We have extended our coverage to video.
New audio/video section forums can be found here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=SC&c=15
or at the bottom of the forum list:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?&act=idx

From the navigation panel on top you can select the latest Audio Topics, Video Topics or FB2k Topics.

We are looking for few moderators for the video section. If you are interested and know about MPEG4 or other digital video areas, send me a PM.

Bleh. People should start redoing their logos :-P

hydrogenvideo.org is available

May we know the reasons that made you take the decision to include video encoding in the forums?

Why not? I'm personally nowadays pretty interested also in video.
Of course I and everybody else really interested in video will also visit other video boards, but imo it's nice to have a video section and video talk at HA too.
And maybe HA can bring its own spice to this area.

Well, that is certainly a good reason. Myself, I have also got interested in video encoding and since I'm quite "virgin" in that area, I will probably profit from such a section, too.
However, I feel a little scared about the consequences this might have. Video encoding is definitely the hot topic nowadays, and if the section here at HA.org sticks (and it has the potential to stick; loads of subforums!), I am afraid we will be soon swamped by video-related topics and slowly lose the focus in audio this community is supposed to have. The new section in the upper bar with the "Audio/Video/fb2k" topics surely will aid to keep the audio part a little "safe" or "uncontaminated", but I can already envisage the "Active Topics" on the portal being usually ruled absolutely by video threads (a phenomenon that is happening already, just a couple hours from the "inauguration") <<shivers>>.

I think its a great idea though it does contradict the name 'Hydrogenaudio' though. Maybe hydrogenmedia.org would be better.

IMHO, this sounds like a terrible idea.

This forum/site is about audio, not video. right? (as in the name).

I really don't want to come here and get alot of video topics listed, ugh.. i have doom9.org and everwicked and divx/dvd-digest/forum for that.

Maybe the sitename should be changed to hydrogenmedia.org ?

Why not concentrate on what this site is based on? namely audio discussions with alot of depth. There are already many many well established video forums floating around, so i don't really see the point.

Because I am not personally concentrading only on audio, and since I'm admin here, I don't see the point why I shouldn't pursue the area of my and many other's interest also here.

Well, why not make a total separate forum for the video stuff then, and get hydrogenvideo/media/whatever.org or something and point that to a subdomain video.hydrogenaudio.org with its own forum on?

As dologan said, it would be very bad if the main page was contaminated with video topics, when the main topic for this forum is supposed to be audio topics (?).

Well, anyway, i've said my peace.. i think it's a bad idea for the HA community.

Because people visiting this site purely for audio topics will now be inundated with video topics in the portal.

That might not be such a bad idea. A total separate forum with a new logo and new colour scheme. It would make the forum less cluttered. While grouping AAC/MP3/MPC/Ogg Vorbis/etc etc into one big category is logical, it does look a bit cluttered.

I actually like the subdomain idea. Maybe on of the Admins could implement that for the A/V and fb2k sections.

The only chance for this to be succesful is IMHO not to try copying doom9.

dev0

Since when has there been such a great demand for MPEG4 discussion that new forums needed to be created?

Bug (?): Both sections show up in the portal. But only the audio topics show up when I click "More..." to get more.

Well, if the admins have made their mind, then I think there will be no backtracking. I will adopt a "wait and see" attitude regarding this, although I am not personally thrilled with the idea. I would support the creation of an amateur video section to vent the irresistible urge of talking about video compression; but after seeing the "revamped" structure of the forums (all audio codecs bunched together under "Audio Compression", with the video section right behind it with almost as many subforums) I am seeing this is really going serious.
Personally, I wouldn't like to see Hydrogenaudio become Hydrogenmedia or Hydrogenvideo, since I think its spirit would be difficult to retain, so diluted in topics where an objective, scientific approach is harder to maintain, IMHO. (anyone ABXing video encodings out there?)
OTOH, with so much competition around (doom9, afterdawn, everwicked, etc); I find it difficult that this fish, undisputable ruler of the audio-sea, will successfully evolve into a video-land animal; but will instead become a clumsy amphibian neglecting its watery roots.

There is a Site Discussion forum for that; please stay on topic.

Yep. My plan is to split the portal latest threads in 2 parts. Audio and Video.

What comes to the other points, like why not create a totally separate video forum.
Well
1. Because this forum has already user base
2. It's much easier this way. I or anybody else here has currently no time to maintain 2 totally different forums for free.

Anyway, I will make it so that both sections are in harmony, and people interested only in audio feel minimal disturbance.

I think it's a good idea to create a video section.
As long as it's kept under resonable tight leash, i'm all for it .

