1-hour Fireworks filmed with HC1 DivX

I just received my HC1 sony HD camera.. Here so I put up 57 minutes of Fireworks on my website:

http://geneva2005.fireworks.videocoverage.org

http://server.charbax.com/videocoverage.org/logo1.jpg

Video encoded with DivX6, Insane mode, psychovisual shaping, 2808kbit/s average 1-pass, 1280x720 resolution, 25 frames per second de-interlaced.

Audio encoded with Mp3 Lame, CBR, stereo, 44khz, 192kbit/s.

You can download clips directly, but the complete 57 minute video is up on my fast BitTorrent SEED server. So you need to install a BitTorrent client on your computer to connect and start the downloading and uploading over peer-to-peer of that file.

What do you think?

I think a 70K download isn't a fast seed.

Yeah well I got 1mbit/s main seed, and adding two other smaller seeds to have 2mbit/s at least as constant seeds for my VideoCoverage.org HD video channel.

I'm looking for which suggestions I can give people who might be interested in subscribing to receive automatically and thus help seeding new HD videos.

I got one rss feed at http://server.charbax.com/bm/rss.php?i=2

Then I've seen a program currently only for Mac that looks promizing, they say Windows and linux versions will come within the next few weeks at http://participatoryculture.org and there seems to be a program at http://videora.com for that also but it doesn't look as cool as DTV.

Maybe simply Azeureus can do rss channel subscription for auto-download of new content, I have to check it out.

Of the video quality, I am sorry I am so close to the fireworks I often pann quite violently, specially in the first 15 minutes where some people think it's funny to stand infront of the camera. I'm not certain the camera settings were right, I filmed this the second day that I had my HC1E..

For the DivX encoding, maybe 2808kbit/s is not enough, next videos I make I'll try to add at least 500kbit/s for 3308kbit/s to see if that takes some of the blockiness out, but I guess the blocks specially appear because it's night time, and fireworks are violent sometimes for a codec like DivX, which is just Mpeg-4 and not H264 yet.

I expect my videos to be compatible with the new HD DivX and wmv players by KiSS-Technology and those Singapoureans or Taiwaneese companies. And I'm looking forward to see how it looks on a HD screen.. Cause all I've got is a 7 year old fuzzy 17" CRT, the small 2,8" low resolution LCD on the camera and my standard analogue definition TV. Maybe I'll take my new camera down to the electronics store one of theese days just to look at the quality on the 720p and 1024x768 screens.. But none seem to have firewire input here in Switzerland, and there are absolutely no 1080p TVs nor projectors, just component stuff for now. I'm planning to get the next generation HD projector, maybe the AE800 by Panasonic or whatever will be available I hope quite soon.

Awesome dude. I requested fireworks a while ago and you provide. I just lost a 3GB, unmetered server tonight. If not, I would have put this on it.

Yeah, shame about the compression. I'm guessing you'd need around 4000 - 5000 kbit/s to really see the HDR-HC1 camera shine. Of course this would make the video size huge though. Thanks for sharing your video - much appreciated :)

with divx5, it used to take me at least 6000kbps at HD settings (1280x720p from a 1440x1088i source) to get minimal blocking. 8000kbps had no blocking at all, but proved to be rather pointless, as the whole point with divx is to minimise file size at minimal cost in PQ.

4000kbps (and anything below) turned out to be very blocky.

I'd love to try divx6 though... can you use it with virtualdub yet?

In any case, try encoding using H.264 (Nero Digital comes to mind) you'll be very pleased (mostly) with the results :D

Yes I encode to DivX6 from the 1080i Mpeg-2 file using VirtualDubMod. DivX6 has an Insane encoding mode that goes at something like 2 frames per second encoding on my 2,4ghz.. I will try some 4mbit/s bitrate I hope it will look good for well lit day-time video at http://lausanne2005.beachvolley.videocoverage.org/ The current short sample that is there is also 2808kbit/s.

Okay I'm thinking to try H264, but read in forums that it's very slow to encode and requires a faster computer to playback.. And is for now less compatible with HD DivX wmv DVD players, but a whole bunch of new HD DivX wmv players are supposed to come very soon which support h264.. I need to test that codec.. I think also that the next version of DivX will use h264.

