I was wondering if there are any new video formats in the works that offer a higher compression with approximately vcd/vhs quality.

I understand mpeg-4 is intended for extremely low bitrate transfers, so I assume that would be very low quality.. anyone familiar with it?

Thanks Mike

-- Mike K (noemail@please.com), August 03, 2000

Answers

Mpeg-4 is low bitrate and very acceptable quality. Currently it is one of the best quality/bit ratios avalible. Bitrates less that VCD can be used for full 640x480x128mp3 multimedia streams that look very good with little artifacting. Mpeg-4 also goes by the following names Divx, SrM, new ASF's are almost all mpeg-4 as well.

Problems with mpeg-4.

1) MS's propriatary interpertation. We have no way of knowing if this is true to the standard, or if they are attempting to embrace and extend the format.

2) Encoder will drop frames to get more bits. Very high motion scenes can stutter, and there is nothing that can be done.

3) Lack of high quailty tools for encoding.

4) Lact of good cross platform support ( I know divx is availible on many platforms, but really only the mac one is working right ). This relates directly back to point 1.

5) MS's achieving this low bitrate... possibly by cheating. I have read techical papers by MS employees that state there is no reason to encode at full rez, but that they can do a lossless resampling to sqr (2) of both directions. This means that they are only encoding half the pixels, of course they can achieve better compression like that.

6) Compatibility with NON PC playforms. You cannot play back these formats in aly type of standalone player.

If you don't mind the above problems, it's a good format that I myself have used. Since Tmpeg has gotten better I have switched to SVCD encoding for most of my work. consitering the proce of CD's these days it's really not worth it to try and skimp on my encodings. 45 minutes is all I need and that fits like a charm on SVCD.

Happy encoding

-Eric

-- Eric (nobody@nowhere.com), August 03, 2000.

i agree with Eric. the mp[eg 4 codes made my mpeg clips (mpeg to avi using virtual dub) slightly bribky with more artifacts, but not bad. The divx codec made my clips look god aweful and how people claim this gives good quality is beyond me. I use the intel indio 5.04 (set to 100 for compression quality and set to quick scalabiltiy). And my avis look great with virtually no artifacts to be seen.

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 05, 2000.

BUTY i just tested a dvd clip using the mpeg 4. intel 5.04 and a newer one called intel 1236. intel indio 5.04 still gave the best pick, mpeg 1236 second and mpeg4 third. But all were very close in quality unlike my last test. However the mpeg 4 was half the size of the other two which was cool. But if you do decide to convert this to vcd the file size still would be a normal file size. But yes it is cool to fit movies on one cd instead of two

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 05, 2000.