Mainconcept H.264 Encoder Preview released Options

[bond]

MainConcept is proud to announce the immediate availability of our H.264 Encoder Preview Version for Microsoft® Windows®! Although not yet optimized for speed, this free demo will enable you to sample the quality of our newest codec. H.264 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, is an exciting new standard which offers many advantages and has the potential to replace existing standards.

Our H.264 Encoder Preview Version also includes our H.264 Decoder, enabling you to play H.264 files in Windows Media Player and other compatible programs.

NOTE: This demo version places a watermark on encoded material.

http://www.mainconcept.com/h264_encoder.shtml

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/44488 (german article)


my first impression:
i compared xvid with qpel, trellis, vhq4 and 2 b-frames, other sttings on default and the mainconcept encoder with the default settings and main profile using a very small (!) test clip: neo using his mobile phone in matrix1

imho h.264 brings already pretty good results at ~500kbps bitrate, tough not comparable to xvid sharpness-wise (maybe i should have tried xvid without qpel?)
but the quality seems to be strongly fluctuating, meaning it seems that sometimes the picture is blurry, than sharp again, than blurry, with blocks sometimes showing up in between... (maybe thats a decoding issue?)

all-in-all not bad for a start, and i think there is _a lot of_ room for improvements (imagine how normal mpeg-4 part2 encodes looked like some years ago )

[idioteque]

the trouble is this;i doubt wmv9(or h264,if bulletproof is right(on 1mbit),and i think he is) has adaptive filtering(ie. filter less as bitrate increases)...
that's why normal mpeg4 might even win on higher bitrates...it just might...
and on lower bitrates..well,there's always ffdshow and addnoise....
(as i said,if there's a confirmation that this encoder can load avs,i'll try it against mpeg4...i already tried wmv9 and i didn't took that encoding path..it's 2x(or more) slower while being 10-20% better than mpeg4 on lo bitrates...and better here means that it blocks less,but also has less detail....i rather use ffdshow to compensate...)

[snip]

this sort of filtering is a BAD thing and shows that desperate measures are employed;this just blurs the image (few nice illustration shots in this pdf....both blocked and filtered images look like crap;one is full of blocks,and another is blurred like freakin' rv9!)
(perhaps this is the link to get pdf's
http://www.vcodex.fsnet.co.uk/h264.html )

The h.264 in-loop deblocking filter's benefits can be measured both objectively and subjectively and have been documented during the development of the h.264 standard. It's not just a simple blurring, application of the filter varies on a per block edge basis. The usage of the filter is accounted for by the encoder, hence the in-loop name. It does vary based upon bitrate, higher quantization will mean more use of the filter.

This post has been edited by idioteque: Feb 15 2004, 06:49