Your HD video is horrible. Totally newbie badmaked.
Divx6 for HD!?

1. First of all Divx6 better than Divx5 ONLY for low bitrates.
2. Did you apply psymode shape for HD material? Divx Psy is pretty useless for HD . It hurt quality much.
2.a. Psy mode is bugy as hell in Divx6
3. If you want to encode your HD to MPEG-4 use Xvid 1.1. Now it's best MPEG-4 codec. Try to encode with this fresh Xvid 1.1 beta 2 + some improvements on quality version. It´s very stable. http://www.geocities.com/y0ngc/xvid20050817.zip With Xvid HD video will be more sharp not blur as divx.
4. WMV9 has a higher complexity than Divx. Divx has a higher complexity than Xvid. that's why Xvid 1280x720 is easy to playback on videolan player. While in quality terms Xvid is better than Divx6 and WMV9.

5. You can give a try to another good codec like Nero H.264. Only problem that you can get it requieres a good proccessor like 3 GHZ for playback HD staff.

6. You won't lose a DivxHD hardware compabilty with Xvid. Just disable Qpel, GMC, packed bitsream, custom matrix. Use only H.263 matrix.

If you need some help how to encode to Xvid with high quality ask some people or at least ask me. :)

In fact, Divx won't be a H.264 codec at least untill 2008. Divx has a lisence agreements with fabrics of hardware player who supported MPEG-4 ASP. Unfortunatelly Divx will die next years because it's has no alternative. There is a new standart for HD-DVD H.264 and Divx even doesn't start to develop their h.264 codec. They can nothing to do comparing with a Nero H.264 and great quality opensource x264.

I think the blocks in my initial fireworks video are because I just used 2808 kbit/s.

I haven't heard that DivX 6 should be any worse than DivX 5.. Rather the opposite, quality between version 5 and 6 has improved, together with an Insane encoding mode..

I will experiment with XviD, I don't have anything against XviD.. it's built on OpenDivX code, and that's fine.

I just also think it can be a good thing that there is a company called DivX Networks, that receives a few millions of dollars each year from investors, so at DivX they can have some coders working dedicated full time on developing a reliable alternative to windows media codec from the Big evil Bill Gates. DivX works on stuff like implementing DRM and ultimately legal Video-On-Demand.. That is usefull so that some of the content providers can choose DivX instead of windows media.

The licensing of DivX is no different than XviD. If you use for non-commercial stuff it's free, but if you do some commercial stuff then you have to pay the Mpeg-4 license to Mpeg Consortium, no matter if you are using DivX or XviD.

Okay I will try to stop using psy mode for a bit, at least to improve my encoding speed, cause theese encodings I make at 1280x720 Insane mode with DivX, with de-interlacing and resizing filters of VirtualDubMod go only at less than 2 frames per second.

I'm sure DivX are working on DivX 7 with h264.. They simply have to, cause everybody else are. Windows are making VC1 codec, Nero have theirs, Apple are making Quicktime 7.. They are all starting to try and use h264.

My audience is people with computer screens mostly, also a little bit the kind of people who are looking for content for their newly bought HD Mpeg-4 player. Those HD players will soon support h264, but they don't yet..So because of that, and while there isn't some faster h264 decoder software somehow, I might wait just a bit before releasing h264 videos.

Anyways, thanks for your input! And check back tomorrow if you want on my site http://lausanne2005.beachvolley.videocoverage.org - I will post some beachvolley matches that I filmed with my HD camera. Now I put 4mbit/s instead of 3mbit/s, so it will make less blocks.

2808 kbps for 1280x720 even for H.264 it's a hard task. Your video is a high motion.
Even with a extremely pro high quality settings bitrate for H.264 should be at least 3200-3500 kbps and 4000-5500 kbps for Xvid.

DivX is evil (because it's private company and develops closed source), but Windows is much much more evil. So I don't think it would be a good idea to try to kill DivX by saying XviD is better. I prefer saying DivX and XviD are better than Windows. Let's kill windows.

You use a virtual dub filter deinterlace and resize. They are much slower and aren't better if you will do that via avisynth.


