h264

Kraise · Post by **Kraise** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:01 pm

Hey, is there any guides yet for encoding with .h264 / .mp4 format yet? And do you know where I could get these codecs? And teh stuff needed to encode with them.. lol

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:06 pm

At the moment, its still a somewhat complex process.

If you want to try it, look for MeGUI, which is probably the easiest way to do it right now.

Gox777 · Post by **Gox777** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:23 am

Yea I've seen some pretty good encodes with h264...I'll look into that.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 10:47 am

I had been thinking about writing something up but abandoned it since the main part would be explaining what the functions in MeGUI do, but MeGUI already explains them to you (for the most part). I could only recommend settings that I like, but it would probably just get picked apart (mainly because I detest the deblocking filter and never enable the damn thing, and people like to bitch when others say they disable it).

Needless to say the settings I usually use have most everything maxed out, with the exception of the Rate Control or the Quantizers section (although I have the Bitrate Variance at 100%). It takes an ungodly amount of time to encode, though, especially on my computer - that's primarily because of the Exhaustive Search ME settings, and somewhat because of the B-frame settings. I don't actually have an example of one of these encodes available, though, but my next release should be.

Cloyce · Post by **Cloyce** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 6:06 pm

The simplest way to encode H264 video content:

<a href="http://x264.nl/"> x264 </a>

It's compliant with AVI format, and you can simply use VirtualDub if you want.
and
<a href="http://gabe.5000megs.com/guide/DeathThe ... html">Here
is a fast, but well done tutorial to x264 settings </a>

But I warn you
x264 can take you 4 - 6 hours where XviD only takes you 1.5 hour! >.>

shiro_clanclan · Post by **shiro_clanclan** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 6:50 pm

h264 in AVI = very no

MKV's a lot better for h264... don't stuff h264 in AVI, it wasn't designed to work that way. In fact, if you load such a file into MKVmerge, it'll give you a warning about how AVC/VfW is not an h264 standard. It's right.

So yeah... be careful.

Zero1 · Post by **Zero1** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 6:57 pm

Qyot27 wrote:I had been thinking about writing something up but abandoned it since the main part would be explaining what the functions in MeGUI do, but MeGUI already explains them to you (for the most part). I could only recommend settings that I like, but it would probably just get picked apart (mainly because I detest the deblocking filter and never enable the damn thing, and people like to bitch when others say they disable it).

Needless to say the settings I usually use have most everything maxed out, with the exception of the Rate Control or the Quantizers section (although I have the Bitrate Variance at 100%). It takes an ungodly amount of time to encode, though, especially on my computer - that's primarily because of the Exhaustive Search ME settings, and somewhat because of the B-frame settings. I don't actually have an example of one of these encodes available, though, but my next release should be.

ESA is next to useless, the dev said something along those lines himself; it's better to use UMH.

As for bitrate variance, do you mean rate tolerance? Here's an extract from my guide:
--ratetol
Usage: --ratetol <float> (default=1.0) [0.1 - 100.0]
Defines the allowed deviation in the average bitrate. Setting it higher than 1.0 may result in files larger than your target, and likewise setting it less than 1.0 may result in undersized files.

It doesn't directly affect how much difference there can be between a minimum and maximum bitrate, it simply means that it may use a higher average bitrate (which could end up with a larger range, but then again it might not). It basically affects the accuracy when you aim for a target bitrate/filesize. If filesize is not of concern, you should use CRF 18-20 depending on your quality/size requirements.

And yes, deblocking. While I can see why some people turn it off, turning it completely off is suboptimal, try setting a very low value for it instead, something like -3:-3 down to -6:-6

Work on the fact that a "deblocked" image is likely to be more relevant to adjacent frames than a blocky image, this means that you can use more frames as references.

Zero1 · Post by **Zero1** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:02 pm

shiro_clanclan wrote:h264 in AVI = very no

MKV's a lot better for h264... don't stuff h264 in AVI, it wasn't designed to work that way. In fact, if you load such a file into MKVmerge, it'll give you a warning about how AVC/VfW is not an h264 standard. It's right.

So yeah... be careful.

Yes, VfW/AVI is evil for MPEG-4 codecs that use B-frames (such as XviD, DivX and x264). The author of that guide also took a lot of criticism on doom9 and a bunch of flamewars about AVI vs MP4/MKV. Stupid really.

MKV would be a good choice if you produce ISO spec H.264, but if you encode H.264 in Virtualdubmod using x264 and saving as MKV, that's just as bad as using AVI. (The actual problem is that doing it via Virtualdub/mod produces hacked VfW compatible files).

MKV is better for H.264 than AVI, but I still prefer MP4 (it's the official, standard container for XviD/ASP/H.264)

shiro_clanclan · Post by **shiro_clanclan** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:08 pm

Ah, gomen, gomen. I forgot to mention the part about using the VfW encoder being bad for any format. Thanks, Zero1.

Cloyce · Post by **Cloyce** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 5:26 am

mmm... I found some posts like this on TorrentPortal

" MKV, What hell is this? I tried to play it in WMedia Player
But it doesn't work, please help me u_u"

Remember, there are o lot of stupid people around the web! ^^" (80%?)
And there are also people who don't understand the difference between
XviD and DivX! X.X
Why? The reason is very simple, when you install the official DivX
codec on your PC, as default decoder configuration, the following
options are checked:
"Support decoding for generic MPEG-4 video "
"Show DivX logo watermark"

So, if you put a XviD-video AVI into a VideoPlayer, you will SEE
the DivX logowatermark impressed on the video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
["Support decoding for generic MPEG-4 video " ^^]

The strange thing, is when you try to put the same AVI file into
the DivX Player (installed with DivX codec as default), in fact, an
error mesage will prompt out :
"the FourCC is XviD ...." or same thing like that.. ^^

So, for stupid people, I use stupid video format (avi).
At least they'll download it.

AnimeMusicVideos.org

h264

h264

x264

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