Thanks for your thoughts, interesting. Id guess the only way 3ivx or other mpeg4 could be better than h264 in terms of quality, is if you enable options that go way beyond simple profile mpeg4, and so break quicktime & ipod etc compatibility. Ive just had a brief go with 3ivx 5 and have encountered an issue or 2, it wants to create avi's and didnt offer aac audio, so I had to reload the resulting avi into quicktime, and export as mpeg4 with video set to pass-through, and audio set to AAC-LC. Even then Ive managed to get an option wrong which makes it incompatible with quicktime, resulting file works ok in VLC though.
Its certainly important to highlight the fact that quicktimes encoding isnt the best available. Same could also be said for playback, eg some higher-res h264 that doesnt play at full framerate on my G5 in quicktime, plays much better in VLC or other player. Several years ago when h264 vs mpeg4 was a hotter topic here, I meant to work out what was the slowest machine that could handle 320x240 (or equivalent widescreen res) h264 files actually was. Because so many times, the issue of h264 playback performance is mixed in with higher resolution issues. The example that Andrew Baron has kindly provided today, is more of the same. Sure, the file struggles to play at full framerate on a G5, I just tried it myself, but this is a 1280x720 resolution video we are talking about. Does the same res & bitrate mpeg4 file playback much better? See Im not disagreeing that h264 does take more power to decode, I just question quite how much of an issue it is for most people and 320x240 footage. What is the minimum spec computer that people hope their videos will run with anyway? Ive got a celeron 800 here that I will try shortly, I seem to remember G4 iMac could do 320x240 h264 ok, but I'll have to retest sometime to be sure. Also need to test how much difference making stuff ipod compatible, and thus baseline rather than main profile h264, makes to processor requirements for playback. Oh I dunno, this issue just seems even sillier when we consider how many people are using 15fps for their 320x240 footage, ok this may make playback more consistent on slower machines, but also consistently unsmooth playback for all. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Brook Hinton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm absurdly obsessive about image quality, and ALL of the current options > make me wince (except when their artifacts and problems are part of the > aesthetic of a piece), but I have to say h.264, for me, was a gigantic step > up from 3ivx (which had been my pick for best quality), which in turn did > indeed produce much better mpeg4 and at smaller file sizes than apple's > mpeg4 codec. But in my tests and use, (no, I haven't kept stuff from the > initial tests I did, sorry), artifacts were MUCH less of a problem in h.264, > which was the first temporal codec that seemed to cure most of the horrible > blockiness that even bugs me when I watch a DVD. It does, however, only work > well with progressive, field-blended or deinterlaced sources, so I have to > do more prep with it. > > I also found the x264 flavor of it used by mpeg streamclip and ffmpegx > produces better looking video at small file sizes (at least using multipass) > than quicktime's h.264, though you have to be careful when you tweak > everything to stay compatibnle with ipods, appletv. etc. (there is an > excellent overview of all the h.264 levels and compatibility issues on > wikipedia),. Had I been stuck with quicktime for web-destined h.264, I'd > have given up due to the encoding time alone. > > There is, sadly, no way around the other issues Andrew mentions: some older > machines choke on decoding h.264, and it starts to look really bad when the > try to play it back. For me, the high quality on machines that can handle it > is just too seductive, so I use it anyway, though I just moved Trace Garden > to blip so that it can have a flash version for other folks, and will be > moving all of my other vlogs and video stuff there shortly as well. > > I'm going to try the new 3ivx when I get back home, though. I'd be thrilled > if the quality is now comparable to h.264, because having to use flash for > the "widely viewable" versions of stuff.... yuk yuk, yuk yuk yuk..(though > kudos to blip - their flash encoding is LIGHT years better than > YouTube/LiveVideo/etc.) > > Brook > > _______________________________________________________ > Brook Hinton > film/video/audio art > www.brookhinton.com <<vlog links are here > > TRACE GARDEN now viewable in flash on Blip! > http://tracegarden.blip.tv > ________________________________________________________ > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] >
