Preferred Video format In a Front End

[Howard_Casto]

Both >p< and myself are pondering a conversion of video formats.  The main reason that we need to is because, well, real video sucks.  The main problem that we face is compatability, loading speed, and most importantly filesize (the files have to be hosted afterall).

[Banacek]

Both >p< and myself are pondering a conversion of video formats.  The main reason that we need to is because, well, real video sucks.  The main problem that we face is compatability, loading speed, and most importantly filesize (the files have to be hosted afterall).

How about DivX? Would that be good? Good quality for a smaller size..

http://www.divx.com

[Howard_Casto]

Divx is an avi "hack" and thus it's very hard to integrate into a directx/opengl environment reliably.  

A good suggestion though

[eightbit]

I'd change my vote to Divx if it was an option but it looks like you can't or don't want to use Divx so I made a second choice.

[Dave Dribin]

Voted for MPEG2, though I think MPEG4 would be decent as well.  As long as it'll work with something like FFmpeg:

http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/

-Dave

[)p(]

Because both lazarus and my fe will use them as textures. I probably will re -encode them width power of 2 width and heights so no resizing has to be done before they go into the 3d pipeline. I will probably uses 256x256.  As far as I know that excludes mpeg2. So my vote will go to mpeg or mpeg4.

Size is the problem though with all these formats, when compared to realmedia they are huge... Just for fun I converted all video's to mpeg1 today using a flexible bitrate with a quality setting of 90% which is barely acceptable...the result was about 5x the size of the realmedia files...

peter

[Silverwind]

I prefer mpeg2 also.  That is basically the same as what's on DVD's..

[Howard_Casto]

In directx I can use any version of mpeg, avi and some other odd formats, so it won't be too hard to convert them all to a format that both >p< and myself can use.  As he said, our main issue is bandwidth.  Right now there are about 400 or so of these real video previews available and the sever they are on is sometimes crashing because of load.  At best the files are going to be twice as big, so perhaps what we need is some generous soul with some server space.  

[Dave Dribin]

Because both lazarus and my fe will use them as textures. I probably will re -encode them width power of 2 width and heights so no resizing has to be done before they go into the 3d pipeline. I will probably uses 256x256.  As far as I know that excludes mpeg2. So my vote will go to mpeg or mpeg4.

Why does 256x256 exlucde mpeg2?

Size is the problem though with all these formats, when compared to realmedia they are huge... Just for fun I converted all video's to mpeg1 today using a flexible bitrate with a quality setting of 90% which is barely acceptable...the result was about 5x the size of the realmedia files...

mpeg2/4  should be much better than mpeg1,  no?  If you can, could you post the sizes of a few RM movies converted to mpeg2 then to mpeg4?  Then at least we have some hard data to make an informed decision.

-Dave

[Howard_Casto]

Well the compression ratio is about the same.... mpeg4 might save about 50k or so on the average sized clip but the main difference is the quality and loading time.  Mpeg4 looks great at fairly high compression while mpeg3 looks horrible at the same compression.  With that being said, the better the compression the longer the loading time and the more processor dependant the playback is.  Mpeg and mpeg2 are almost instant in their loading while mpeg4 takes a sec or two.  Also you need a powerful pc to playback mpeg4 and have other things going on at once.  (By powerful I mean around a gig or more processor.)  

These aren't exact benchmarks though, just what I've found by playing around with them.  

Perhaps someone could reccomend a good video editing site with tips for best compression and a side-by-side comparison?

Believe it or not, in a former life I used to do this stuff semi-professionally.  But at the time real video was the only thing worth doing and mpeg2 was the next big thing, so I'm definately out of the loop at this point.  

[Lilwolf]

btw, you might consider somethign with a good license (mpeg1 or mpg (png's motion standard... don't know how good it is).

also something easy.  If I could make 50 png files with mame.  Then have them automatically (or with a button press) change them all into a video that would be way way cool.  mpgs (I think) will have the authoring librarys free and might take a series of png files.  Might be worth a look.

[Howard_Casto]

Well that would be great if we didn't want sound....

Also with the fps and length of the videos (we capture the full attract mode sequence)  it would be about 1000 png files per clip.  While this might give for a better picture it would be extremely time-consuming, and that's something neither peter nor myself have to spare as I'm sure you understand.  

[Dave Dribin]

btw, you might consider somethign with a good license (mpeg1 or mpg (png's motion standard... don't know how good it is).

You mean MNG?  AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMENU supports MNG for animated screen shots.  It is lossless, though, which results in larger files.  But MNGs are pretty easy to deal with from a programming point of view.

-Dave

[)p(]

Mpeg and mpeg2 are almost instant in their loading while mpeg4 takes a sec or two.  Also you need a powerful pc to playback mpeg4 and have other things going on at once.  (By powerful I mean around a gig or more processor.)  

I think loading time is importent for a good experience and as the filesize of all mpeg version are more or less the same i think I know woyuld prefer mpeg or mpeg2 over mpeg4. I have not yet and encoded that will encode mpeg2 in special resolutions.

I personally don't like mng's because I want a format that has sound support

peter