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You are here: MacNN Forums > Our Archives > General Archives > Digital Video & Audio Archives > Anyone getting good results with Apple's mpeg4 codec?

 
Anyone getting good results with Apple's mpeg4 codec?
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wvx
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Join Date: Feb 2002
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Jun 14, 2002, 08:35 AM
 
I have worked this sucker over and over with all types of video and it's not coming close to VP3 and Sorenson3 usually looks better too.

Does anyone have any tips or is this what I should expect?

I love the quality of VP3 but am more inclined to compress with a standard format for long-term compatibilitiy.
     
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Join Date: Jan 2001
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Jun 14, 2002, 12:17 PM
 
I have had pretty good success with it so far. I am compressing videos for download (originally DV footage) and have been able to get very watchable clips at about... 1.5 megs/min at 320x213 (preserves the original ration). 15fps and limited video data rate to 20k/s and audio to 56k/s. video at 30k/s came out good too at the same resolution, came out at about 2 megs/min.

Also fooled around with larger settings (around 520x346) at 15fps, video and audio at 80k/s. was about 5 megs/min.

All in all, i got a 3:40 dv movie down to 6 megs, with very watchable audio and video. a corresponding quality version done in sorenson 3 was about 20 megs.
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wvx
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Jun 14, 2002, 02:49 PM
 
What do you set your keyframe to?

thanks
     
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Jun 14, 2002, 03:50 PM
 
10, but i didn't notice any real difference from 15.
AIM: kidtexas1
     
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Jun 14, 2002, 06:04 PM
 
Could you post a small smale of your results?

One thing I have noticed about divx (an MPEG4 based codec) is that it relys heavly on postfilters to remove artifact appearance and make the colors look good. I think apple may not have the post-filters all done / wont have ver good / many of them.

hehe thats "my 2¢"

-Owl
     
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Jun 15, 2002, 12:23 AM
 
sure. i will say that there are artifacts, etc., but for the quality of the sound and length, i was impressed.

here you go
the first is at the small setting described above. the second is at the larger setting. i put up 2 diff clips - if you want the same clip, i can do that too.
<a href="http://media.chookindustries.com/small.mov" target="_blank">sample 1</a> <a href="http://media.chookindustries.com/small2.mov" target="_blank">sample 2</a>
AIM: kidtexas1
     
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Jun 15, 2002, 11:45 AM
 
new here with new g4, i'm trying to learn about video so i'm just hanging out in the background watching the discussions but when i tried to watch above clips i was told quicktime was missing a component. probably a green question but any idea what i'm missing?

sorry to get anyones hopes up that a new post with relevant info might have been here.
     
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Jun 15, 2002, 01:34 PM
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Originally posted by bochu:
<strong>new here with new g4, i'm trying to learn about video so i'm just hanging out in the background watching the discussions but when i tried to watch above clips i was told quicktime was missing a component. probably a green question but any idea what i'm missing?

sorry to get anyones hopes up that a new post with relevant info might have been here.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">You need Quicktime 6 Public Preview to watch those clips. They're encoded in MPEG-4 which is included in QT 6. You can download it <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/preview/quicktime6/" target="_blank">here</a>
Mac mini 1.25/512/40
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Aug 2001
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Jun 15, 2002, 01:35 PM
 
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Originally posted by bochu:
<strong>new here with new g4, i'm trying to learn about video so i'm just hanging out in the background watching the discussions but when i tried to watch above clips i was told quicktime was missing a component. probably a green question but any idea what i'm missing?

sorry to get anyones hopes up that a new post with relevant info might have been here.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Do you have QT 6?
     
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Jun 16, 2002, 04:09 PM
 
MPEG4 is inferior to Sorenson 3 Pro.
When I encode movies with Sorenson 3 Pro with Variable Bit Rate (VBR) I get crystal clear movies even at low datarates.

When I make "live streams" or on "demand streams" and stream them through the Quicktime Streaming Server, I get better results with MPEG4. it seams that MPEG4 is better suited for streaming.

Maybe the problem with MPEG4 is that it doesn't have any VBR capabilities because it's more targeted for streaming. VBR makes a big difference.

The best codec for encoding is still DivX. The problem is that there are no real DivX encoders for the Mac out there, and that is strange when there are so many open source projects like FFMPEG which can encode to DivX and to other formats.

Porting FFMPEG to MacOSX should be easy, I tried porting it to MacOSX myself and I managed to compile its libraries but got errors when it came to the ffmpeg application .
I'm no programmer but somebody who is shouldn't have any big problems compiling this. It should also be possible to make it as a component in Quicktime...
     
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Jun 18, 2002, 12:29 PM
 
Someone ported the CLI version to OS X last week some time. I saw it in the OS X software forum I think. I could only get it to read MPEG (1/2) files, though, so I can't use it for my TV captures. Also, I could only get it to read demuxed streams, which means I have to re-mux the a/v after encoding, and I don't know how to do that with AVI's on a mac...but the encodes themselves were quite good, I'm just not going to spend time encoding something that is only viewable on mac (divx.mov, until 3ivx d4 for windows is released)

here's the link:
<a href="http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=37;t=003727#000000" target="_blank">http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=37;t=003727#000000</a>
blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer extortion. the X makes it sound cool
     
 
   
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