Which MPEG-4 video codec you consider it is the best?
My choice is XviD.

Wmv9 is not compatible with the mpeg4 standard. From the current crop xvid is my choice, but i'm waiting for a good h.264 implementation (that's also mpeg-4).

Currently I use DivX 5.

this is not a simply straightforward question; first has to defined what best really is

i guess somewhere between ffvfw (why is it not in the options and WMV9 is??? )/DivX/XviD

I am stupid becuase i saw an encoding option "ISO-MPEG4" at Windows media encoder 9...

Fixed: WMV9 -> libavcodec

I choose xvid because it easy to use(?) , Dual pass first pass video analyzing is very fast (GMC off, VHQ mode: 1 Mode decision), second pass also(~12fps), help me to reduce some monster-size video(1 minute 43 second = 99MB) to 18MB, nearly keep all quality...
But it have bug (most recent build), the encoding option "interlaced encoding", anybody try it before?

What bug have you found? You do know that this option is not for deinterlacing but just makes for encoding interlaced video properly?

I may be the only one to think so, but a video I encoded with XviD had more visual artifacts than the same one encoded in DivX. I wonder why that is so.

I don't know how describe the problem, it's a visual artifact, but i'm sure the source video i use is interlaced. Let's say a single red color line in the picture, if i use the option "interlaced encoding", the line will become blur, or blocky.

Xvid is best IMHO. I will switch to H.264 when a good implementation appear sometime next year though.

The current H.263 is sadly not very good..

Hummm, is the artefact visible if you load the video into VDub, too?
And the source is DVD?
In that case, please post a snapshot of the source-frame and XviD-frame.

Can you post the xvid encoder setting and the video source information at this forum?
May be somebody can solve your problem...


Yes, but the source is MPEG1 video, resolution is 640x480, ~7772kbps.
Snapshot will wait someone to help me.
t.g.deck, are you one of the doom9 forum moderator?

Now is DivX 5.2, i encode the same video clip with Preserve interlace, Progressive and De-interlaced, but nothing difference between them.
But , Divx Produce some ugly pictures...

I use DivX 5 (with 3 pass encoding)

lavc via MEncoder on OS X

i use one preferred switch which works great with my divx-player and gives great quality from most DVD

i use DivX Pro 5.2.1 and 3ivx D4 4.5.2 fc 2.1
(1-pass quality, quantizer=2, all keyframes, H263 quantization)
they are very good quality and fast

WMV9 VCM is also very good but much too slow
REALmagicMPEG-4VideoCodec is good

i hate xvid

xvid

Why you hate xvid? Hard to use? Quality problem?

I chose DivX 5. IMO, it provides an easy-to-use interface, while having still enough options to customize the encoding according to ones wishes and videos.

for real? why not just keep the DV files? you're throwing away virtually all the benefits of MPEG-4 in one fell swoop. and your files must be huge.

i put it to you that xvid at Q2, I-frames only will be visually indistinguishible from divx pro at Q2, I-frames only, when played through the same decoder.

i'm an xvid user - my machine simply isn't fast enough for ffdshow/vfw (or i haven't found the right settings), and divx infects my computer, which i'd rather keep as my own. i'll take open over non-open as a matter of principle even if i get less quality (which i believe isn't the case, but i haven't done any video-ABX tests to verify this, and i couldn't be arsed downloading divx pro and getting a bunch of spyware).

i decode everything i can with ffdshow, of course.

There is no spyware anymore in DivX 5.2 so go ahead and ABX...

i stand corrected

Using "all keyframes" must be nice for seeking, but is essentially MJPEG. Also, at 640x480 you're talking about ~10MB/sec. Hatred sure is a powerful force to make a guy resort to that.

i don't have DV files, i convert captured videos (huffyuv) from TV
i can't keep the huffyuv files, they are too big (~500 MB for 1 minute 640x480)

no, 30-45 MB for 1 minute 640x480

yes, that is why i use all keyframes and play the files with MS ActiveMovie ActiveX Control (copy AMOVIE.OCX from Windows ME CD, in WIN_19.CAB)
i do a lot of seeking and with all keyframes, i can seek very fast, no waiting, seek at the exact frame # i want, seek 1 frame forward or 1 frame back.

