[Ben Waggoner]

What applications are you using to encode?

[Ben Waggoner]

AFAIK Compressor nor QuickTime don’t support interlaced H.264.

I’m not aware of Apple having ever released an interlaced interframe encoded QuickTime codec.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Was it really shot letterbox (with black matte at the top and bottom of the frame) or just 16:9? I’m not familiar with that camera, but most cameras always shoot full frame.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Huh? Expression Encoder absolutely does support QuickTime source files. Give it a shot – there’s a 30-day free trial.

[Ben Waggoner]

Arg, the blog post hasn’t propogated yet. Here’s the details”

I’ve had a number of requests for how to find me and Microsoft at IBC, so here’s the details.

First, Microsoft is in its own space – the Topaz Lounge. Beyond the codec team, we also have big presences from Silverlight, Mediaroom, and the Interactive Media Manager. We have a bar here with complementary drinks and coffee, and I hope something good will happen with those beer taps later.

The big news for my team is of course is the launch of our new VC-1 Encoder SDK. This is an improved VC-1 implementation for all markets (Windows Media, IPTV, HD disc, mobile, etcetera) that’ll be incorporated into third party products. Rhozet, Inlet, and Envivio are demoing support for it in their products here at the show. More details are available at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/mediaandentertainment/ibc2007/vc-1encodersdk.mspx

I’ll be presenting our new VC-1 Encoder at the booth on the below schedule. Feel free to drop by to say hello, and chat about anything digital media related.

Friday: 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Saturday: 1:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Sunday: 1:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Monday: 9:30 am – 1:30 pm
Tuesday: 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
We’re also going to be doing a daily hour-long presentation of the VC-1 Encoder program. That schedule is:

Friday: 4:30 pm
Saturday: 10:00 am (I’ll be giving this one personally)
Sunday: 4:30 pm
Monday: 10:00 am
Tuesday: 11:00 am

We’ve got a ton of great news – I wish I was going to have more time to blog before next week, but for those of you here in person, I’m glad to discuss it 1:1, and show you the impressive results. We’ve been blowing people away with our 720p @ 5 Mbps for IPTV demos.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

There aren’t any plans for a Mac version.

Of course, Mac encoding tools like Flip4Mac, Episode, and Sorenson Squeeze can encode Silverlight-compatible .WMV files. And since Expression Encoder can add the Silverlight player skins to an existing .WMV file, you could do all your encoding natively, and then add the interactivity and skinning via Expression Encoder in Parallels.

Expression Encdoer does support reading QuickTime source files, so it also works better with a Mac-workflow, even if the encoding gets done on Windows.

It’s got a 30-day trial. Check it out!

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

One thing to bear in mind is that H.264 encodes can be a lot more expensive to decode than equivalent VP6 or WMV files. While QuickTime exports a complexity-limited H.264 encode that leaves out the features that are slow to decode, this keeps its compression efficiency limited.

While H.264 as encoded by products like Episode that can do High Profile, multiple reference frames, CABAC entropy encoding, etcetera can be a lot more competitive for quality, you’ll need a lot more MIPS/pixel for decode.

Also, features like HE AAC for audio aren’t fully supported by QuickTIme (HE AAC @ 44.1 KHz gets played back by QuickTIme as 22.05). And for streaming, Flash will still only support the Flash servers, and won’t be able to connect to Darwin/QTSS, so existing streams using H.264 won’t be compatible.

The biggest news in this is that Adobe is cutting their dependance on On2 to provide professional-grade video encoding for their platform. But quality and interoperability with the QuickTime/MPEG-4 ecosystem isn’t as profound as initial reports suggested.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

My general go-to tool for more unusual MPEG-2 encodes is Rhozet Carbon. Most of that functionality is available in the much cheaper ProCoder.

You might want to check back with your client, though. Normally 50 Mbps MPEG-2 is HP@ML standard-def I-frame only 4:2:2. I’ve not heard of 50 Mbps long-GOP being used for HD archiving much, but you should get good quality at that bitrate.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

I honestly haven’t done much hands-on HDV work these days – I’m mainly coming from higher bitrate sources.

ProCoder uses the superior Canopus MPEG-2 encoder, while Squeeze uses Main Concept, but that shouldn’t be a big difference. Which version of Squeeze do you have? Versions before 4.5 had a poor quality scaler, which made resizing pretty ugly.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

That’d work.

2 MB in 53 seconds requires

(2 MB * 8000 Kb/MB)/53 sec = 301 Kbps

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html