is used of course. Now you might think this is another use case for XVID. No. XVID like x264 kinda does violate profile limits unless very correctly configured. And then the picture does not look so good anymore. That's because XVID files are supposed to be decoded on a PC without hardware constraints.

Also nice story there with your car DVD player. I would not interpret much into it though, there are always greater retards. More current people have moved on though, to smartphones, tablets and Smart TVs.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by Katie Boundary

No one is talking about consumer electronics.

You defacto are when talking about anything older than H.264. Even broadcasters who are using MPEG2 are doing it to maintain compatibility with existing MPEG2 receivers. And so are DVD publishers using DVD-Video instead of something like AVCHD or BD9, they are doing it to maintain compatibility with existing consumer electronics DVD players. That's the vast majority of demand for encoders for pre-H264 standards right there.

And anyway, the original question was "Is XVID still used?", so I have to explain to OP that it's used mostly to target non-H264 consumer electronics devices nowadays and its relative merits over DVD-Video that those devices also support.

Originally Posted by rwill

Also nice story there with your car DVD player. I would not interpret much into it though, there are always greater retards. More current people have moved on though, to smartphones, tablets and Smart TVs.

I am not in the market for one right now and not planning to be. It all started when browsing Philips' website for something else, and then out of curiosity I wanted to see what kind of media players their name is being plastered on nowadays (hint: not very good ones, it's budget DVD players and car DVD players). Then I veered off to Amazon to see if similar non-H264 players are sold by other brands (apparently they are, a lot). You can try to stop other people from buying these things and also try to convince other people to throw away any such players they already have, so that XVID disappears. I will be waiting. Until then, XVID will be with us for a long time. So, to answer the original question, XVID is still used and will be for a long time.

[filler56789]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

.......
backwards compatibility (which is the only reason you should use anything older than H.264)

You are wrong.
Now and then I still do some DivX reencodes of hi-quality short (30 minutes maximum) AVC clips which are highly-compressible
(not too sharp and made of low-motion content).
I use a high-bitrate quantization matrix with constant quantizer = 3,
GOP-length = 5 seconds, no B-frames, and so I may get, for example, a 300 MB file (audio included) from a 2 GB AVC source whose GOP-length = 0.5 second.
My storage space is limited and running DivX @ 1920x1080 is faster and simpler than using HEVC, AVC or VC-1,
therefore I choose the easier way whenever I can.

[MaximRecoil]

Originally Posted by Katie Boundary

"Watchable"? 700 MB per 2-hour movie was the standard. Only as movies approached 2.5 hours did you start to see the 2-CD encodes become more common.

700 MB Xvid encodes were the most common, but they weren't very good quality. The best case scenario for them, in terms of a Hollywood movie, was a short (around 90 minutes or so) 2.35:1 movie, which would typically be 640×272. A 2-pass encode with 128 kbps audio didn't have any major compression artifacts at least, but it didn't exactly preserve fine/complex detail like film grain.

Things got worse from there, i.e., a 1.85:1 movie was typically 624×336 (about 20% more pixels to encode), and a 1.33:1 movie was typically 640×480 (about 76% more pixels to encode).

"2-CD" encodes were a thing at least as far back as when I first got a PC / internet access (2001), they were just less common because internet speeds were a lot slower and hard drives were a lot smaller. It didn't usually have anything to do with the length of the movie, but rather with the preferences of the person / release group who encoded it. For example, I doubt that "aXXo" ever released a 2-CD encode, while there were people who always did 2-CD encodes regardless of the length and aspect ratio. 2-CD encodes usually had the untouched AC3 audio from the DVD, usually the 192 kbps 2-channel stream that many, if not most, DVDs included.

[Katie Boundary]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

You defacto are when talking about anything older than H.264.

No. Piracy existed before h.264 and it had nothing to do with consumer electronics.

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by Katie Boundary

Compatibility > efficiency

Every time.

Every. Goddamn. Time.

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

For consumer electronics backwards compatibility...

Originally Posted by Katie Boundary

No one is talking about consumer electronics.

What am I missing?

[rwill]

Originally Posted by hello_hello

What am I missing?

You seem to be missing that Katie Boundary's reply was below something about MP3.

Unless music requires a surround format you can buy 44.1kHz Stereo albums for download in MP3 which sound just fine, given their ~250kbps VBR. 44.1kHz Stereo is still somewhat current.

I have not yet seen 2CD Xvid releases of full length movies in (U)HD though. (U)HD is somewhat of a current standard as well.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by rwill

You seem to be missing that Katie Boundary's reply was below something about MP3.

Unless music requires a surround format you can buy 44.1kHz Stereo albums for download in MP3 which sound just fine, given their ~250kbps VBR. 44.1kHz Stereo is still somewhat current.

I have not yet seen 2CD Xvid releases of full length movies in (U)HD though. (U)HD is somewhat of a current standard as well.

So? People will download a (U)HD copy for the living room and bedroom and also a Divx avi copy for the car DVD player or TV/DVD player in the kitchen (or other player that doesn't do H.264 or H.265) and have it both ways

Most people here can't understand that:
- Some people will tolerate bad video quality outside the living room and bedroom, because some people just don't care that much.
- DVD players that won't play any kind of H.264 are still being sold today (because H.264 requires better chips and extra royalty payments). You should expect the average DVD player to support DVD-Video and Divx avi and no H.264 (unless it specifically lists HD support, which most don't). See my posts above for an example.

So, to answer the original question: Xvid will still be used for as long as there is a demand for compatibility with non-H.264 hardware, which is still being manufactured and bought by some people even today (no matter how that makes you feel).