Shouldn't there be a video "general" forum? All subfora seem to concentrate on DVD->MPEG4 conversion, so I don't know where I should post (e.g.) a TV capture question.

Yeah, I will add this.

Anyway, for the moment, most of the Video section topics don't appear on Portal.
Only Topics from av/news, Container Forum and movie/multichannel audio appear also on Portal.

Please do.

Maybe you should add a subforum for "transcoding", you know, converting DVD9 to DVD5 and its many subtleties.

I agree with Dologan, that this might not be thet greatest idea, but we will "wait and see". Besides, the decision is already taken and we cannot do anything about it .

Also, take a look at the Music Forum. There was a rather heated debate about the convenience of having such a forum and look at it now, it is almost dead!

So, lets se how this "Video" thing works out.

since i am more involved in video than audio i welcome this step but can see why some are worried. i have given up on reading certain dvdrhelp.com forums for example...

anyway does that mean the logo needs to change?

like "the a/v technology enthusiast's resource" hm come to think of it maybe rearrange the sentence: "the a/v technology resource for enthusiasts".

or leave it as it is! less work for the logo people *g*

pax.
eke.

Nooo! Save the genitive!!

I'd have thought, perhaps naively, that a linkup with doom9 would be more appropriate. They could do with the audio experience here, and vice-versa with the video bit.

What about Rules #8 of HA Terms of service and this new Video section? Are there ABX tools for video? I've request similar software some times ago on a french forum, and I was really surprised that nobody knows about any video ABX tool. It's very embarassing...

Yeah, but I or any other staff here can't influence on doom9 things in anyway.
It's of course natural that there will be comparisons to doom9, but this is just another video section which is run on HA in HA's way.
I have no illusions that HA could actually compete directly on video field with doom9 for a loong time (and it's not the purpose either), but HA can hopefully bring its own spice to this field.
Anybody seriously interested in video visits also doom9 daily, and maybe HA can bring more users to doom9 also.

I don't know any video ABX tools either. Anyway, clear opinions are ok as usual, but hard claims are a bit different thing. This is something that should be thought..

Wouldn't it be much easier to see video artifacts than to hear audio artifacts? I would think that the most effective form of comparison would be to set up two monitor displays playing the compared videos normally or frame by frame if needed.

Typically for video, abx'ing isn't as important as with audio. That's because we can do things like side-by-side & frame-by-frame comparisons.

Also, artifacts in video generally occur more and are less annoying than in audio.

But you have codecs such as WMV9 which automatically post-process stuff, which makes codec comparisons difficult.

I don't know about that, but I'd think that most people have such a vision (at least with corrective lences) that they can easily compare and see visual artifacting even in high quality video if they look closely.
I believe in audio there's much more variance, because people have so different hearing sensitivities.

I dont want to get grilled for sounding overly -ve, but without some sort of ABX tool, coupled with an intolerance for people claiming "X beats Y", the forums are merely going to be comprised of threads whereby a newbie asks a question, and someone else points them to the appropriate page on Doom9.

I don't see anything wrong in that if a newbie asks a question and someone links him/her to an answer at doom9.

And what about usual open-source zealotry? I'm familiar with generalist french forums, and there's a serious correlation between "vorbis rockks"-"mp3/wma/aac sucks" and "XviD is million time better than DivX"/"I-can-simulate-RV9-behaviour-and-quality-for-manga-with-xvid" etc... [I know that XviD is all except patent-free, but explain that to childish people...]

This summer I tried to compare XviD and DivX, and I was seriously annoyed. Frame by frame comparison is not very reliable. And when I tried to compare DivX and XviD by switching with a media player, well... it's the same than comparing two files with Winamp: you know the answer before beginning the test.

I fear that this new video section will be a backdoor for unfounded claims. "Clear opinions" is a vague answer to this problem. What about a newbie having "clear opinions" about --alt-preset "cold/warm" sound heard through a winamp comparison? It's not serious, without double blind test. Why should video differs from audio?

Some thoughts:

Audio can be recorded and reproduced with amazing fidelity (-> binaural recordings) with relatively low / cheap technical effort, covering the hearing's abilities in all ways (frequency range, dynamic range, time resolution, soundstage ...). Video is far away from this "transparency". A screen is only a small part of our "viewstage", it's 2D and not 3D, the "dynamic range" (difference between black and white) is only a small part of what the eye can handle / adapt to (bright sunlight vs. moonlight). Because of this our expectations to video are not "transparency" - It's enough if video quality doesn't distract us from the taste of beer and chips. Most audio we listen to is music = art, but we wouldn't put a screen on the wall showing an oil painting.