?

not 10 MB/sec
0.5 to 0.85 MB/sec

to each their own...

any reason for the activex stuff? i'm a little confused as to why a regular media player isn't enough. is it a sort of home-brewed NLE app you're using? i just run everything through either avisynth or premiere or both, but i don't really do anything except for DVD backup/authoring, filtering experiments and editing student films.

mpeg-4 I-frame only will be pretty similar to MJPEG, though the huff coding will be much more efficient.

hmm... would divx/xvid be fast enough to capture to? I-frame only takes a huge load off the encoding process - there's no motion search needed, no scenechange detection, and no GOP management. i'd imagine you'd get good capping speeds with Xvid (don't know about divx as i stopped using it long ago).

ActiveMovie is the best player
fastest : no playlist or web things
can display frame # instead of time
has buttons for seeking 1 frame forward and 1 frame back
can display the list of codecs and directshow filters used and set their properties
can set the starting and end frame if i want to repeat only a section of the video

i found no other player that has all these features.

yes, 3ivx and divx are fast enough for capture.
but i can't capture with them because i need to do deinterlacing and sharpen

For a long time I used DivX5. I believed all their commercial hype. But when XviD went final I gave it a try. There's no going back.

why not cap interlaced? if you're going CQ2 all the way, I-frames only, then interlacing isn't much of a problem.

also, it's best to keep interlacing unless you absolutely have to get rid of it. modern GPUs will bob-deinterlace on the fly, as will progressive TVs. the only real concern is with bitrate, and if you're going I-frame only, you're obviously not worried about bitrate, so why not go the extra %20 or so?

btw, VirtualDub does all those things... media player classic does most of them (not sure about frame # display, but why would you want that for playback?), zoom player will do that stuff too (and has exceptionally good filter configuration tools in it, allowing you to really get stuck into the innards of DirectShow).

best, only if you play it on tv.
interlaced is awful, i can see the horizontal lines.

interlaced image 1
deinterlaced image 1

interlaced image 2
deinterlaced image 2

modern ?
i have GeForce FX 5600 and it never deinterlace by itself.

VirtualDub is not a player, can play video but not fullscreen.
media player classic has no frame # display, no 1 frame back button and no settting for the starting and end frame.
zoom player pro is not free and is ugly.

Your video file is huge, i have some xvid encoded 640X480 or 800x600 video clips which is 1 minutes at around 5MB to 10MB, still can preserve the quality.


You can try to open the video file with Media Player Classic, play it, and press the left key or right key on the keyboard.

libavcodec through latest mencoder (also works in windows now!). Masking works miracles and nothing compares to lavc in terms of speed.

Masking?

If you are familiar with XviD its called adaptive quantization there. But it's much more efficient IMO and can be extremely tweaked with lavc. Much more efficient than B-frames I think. You get separate options for darkness, luminance, spacial complexity, temporal complexity and P block masking! And best of all is that the performance hit is relatively small.

EDIT: seperate -> separate (aaaargh!)

So it is the good-old lumi masking. It appears that I need to do some testing.

afaik the correct expression of this in the mpeg-4 standard is indeed "adaptive quantisation"

its a psychovisual tool and therefore the implementations can heavily differ qualitywise in different codecs (depending on what devs think, the human eye cant see or see not so good and how they implement it)

I found the ISO MPEG-4 Video V1(Windows Media Encoder 9's video codec) video clip can decode by ffvfw DivX4, GPAC player and mplayer ffodivx, their fourCC is MP4S, but still not sure it is ISO-MPEG4 complian or not...
Still don't konw how to transmuxing to AVI, MKV or MP4 container...

i've started playing with mencoder/lavc recently. not enough to give up on xvid (it's a pain to have to wrap all my avs scripts in avi files), but i'm getting there. when i learn compilers and stuff i'll start going it hardcore.

x264 is looking good. already equal/better than xvid at the same bitrates, and there's still heaps of features that aren't implemented yet. h-264 is a very promising standard to say the least.

btw, for the record:

interlacing is NOT an artefact. i find the information at 100fps.com to be a tad misleading, slightly outdated and not all that helpful. certainly it's a good explanation as to what interlacing actually is, but it seems to give the impression that it's something to be removed, rather than worked with. a good codec should be able to handle interlace, especially if it's aimed at DVD backup, as a great many DVDs are interlaced (TV series, for instance. or standards-converted titles). deinterlacing is a compromise. double-rate deinterlacing (bobbing) is of course necessary for progressive screens, but it should be done at playback, not encoding.

