[tkmd]

I hear that this new codec (included in tiger) will really be an improvement in movie compression. My question is that I would like to back some DVD's that I have so I dont have to lug around DVDs, and the application handbrake has the option to encode in h264- but it is slow because of lack of optimizaton in the codec itself. My question if I encode the DVD in this format and optimizations continue on h264, will I have to re-encode later because my version of h264 is "old" or will the optimizations only affect the encoding speed and playback of the video?

[bmedina]

As long as the encoder is standards-compliant, you shouldn't have any problems. But it's probably not worth the effort at this point. H.264 encoders aren't very good or optimized yet, so I would just use MPEG4 SP or ASP.

But that's just me.