video compression questions

TomTomTom · 21 Aug 2006 at 16:58

I have a pile of uncompressed video that I want to archive keeping the best possible quality while getting reasonable file size. I'm not very well versed on the features of each codec.

So far I've been using AVS Video Converter which is a very good app and makes some default options choices that has helped me familiarize a little.

The choice I made so far is MS MPEG4 v2 with MP3 128 bit for audio. This makes larger files than XVid or DivX which I'm assuming is because it does not lose as much quality in the compression. Is this the best choice considering my preferences as stated in the first line in this msg? Is there something better? I don't mind a file size of up to 2x the previous... if the quality is significantly better...

EDIT: oh and I prefer a codec that WinMedia player will play by default without plugins or whatever.

Also with the MS MPEG4 v2, I left the codec's settings at the default: the slider being 75% on the side of "crispness" and data rate at "3000 kb/s" (which doesn't sound right). But if I just, for example, put the slider 100% toward "crispness" is this like getting "more toward lossless"?

Anyway once I make the final choice on the video codec, I will erase all the original raw video, so I want to be sure.

Thanks for help!

Seft · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:19

The best codec right now is X264 (H.264 codecs generally being the best). You will need a discrete codec for it (but this is the case for XviD anyway). I would guess that the MS Mpeg4 codec is far inferior to XviD (which is generally regarded as being better than DivX).

On another note, 128kbps mp3 is far too low for archiving. I'd recommend AC3 or AAC, or maybe 224 vbr MP3.

joeyjojo · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:21

Not my area of expertise, but here goes anyway.

Mpeg4 is ok. If going with mpeg use ac3 audio. I'd also try a high bitrate xvid. Should be better compression, with similar quality if the bitrate is high enough.

There's a lot of info here and here. That site is great.

TomTomTom · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:27

Thanks for reply. Well I noticed with XVid that it's resulting video bitrate is far lower... I've always assumed that XVid is favored because it has a nice balance of quality/size for video shared on the internet... for things like "Snakes on a Plane"

... but in my case broadcasting or sharing bandwidth is not an issue... just not completely clogging my HD.

But is there some other magic behind XVid that makes the lower bitrate irrelevant?

I'll have a look at the other codecs you suggested.

Thanks!

TomTomTom · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:31

joeyjojo said:
Not my area of expertise, but here goes anyway.

Mpeg4 is ok. If going with mpeg use ac3 audio. I'd also try a high bitrate xvid. Should be better compression, with similar quality if the bitrate is high enough.

There's a lot of info here and here. That site is great.

I'll review again the XVid and Mpeg4 options. Is there some interleaving issue with the choice of audio? AVS just by default had "mpeg layer 3" for the audio on mpeg4 v2.

The stuff on lossless looks interesting.

Thanks!

Seft · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:34

If you haven't already, check out www.doom9.org, particularly the excellent forums.

TomTomTom · 21 Aug 2006 at 17:58

Seft said:
If you haven't already, check out www.doom9.org, particularly the excellent forums.

Whoa... looks like the right forum for codecs. There's just too many

But ok I should have this figured out soon.

Thanks!

probedb · 22 Aug 2006 at 14:04

I don't think the MS MPEG4 codecs are updated anymore either. Xvid and Divx are generall always being updated...even if its just optimising the code to make it faster and stuff like that

I use xvid and it's great.

Sirrel Squirrel · 23 Aug 2006 at 09:31

Doesn't MPEG 4 use AVC codec, which is actually h.264?

I've encoded stuff as MP4 and when you look at the codec info it shows as h.264, also uses aac audio.

Seft · 23 Aug 2006 at 09:41

Sirrel Squirrel said:
Doesn't MPEG 4 use AVC codec, which is actually h.264?

I've encoded stuff as MP4 and when you look at the codec info it shows as h.264, also uses aac audio.

AVC/h.264 uses an extended part of the MPEG4 standard (Part 10), so whilst it's technically MPEG4, it isn't what most people generally regard as MPEG4 (Part 2 - XviD DivX).

MP4 is actually just a container (although part 14 of the mpeg4 standard), and could have any sort of video or audio embedded.

Sirrel Squirrel · 23 Aug 2006 at 09:48

Ah right, its weird I've just encoded some game footage with the AVC codec at 3000kb/s and it has loads of jaggies. But if I encode it using Quicktime and it's h.264 codec at the exact same bit rate their aren't any jaggies at all.

Surely I should get the same result from both as it's basically the same codec?