GPUs will deinterlace if they're told to. directshow does this by taking flags from the decoder. xvid is doing this, but it's at an early stage and doesn't seem to be working yet (there was a test version that this worked on, but even it seems not to work. i might have messed up my directshow). try play a DV file through directshow and you'll see it bobbed. also, most DVD software will bob on playback if it has to (except on a mac for some reason...).

i'm running an Asus GeForce DDR 32MB and it does bobbing. that's a very, very old card. my newer one (still only a GF2 MX400) exploded and splatters crap all over my screen, so much so that windows became unusable. good thing i kept the old one around :|

Finally i found an easy way to transmuxing ASF/WMV container to avi .
Using mencoder with the -oac copy -ovc copy switch.
I only can transmuxing ISO-MPEG4 Video v1 WMV to avi with the mencoder only, but can't re-transmuxing the avi to ogm and mkv using the VirtualdubMOD...
it will produce br0k3d video(but not the AVI warpped WMA/V stream)...
Still searching the info about advantage of ASF/WMV container...

EDIT: found it, disadvantages is more than benefit, should be aviod unless want to mux ISO MPEG4 Video v1/wmv with windows media audio...
Now we should be able to mux WMV with the common audio codec like ac3, aac, vorbis ,mp3 and .... Hurray!!!

EDIT: Oh, sorry, the VDMod didn't produce br0k3d video, it's the ffdshow can't decode the ISO MPEG4 Video v1 MKV(avi don't have this probelm, it's kinda wired, but the mkv can decode by mplayer) for unknown reason, it will decode by MS MPEG4(???) DSHOW decoder without error.

EDIT: Sorry, too many edit here, i'll make a conclusion:

For transmuxing iso mpeg4/WMV to avi, should be using mencoder, but the avi file size may be larger(larger 2 or 3 MB @ 100 second video clip) than original ASF/WMV(Don't know why, avi overhead???, the AVI muxer can handler the wmv, it will produce 30fps only, broked; but 1000fps with mencoder, normal.)

For transmuxing to MKV, using the Matroska muxer with graphedit will be faster.

@MugFunky:


It's seem you are reply me.(not sure )

it seems like artefact, it cause some bright color like red, yellow, green and so on, become jagged(???) image.
I have some interlaced MPEG1 video, ffdshow libavcodec or libmpeg2 automatically deinterlace it, but the Micro$oft MPEG1 video decoder doesn't deinterlace, very ugly(it will disappear when display at TV).

I'm not sure this is a good reply...
[to be continue...]

heh?

IIRC MPEG1 cant be interlaced (?)... encoding interlaced material with MPEG1 is messy

but Mug Funky is right, interlacing is not an artifact... its just a case of showing the wrong material on the wrong monitor.

@stephanV:

Ok, i ask you a "dumb" question:
How the interlaced video look like when display on the CRT monitor, and the video decoder doesn't deinterlaced* it automatically?
I don't have dvd drive installed, so no chance to watching the MPEG-2 interlaced video in my computer...
I also not sure, why my video clip look (some part)jagged when decode by MS mpeg video decoder, but ffdshow doesn't?

* = edit

Then it will look jagged, striped or whatever term one uses to describe the phenomana, as interlaced material is not intended for a computer monitor, but for a TV... that does not make interlacing an artifact. An artifact is something that shouldnt be there, like blocking or ringing. You could argue that TVs as they are now are stupid and shouldnt be there like they are now... but yeah, they are what they are intended to be and so is the video material provided for it.


ffdshow deinterlaces automatically but MS decoder doesnt?

I'm using XviD, and I'm curious to play with H.264. I'll probably use whatever implementation len0x supports in AutoGK, hoping that he will do so.

I'm not very good at video encoding so I use XviD + AutoGK.

@stephanV:

thanks for the answer.


Comfirmed, for interlaced MPEG1 video.

Perhaps it is because MPEG1 DOES NOT SUPPORT interlaced mode.

Can you please tell me why?
And why the freeware TMPGEnc or [ffvfw MPEG2 mpeg1] encoder have interlace encoding options for encoding?

Well, there is nothing preventing you to encode interlaced content in mpeg1, but it will be encoded as progressive.
There are no provisions for interlaced content in mpeg1. Interlaced content support was added in mpeg2 only.

XViD

It may be different now, but xvid use to encode quicker and qua IMO was better than Divx. I hadn't done alot of vid encoding lately, so things could have changed.

Also kind of makes me angry about the way Divx use to have spyware for Pro edition(actually didn't know they didn't anymore til reading this thread).

i use xvid but sometimes wm9 video because that is good.But man H.264 i have tested like 4 different encoders and xvid is still better.H.264 has macroblocks
and has anybody noticed how much detail H.264 looses it spatially blurs it for high compression.Therefore WM9 & xvid is one of the bester compression methods.