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On2 Releases VP6 video codec
A reader writes:"On2 Technologies, the folks who brought you the open-source VP3 video codec (now managed by Theora.org), have released our latest codec, VP6. Highlights include hi-def support with no encoder restrictions, real-time encoding at full D1 resolution, and substantial performance & quality improvements over VP5. Best of all: no "patent pooling" restrictions or external licensing fees, a la MPEG-4."
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/xvid.html
I would really recommend reading this codec comparision by doom9:
t m
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-103-1.h
Doom9 shows us very nice screenshots from non-keyframes. The conclusion is still: XViD is the best codec around. I hope people understand that whatever other companies claim (e.g. "50% better compression") you should never underestimate what doom9 says: all codecs out there now are VERY similar. None of them is really outstanding.
The On guys compared VP6 to something called H.264, which I come to find out later is an official standard (newly released) for MPEG-4 encoding. It looked really damn good, almost as good as VP6 on the frames they chose.
I understand XviD's implementation of MPEG-4 is based on H.263.
So is anybody (including XviD) considering implementing it? I understand it isn't patent-encumbered. I could be wrong...
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Ffdshow is a filter for most mpeg4 codecs. Works with divx 4,5, xvid and other mpeg4 implementations. If all you do is playback, no codec required. Also if use alpha xvid codecs and it doesn't playback properly with ffdshow, you know that your vid isn't mpeg4 compliant. Btw, I capture/encode shows all the time in windows and would like to do this in linux, but it seems really lacking. First off, avisynth is an indispensable tool for dealing with video. What first attracted me to it was the best ivtc plugin by Donald Graft. This processes telecined sources back to their original film frame rate which I use on toons/film sources.
:) ).
But the versatility goes way beyond that. Here's an animated menu I made for batman tas for a vcd I was working on, which btw I authored with videopack 5 to include animated menus, galleries with audio and chapter selection (I love pimpin that
Also worth mentioning is Tmpgenc, probably the best mpeg 1 encoder, which is free. And not to shabby mpeg2 encoding. Also of course is virtualdub, which has come in handy on many occasions.
So where are the comparable linux equivalents? I couldn't find them. I'd love to see a write up on video encoding on linux, maybe I'll do one myself.
Yep! Was very excited by their claims, immediately tried to download the player, which to my horror turns out to be only available for windows. Do we really need another windows only codec? Or is the idea that say, Apple will intedgrate this codec into quicktime?
At the moment though, if you wanna use this codec then you have to dance the dirty with Micro$oft, which is most certainally not free, or without restrictions. We use heaps of video on our sites, streaming, downloadable etc. and our primary concern is cross-compatibility.
So, nil point for ON2.
I did not see that listed in Doom9's comparison. It seems the MPlayer developers prefer it over Xvid. I've always used FFMPEG MPEG4 with fantastic results.
Since there's no download, nor - if history serves as a guide - will there be a download to test, I think this is fairly irrelevant.
Since I've never come across On2-encoded video I suspect that this codec isn't worth the hassle.
Another poster pointed out that this codec isn't free, and is just as commercial and proprietry as Real and WMV. They're wrong - it's actually much worse than those in terms of cost and lock-in.
Now, I don't know what the terms are for VP6, but our company investigated implementing VP5 a while back. To encode in realtime, you needed dedicated hardware ($15,000 per license). To encode offline, you need software at $10,000 per license. This is licensed on a rolling annual basis - i.e. $10,000 a year. You then additionally need to license the TrueCast on-demand server to distribute content, which is similarly priced.
I'd expect VP6 to be similarly priced to VP5. You'd better be encoding an awful lot of video and saving an awful lot of bandwidth to make it worth your while.
OTOH, the quality of VP5 was extremely good for a given bandwidth (much better than xvid).
Ffdshow is an easy replacement, as it's based on a Linux project, ffmpeg.
The extent of my encoding comes from recording TV or VHS tapes and throwing a few filters at them for cleanup and encoding. So I've never had a chance to become familiar with what features avisynth has. Some people over at Doom9's Linux forum have mentioned getting Avisynth running in wine.
Tmpgenc should be a pretty easy replacement. Transcode seems to be a favorite for mpeg2 encoding. There was a problem when I first started using Linux, which slowed mpeg encoding to a snails pace for a while, and I've never found a chance to get back to see how it works when fully functional. A lot of peoplel swear by it though, and it's feature list is pretty impressive. Avidemux, as well as quite a few other programs also provide mpeg1 encoding, I think through ffmpeg.
Everything in VirtualDub/VirtualDubMod except video capture should work fine under wine and that's what I used for quite a while before Avidemux appeared. The design and functionality are very similar to virtualdub, and it also includes encoding to mpeg1.
One of the two best media players for Linux, Mplayer, should be noted to have better support for matroska, in cvs, than is available for the format under windows. And these tools can be used for creation and editing of matroska files.
For capture from a tv card, I use nuppelvideo, and then use avidemux to edit and convert to a smaller format.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Actually, H.264 is manifestly NOT patent free. There may be a license-fee free baseline profile for it, but it's certain that the higher profiles will have some kind of license fee ala the current MPEG-4 codec.
Still, that certainly doesn't kill a format in every case. Every DVD player pays $2.50 to MPEG-LA.
My video compression blog
Right up to the point where they download their first XviD video file.
There are no XviD video files. Currently most video files are:
AVI Container
MPEG-4 Video Track
MP3 Audio Track
The difference between DivX files and XviD files is the FourCC ("Four Character Code" or something).
DivX and XviD are just differernt encoders, not different formats. Just like LAME and FhG MP3Enc are differend encoders, but produce the same format.
If you change the FourCC from ''XVID'' to ''DIVX'' the normal DivX codec should be able to play it (I've never heard of any problems).
That's why I think, the people who encoded the video file should change the FourCC to DIVX, try to decode the file using DivX, and (if it works without problems) release the file with the DIVX FourCC.
This way you can reach a wider audiance.