Is there a soft that really scan a video stream to check L4.1 compliance ?

[vega1970]

I've got a Tvix 6500 and, like most standalone .mkv players, it only plays correctly files with a video stream compliant to the High profile@level 4.1 .

From time to time, I receive files whose video stream are 1920x816x 5 ref frames (and average bitstream < 12Mbits/s) and which are flagged "compliant with HP@L5.1".

Normally, according to wikipedia, this kind of file should also be compliant with HP@L4.1. Indeed, some of them play fine on my player ... and some of them not (they seem to ... at first ... but they reboot the player at a specific point in the file).

When a file is not compatible with my player, I have to totally reencode it ... and as my pc is not fast it may take up to more than 24 hours.

Is there a way to know if a file is compatible other than playing the whole file through ?

Is there a software that can check the profile compliance by scanning the whole video stream ... and not just by displaying the informative data in the stream (like mediainfo does) ?

[poisondeathray]

There can be other reasons than just reference frames and average bitrate that may cause incompatibility issues with hardware devices

Different Max bitrate (peaks), improper VBV buffer, consecutive b-frames may cause playback issues as well. You've seen this with the reboot scenario - usually it's a bitrate peak, or buffer underflow but it can be something else as well

No free tools that I know of, you can use Elecard stream tools to check some of paramaters (they scan frame by frame, not reading header info), or h264visa. Even these don't guarantee it will work (e.g. it might play on popcorn hour, but not tivx, even though all the parameters are supposed to be compliant)

[PuzZLeR]

B Pyramids could be another problem if they're in the stream - a guaranteed choker to many decoders.

Personally, for now and in the meantime, I've stopped encoding to H.264. Too many issues currently. Either the encoders currently are not good enough, or not fast enough, or too expensive or decoder this, or playback device that, etc, etc...

We all know the standard has huge potential for prime time, and it is indeed inevitable it will get there. But currently, it's just too painful.

Here's hoping DivX sorts this all out in the market.