ffmpegX 0.0.9p with H.264 encoding

[major]

Since the forum was down, I announce now the release of ffmpegX 0.0.9p. Here's the list of new features:

http://homepage.mac.com/major4
ffmpegX 0.0.9p - Sep 4, 2004

- Added H.264 quick preset for encoding with mencoder engine with the H.264 Advanced Video Codec (mpeg-4 part 10) through the library x.264 (revision 46). Due to current limitations of mencoder, H.264 will be encoded in an AVI container with MP3 audio, instead of in an .MP4 container with AAC audio as it should be. Support for MP4 container will be added later. Use it to test this new codec, featuring superior performance and compression (40% smaller than mpeg-4, 60% smaller than mpeg-2).
- Added support for H.264 decoding for ffmpeg and mencoder engines.
- Added support for H.264 playback with the "Play" button through a patched mplayer binary. To playback the H.264 streams, click the "Play" button, then hit "F" to go fullscreen, SPACE to pause, RETURN to stop, and arrows to forward/rewind.
- Added "Use CABAC" option to H.264 encoding. Enables H.264 Context-Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding to improve entropy coding and achieve smaller files (slower).
- Added "Full interframe analysis" option to H.264 encoding. Use all available inter-frame analysis methods (i4x4, psub8x8, psub16x16) for a better motion estimation (slower).
- Added "Constant bitrate" option to H.264 encoding. If enabled, encodes at the specified constant bitrate by varying the quantizer between qmin and qmax. Please note that for H.264 the quantizer value has not the same meaning as in mpeg-1, mpeg-2 or mpeg-4. The quantizer range is from 2 to 51 on a logarithmic scale (so eg. the bitrate difference between q=20 and q=40 is only a factor of about 10). If "Constant bitrate" is disabled (default), then the qmin value is used to encode at constant quality, variable bitrate. A good range for qmin is 20..40 (default=22).
- Added support for built-in H.264 "Deblock" filter (in the Filters tab, enabled by default).
- Added "MPEG-TS" quick preset using ffmpeg engine, to encode to .TS DVB transport stream format using the ffmpeg mpeg-2 codec and MP2 sound (experimental).
- Added support of raw .DV video input for mencoder DivX/XviD and vcd/svcd/dvd with "decode with mplayer".
- Added playback of raw .DV video files with the "Play" button.
- Added support of AAC sound input in Quicktime .MOV files.
- Added support of AC3 stereo encoding in mencoder DivX and XviD (before it was just passing through a source AC3 -use 'Passthrough' audio codec to do that now-).
- mencoder DivX/XviD deinterlace filter now use median deinterlacer instead of linear blend, for better quality.
- Added "Decode with Quicktime" support for ffmpeg engine AVI encoding (XviD, DivX). Now used by default with ffmpeg AVI encoding when the input file is a Quicktime .mov file, thus fixing previous issues with MOV input (enables auto-letterboxing).
- The DVD>DVD4 tool can now also process VOB files smaller than 4GB, by applying a VOB to VIDEO_TS conversion without any recompression (1 or 2 audio tracks retained). Disable "Keep elementary streams" if you want to remove intermediate files.
- Further dual processor optimizations to mencoder mpeg-4 encoding.
- Renamed quick preset names as "format name" followed by "(engine name)".

[Case]

I tried two encoding with H.264 codec. 640x352 @ 744 kbit/s "minimum green value" and 480x272 @ 478 kbit/s "Best bitrate". Both loose much detail in low contrast areas (e.g. face) and very choppy in full frame motion scenes (similar to not enough fps).
Too experimental or wrong use?

[major]

Did you encode constant bitrate, or variable bitrate?

[midwinter]

I tried two encoding with H.264 codec. 640x352 @ 744 kbit/s "minimum green value" and 480x272 @ 478 kbit/s "Best bitrate". Both loose much detail in low contrast areas (e.g. face) and very choppy in full screen motion scenes (similar to not enough fps).
Too experimental or wrong use?

What did you use to play the video?

[Case]

Did you encode constant bitrate, or variable bitrate?

VBR (CBR off). Also ticked CABAC and Full interframe analysis in Options. QMin and QMax were left to default values, 22 and 51. Changed I-frames interval to 50.

What did you use to play the video?

ffmpegX/mplayer, like the feature list above mentions.

[major]

Try disabling CABAC and decreasing qmin to 20 or 19.

[Case]

CABAC disabled and qmin decreased to 19. A small fraction better on details and motion, but still a lot worse than mpeg4/DivX (mencoder). Filesize is 173% compared to previous encoding.

[Case]

On a small size encoding, 352x192, the motion is smooth again. Maybe the codec or the playback work better on a small canvas?

[Case]

Tried VLC again, audio plays, waited a bit, and after a short time the video pops up. I guess I wasn't that patient before. The H.264 video plays different in VLC. The motion is smooth in scenes that weren't in mplayer, but it shows blocky artefacts that were not visible in mplayer. So it is a playback issue, it is not encoded like that. 867 MHz G4 is maybe not enough to decode H.264 on large frame sizes, in it's current status.

That leaves the lack of detail/smoothing effect as downside.

[major]

H.264 playback will take more processor time than mpeg-4. But much work is still left for optimizations and the encoder need also time to stabilize. The x264 bitrate control implementation is quite fresh and not as reliable as libavcodec one.

[promoter]

- Renamed quick preset names as "format name" followed by "(engine name)".

This small change makes it a lot easier to ensure I'm using the right engine when encoding batches of files.

I've been using ffmpegX since version 0.0.6x, and think it's gotten both better and easier to use. Thanks for a great product!