So, as we're used to "lo-fi" TV and "mid-lo-fi" DVD, when video codecs are compared, the question can't be: "Is it possible to ABX?" - It will be possible in vast majority of cases, when focussing on a short sequence and watching multiple times. The question is "What artifacts look better under normal viewing conditions?". This is subjective like comparing audio codecs at low bitrates. Some prefer vorbis' high frequency boost, others real audio's pre-echo ...

So there could be a problem with rule # 8 indeed.

I like the idea of having video forum on HA.

But for comparing the quality of video codec there are a lot of variables to deal with (sometime beyond control) and most likely to end up with subjective preference.

Just my $0.02

Guru, tigre: Ok, so do you have any good suggestions how to handle this?

AFAIK everwicked is working on a tool, which is implementing different testing methods for testing the quality of a video signal, it will also include an "ABX-like" (ie. semi-blind) method soon:

http://www.everwicked.com/vqstudio/

No - except by limiting the purpose of the new forum (discussion about audio mux, video contenair, multichannel encoding - and not about Video quality), or simply let these questions in the GENERAL one.

Well, I'm sorry but I'm very interested in video quality, so excluding the quality subject totally is not imo very nice.

Heh, maybe we can persuade Gabest to add somekind of ABX module to Media Player Classic. Anyway, already it's easy to use Avisynth script to play 2 video streams synched on screen.

rule #8 for video forum(s):

Statements on technical or quality oriented matters
1. are expected to be supported by the author responsible for such statements.
2. must be detailed.

explanation
...
"A is better than B" is forbidden. "In cases like ..., A preserves more details than B but OTH is more blocky. I prefer A over B" is allowed. Unless statements represent what's widely accepted for true, they must be supported at least by providing links to screenshots.
------------------------------

Oh ... you've asked for *good* suggestions - I don't have any.

BTW: What about posting screenshots from videos & copyright?

I'm interested too, but not by biased, unfounded or fragile opinion about quality. r3mix talked about audio quality, head-fi too... would you trust each opinions posted on these forums? Without dedicated tools for comparison, without blind tests, most opinions about quality can't be considered as reliable. Ans I don't really want to see HA becoming as many forums: an simple opinion fair.

Umm isn't there a famous saying: opinions are like as****** - eveybody has one.
So of course nobody should completely trust on an opinion. But in a free world opinions are free. Claims != opinions.

If someone says "in my opinion A is better than B", and even better if it continues like "because of xxxx", I don't think that we have to freak out because of that. Éverybody should understand it's an opinion and some people probably have different opinions.

As long as we interfere with unjustified claims, imo everything is ok.

I wasn't even sure it was a bug; besides, how much more on-topic can you get than posting the report in the thread discussing the new Video coverage? I'd imagine the admins will be monitoring this thread closely to gauge reaction and things.

@JohnV: Will there be an option to view both simultaneously? Both interest me, so I'd like to have that sort of functionality, assuming it's not that difficult to add/code. I can see the separation of FB2K and HA active topics lists. I like having those two separate. But it would be nice to be able to check out both audio and video topics at the same time, rather than clicking between them.

@guru: Well, sure, there are loads of opinions out there, and I wouldn't like to see HA get overrun with them, but there are certainly semi-opinionated memes that have certain truth to them, without too much empirical basis, ie. the Vorbis high-frequency distortion perception. I'd imagine that with video, there are going to need to be some statements where a general consensus is the only way the codecs can accurately be qualified. I've yet to see a video codec (short of lossless/high-bitrate lossy) that's 100% transparent. There's also plenty of technical detail in video encoding we can all geek out over.

Ok, I can add this option soon.

Out of curiosity, would this take the form of three types of portals: an audio-only portal, an a/v-only portal, and an a/v-audio-combined portal? That would be nice, IMO, if it's feasible to adminstrate.

And I would think the active topics search page could combine all forums (except the music forum).

I'm more interested in audio than a/v at the moment, and would like to have seperate portals for them in HA if possible, but my a/v interest could be growing soon as well.

I just wanted to say that I would also find this useful and enjoy having a video section, but at the same time I agree that it should be kept somewhat separated from hydrogenaudio. I have, as of late, become quite interested in video compression, specifically MPEG4 (XviD), as a method of backing up my DVD collection.

just to add ymy personal opinion.

i think it's gonna be a mistake.

1: there is allready doom9 forum.
2: It just feels like bloat ware.
I liek to keepthings perfect for one job rather then the jack of all trades/master of none.

Also it would probally swap the portal etc etc and loose focus on the audio part.


Just my negative thoughts thou :-)

Im kind of against the idea of this video forum as well. I thought that was what doom9.org was for......