New, FAST! MPEG-4 Codec by Sigma Designs!

[jpiranha]

Has anyone tried it yet? As far as speed is concerned, a test encoding gave me ~25 fps w/ DIVX 5.02, while that new codec gave me >40 fps !!!!!!!!! (on an athlon 1 GHz)
This is an incredible speed difference.

First visual comparisons showed no major difference in quality...

anyway, the URL is:

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/MPEG4_video_encoder.htm

the codec is free (yes, like some other codec we all used to love), but you have to sign up w/ your name and your email address (but they don't check it, so entering any address will do it).

Well, the next DVD I get my hands on will be put to the test.
Let's see how well the codec combines w/ AC3-sound.

j

[khp]

Re: New, FAST! MPEG-4 Codec by Sigma Designs!

Originally posted by jpiranha
Has anyone tried it yet? As far as speed is concerned, a test encoding gave me ~25 fps w/ DIVX 5.02, while that new codec gave me >40 fps !!!!!!!!! (on an athlon 1 GHz)

Did you use the same settings in both codecs ?, if you did the only resonable explanation would be that the SD RM codec uses less motion search. Which of course means worse quality.

I tried it a while ago, and was not impressed.
- no two-pass encoding
- no support for GMC or Q-pel
- no vfw decoder
- slight bug in DirectShow decoder (try scrolling through the video)

I don't understand why people are so hyped about encoding speed. Personally I would be happy to spend 3 times as much time on encoding, for the slightest increase in quality.

[xviddivxoggmp3]

i agree

if it was 2 days but dvd quality with no glitches i would wait.
quality is everything.

[jpiranha]

yeah, well, i got a little carried away because of the speed difference.

of course visual quality is really important! Whereas you can perfectly well live w/o QPel, because it might even introduce artifacts (i've never seen any positive difference so far).

But i like the one-pass VBR setting where you can specify an approximate bitrate. just as with MP3s, this should give a better image quality. and ok, two-pass is better, but at what price?

besides, they (sigma d.) want to sell their x-card. that's why they're giving away this codec, because obviously it has to work perfectly well w/ the x-card, while the divx-pro-functions like qpel don't. and why would anybody use the SD-codec if it was worse than divx? so, if they're somehow intelligent, this codec should better be working quite well.

ehh, whatever, next DVD will prove it.

j

pd: my last message looked like a spam mail
sorry 'bout that, i was a little tired

[STFUproductions]

In my opinion, the quality comes after the speed, especially when you edit digital video, and you want to use a compressed format. I choose whatever codec is the fastest because I don't want my editing time bogged down by rendering video. So I will try the sigma codec and see if it is better than the mpeg4 codec I currently use (MS MPEG-4 V3)

[khp]

Mpeg-4 is a high compression format, it's not intended for digital video editing. Using a mpeg-4 based codec for editing is a very bad idear, because you loose quality in every recompression. For editing, a lossless codec is much better, not only are they lossless, but they are also much faster than any mpeg-4 based codec.

If you really really want divx5 to be fast, just set 'Quality/preformance' to fastest. Using the slowest setting which is the default I can get about 40 fps, with the fastest setting I can get about 60 fps.

[STFUproductions]

I just did a little test of encoding time, quality, and workability with various codecs. I took a certain uncompressed video file, and I rendered it with various codecs, and here are the results:


CODEC ENCODE TIME (m:s) USEABILITY*

MS MPEG-4 V3 2:45 fast
DivX 5.0 2:38 slow
DivX 3.2 2:45 fast
Sigma RM 2:45 VERY SLOW
Xvid 3:00 VERY SLOW

*Useability is just the overall speed and performance while working with a file in the compressed format.

As far as quality goes, I noticed no difference, but I still am going to use the MS MPEG-4 V3 codec because it works the best overall, and anyone with windows media player 7 has rthe codec already on their computer so they don't have to go to a special site to download the codec to play the file they want. (btw DivX 3.x is the MS MPEG-4 V3 codec, just people without the divx codec need to download it, while they already have the ms codec)

If you have any questions about my tests or anything, just post a message.

[STFUproductions]

I need to use high compression for my editing because i transfer the files from place to place via CD