h.264

savemejc · Post by **savemejc** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:12 am

what is so especial about this codec? and can anyone tell me what codecs work best with adobe premiere???

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:22 am

h.264 (the most popular [free] implementaion of this is x.264) is the "next generation" of codec if you will.

it can achieve much better compression ratios compared to xvid (smaller files and better quality) and is used for blu-ray and hd-dvd disks.

as far as editable codecs, this is pretty much all you need to know (read the next two pages as well)

AthenAltena · Post by **AthenAltena** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:08 pm

I've switched to h.264 as my standard for output, looks great and the videos aren't absolutely huge. If you have the processing power to do it I'd highly recommend it.

CrackTheSky · Post by **CrackTheSky** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:12 am

The only problem with it is lots of lower-end computers can't play back x264-compressed videos too smoothly, or even at all in some cases. There's a whole thread debating the upsides and downsides of the codec.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 7:54 pm

CrackTheSky wrote:The only problem with it is lots of lower-end computers can't play back x264-compressed videos too smoothly, or even at all in some cases. There's a whole thread debating the upsides and downsides of the codec.

The thing to point out though, is what decoder is being used. I can max out x264's settings and still play the result on my old eMachines T1110 (that's 1GHz Celeron, 256 MB RAM, 100MHz front-side bus - it's from 2001), but that's largely because I use CoreAVC as my decoder rather than ffdshow or libavcodec in general. The only constraint is what the bitrate is. Even CoreAVC can't handle stuff over about 2500kbps on my machine, but that kind of bitrate is serious overkill for SD resolutions unless there's a crapload of effects.

savemejc · Post by **savemejc** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:37 am

interesting you fools actually seem to know what your talking about. well ill have to do some more research but this codec seems promising....

savemejc · Post by **savemejc** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:39 am

note when i say fools i mean people not an actual fool.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:36 am

savemejc wrote:note when i say fools i mean people not an actual fool.

You've been watching I Pity the Fool or too many A-Team reruns...

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 2:19 pm

I skimmed through the other thread and didn't find any mention of encoding methods. Am I to assume i can use virtualdub to encode (with the proper files installed, of course) or is there a preferred alternative GUI floating around?

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 2:58 pm

BasharOfTheAges wrote:I skimmed through the other thread and didn't find any mention of encoding methods. Am I to assume i can use virtualdub to encode (with the proper files installed, of course) or is there a preferred alternative GUI floating around?

Which other thread?

As for using VDub to encode, it's strongly recommended not to, because many of the features that allow H.264 to achieve the much smaller sizes that it can don't like to play nice with VFW (which VDub uses to encode), even moreso than the B-frames in XviD or DivX - especially because those two are limited to 2-3 at the most, and H.264 allows up to 16, and the B-frame pyramid, and mixed references, which make for a trifecta encoding nightmare when using H.264 inside of AVI or VFW-based MKV (which is why most H.264 releases are either in MP4 or proper ISO-based MKV - both of those handle those features the way that they're supposed to).

Basically, as far as GUIs go, there are several, including (remembering strictly off the top of my head here), StaxRip, RealAnime, a GTK-based one for X11, and MeGUI. Out of those, I've only ever used MeGUI to any extent. And of course there's the command-line interface. New versions of MeGUI allow you to update without having to keep track of everything it depends on, which is nice.

MeGUI can be gotten here (along with current ffdshow, Haali's Media Splitter, and Media Player Classic builds):
http://x264.nl/