MP4 and MPEG-4 error's

[post-it]

what are the standards for both?

Reason: I have a DVD player that i use in my truck ( semi ) and it won't play the videos
that i re-encode from other formats!?!

why am i doing this: when your on the road you need to watch .. something! The Digital
tv signals drop to blank screens when Trucks go by & there's nothing worth watching but
weather-related stuff.

My i-pod plays one form, my sansi plays another and this MPEG-4 DVD player plays another

sooo, what are the standards for both?

[Zarxrax]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Profiles

Unfortunately, a lot of devices seem to completely ignore the profiles and just support some arbitrary list of features.

However, if you encode to baseline profile, your videos should probably play on just about anything, as long as your resolution and framerate are within a compatible range for your device.

[post-it]

in your links title, it says it all: avc

hmmm .. Q:for
Back when Alpha 3.1.1 was the standard avi codec standard i
made a codec-board for video capturing "directly to file" video
and audio. The program-to-curcuitboard kit had many tweeks
to fine-tune how the video would look and frame-rate de-interlacing
options.

Is there an AVC captureboard in the market today or are geeks
like me all-dead-and-retired? Things are changing too fast and
i no longer understand what the "standards" are!!!

just currious

[Zarxrax]

I'm not really sure I understand your question. There are hardware based solutions for encoding h.264 video files, but x264 is both higher quality and faster.

[post-it]

x264 it is then

THx

[post-it]

Howdy.
.. update on the question about MPEG-4 .. the answer to what "is" MPEG-4" is Xvid.

I encoded .MP4's and tryed all 23 combinations of formats that i have stored through
the years and placed it on a CD. The one which finally responded to the VIDEO codec
of this player was .divx & Xvid's newest codec's.
.. someone should state/explain which codec its looking for on the box or at least in
the instructions of these DVDplayer's so the public doesn't have to guess at what MPEG-4 means!!!

MPEG-4 = Xvid

[mirkosp]

Not exactly.
MPEG-4 Part 2 defines video codecs in general, and among other profiles, it defines the Advanced Simple Profile (ASP), which includes Xvid, DivX, and the likes of those.
MPEG-4 Part 10 defines the Advanced Video Coding (AVC), so it is virtually identical to the ITU-T H.264 standard, which would mean x264, MainConcept H.264, etc.
Sauce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4#MPEG-4_parts
As you can see, there are also many other profiles... MPEG-4 in general defines various A/V standards, and it's up to the hardware manufacturer to decide which level of the standard to support. Since they don't always specify, it's up to the customer to figure out what profile they mean when they says that a device is "MPEG-4 compatible." In your case it was ASP, but that's not always the case, although a device compatible with AVC is likely also able to support ASP and the other standards defined by the Part 2.

[post-it]

hmmm ... I guess, "gone are the days when a name means something definite." It's now chair meaning anything to sit on. House
meaning the TV Series. And video meaning brought to life. Sorta scares ya what they'll define your home as in a few years.

Sooo .. any reasoning behind the Smoke&Mirrors name-game for MPEG-4 ?

[mirkosp]

Actually it's no smoke&mirrors game at all. Let's try with an example. Think of MPEG-4 as a tall building. Every floor of the building represents a part of the MPEG-4. In order to reach a floor you gotta take the stairs, and so in order to reach a higher floor, you happen to pass by the lower floors as well. If the person you're interested in lives on the second floor, then you'll only pass by floor 1. But if you're aiming to get to your buddy at floor 10, then you'll eventually pass by floor 2 too. So if a device is thought to be MPEG-4 Part 2 compatible, it won't need to be compatible with Part 10, but the contrary is true. Continuing thinking under this light, when talking to other people you could say "Hey, I'm going to visit a friend that lives in that building." You don't need to specify that you're going to visit that exact friend which lives on that specific floor of the building, you can just say it in general, which is what the device manufacturers do. If your friends are more curious about which friend on which floor you're gonna visit, they can just tag along, which is what you'd be doing by buying the device and checking for yourself. Of course, generally speaking one can be able to tell what a device is probably going to be able to support. If you're going to visit the building on a saturday evening and your friends know that your girlfriend lives in there, there hardly is a need to ask what you're going to do... Similarly, if you're going to buy something like a bd-player, it's obvious it will be part 10 compatible without the need of the manufacturer specifying it. Hell, most people don't even know what MPEG-4 is in the end, so specifying would probably be useless, since those who would understand probably have ideas clear enough anyway.
Hopefully this example is clear and makes sense... it's pretty late over here so I might have just written BS, but I'd hope not. >_<

[Qyot27]

More like - just as it was in MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, there is no limit on the number of different types of audio/video/etc. that can be ratified under the MPEG-4 collection of standards. MPEG-4 is simply the first I know of that has two *video* standards within it. But the standards for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 (and yes, even MPEG-4) have several different types of *audio* contained in them.

MPEG-1 contained:
MPEG-1 Layer 1 (MP1, MPGA, etc.), MPEG-1 Layer 2 (MP2, Musicam), MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3)

All three of those are distinct, they are not related to one another. Musicam and MP3 in particular.

MPEG-2 contained:
MPEG-2 Layer 3 (which is more an extension to MP3), MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-2 AAC)

MPEG-4 contains:
MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-4 AAC - which differs from MPEG-2 AAC in # of profiles and bitstream formats and so on; from what I understand, the actual methodology for Low Complexity Profile, Main Profile, and RAW AAC are the same in both), and MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 ALS). The standard for the MP4 container also specifies that it can contain any of these formats above, or even AC3.

In terms of MPEG-4, these audio standards were not all ratified at the same time. MPEG-4 AAC was ratified at the same time as MPEG-4 itself, in 1998. ALS was ratified in 2005/2006. The same is true of the difference with Part 2 (MPEG-4 Visual) and Part 10 (H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding). Part 2 was ratified in 1998, Part 10 in 2003. Both are MPEG-4, but they are not all that related to one another, just as AAC and ALS aren't. Unlike Part 10 (H.264/AVC), which has a mostly* feature-complete set of encoding tools available, Part 2 is not anywhere near fully implemented for consumers - because Advanced Simple Profile dominated early, and since all the focus went into it, the other profiles (such as Main, Core, Studio, and so on...there's something like 21 profiles in total) were left out to dry. And then the focus shifted to H.264 in 2004/2005, which has a lot more standard industry implementations and more of a reason not to focus on just one profile within it.

*x264 and many consumer-level H.264 encoders don't support some of the higher colorspaces the standard itself defines, but in time they'll probably be added.