Talking about Divx7. That's ok. In 2008 divx will realese their h.264 codec. But who will care about it when already now Nero digital is preparing to produce a hardware h.264 player.
DivxNetWorks has choosed to stay with old fashioned MPEG-4 ASP from now untill 2008. During this time many others company will implement their H.264 hardware players.

No no no no. It's not about open source and bla bla bla commercial evil. I don't see evilness in commercial codec like Nero H.264 because they caring a lot about a quality and compability,satbility.
Divx has droped develompent of their codec since Divx 5.1.1 december 2003 . Divx6 is better because is 2-3 times slower than Divx 5.1.1
Just give a try to divx 5.1.1 and compare. There is no difference.

Why do you think DivX is not going to release h264 version of DivX before 2008?

I meat Gej the inventor of DivX at CeBIT 2004, and he told me DivX is the best codec.. and also the best solution for video-on-demand..

I will make video coverage on my website at the beginning of September from consumer electronics show in Berlin where all the technology companies will be (I think), check out http://ifa-berlin.de, maybe I can make some interviews with DivX people and other codec people. So they can say what they want about the current Mpeg-4 and the future h264 codecs..

I don't know how many times more processor power h264 needs for encoding and decoding, and no matter if hardware comes this month that can decode h264, I still think there will be somekind of time still now where it's wiser to use Mpeg-4 codec or wmv, than allready now going for h264 or vc1 as those codecs are not really ready yet. If I put h264 on my website, then half of the people will comment that they have trouble playing it back on their pc.

Okay thanks about the deinterlacing tips, I will soon try to de-interlace with some other deinterlacing plug-in for VirtualDub or the avisynth (making a little text file with avisynth commands, name it .avs and open in VirtualDub).. with google for now I found http://100fps.com that explains some things.. I wish my HD camera was a 1080p camera, I guess that's for the next generation..

Why do you think DivX is not going to release h264 version of DivX before 2008?

Evrerybody knows it. They have a contracts to sell Divx hardware players untill 2008. And they have no posibility to change a codec Divx6. It simple.

Heres a nice guide for an hdtv to xvid encode......
http://www.samek.neostrada.pl/hdtv/hdtv2xvid.htm

I meat Gej the inventor of DivX at CeBIT 2004, and he told me DivX is the best codec..


Gej has some kind of humor.
Are you talking seriously?

If you will met to Gej ask them why Divx develepors are stoling open source Xvid ;) . Divx isn't best MPEG-4. It much inferior than Xvid.
And I'm not talking about H.264 codecs. It's already impossible to do compete with them. You don't understand what is going on in video compression tecs. Divx has NO chance to survive completly. And that lies that they said "Our codecs is best of all". Oh yeah? did you beleive them? It's a lie without shame. One divx's dev even said that Divx6 has a same quality that H.264. All laufhed. Because people understand Divx mpeg4 asp never will be beter than a totally new technology H.264

Also ask them why HDTV companys don't want to use their super blur smooth Divx6.

DivX 6 is best, maybe, if you want video-on-demand over the internet. Thus it might be better than h264 for now, because h264 does not have drm and it does not work well in HD on less than 3ghz computers. Thus I estimate less than 20% of computers today.

You can also say XviD stole DivX source from OpenDivX, I don't know for sure any of it, but my guess is several people who made OpenDivX back in 2001, now have a full time job at DivX Networks. What can be bad about that..

Anyways, if anyone is interested I just put up more HD DivX video, this time of beachvolley matches:

http://lausanne2005.beachvolley.videocoverage.org

http://server.charbax.com/videocoverage.org/Beachvolley/Lausanne2005/Lausanne2005_Beachvolley_SimoneKuhn_01_zoom.jpeg

Following Crog's suggestion, now I put more bitrate into the video to keep the blockiness away. The girls beachvolley video is 3,5mbit/s and the mens matchs is encoded at 4mbit/s. I also this time stopped using psychovisual on the mens video, for the de-interlacing and resizing I still use DivX's own.. I will shortly though begin experimenting with XviD and different de-interlacing methods suggested here. I just need to find the exact plugin and command for avisynth that is best to use for 25fps deinterlacing of HDV video.

Hey

If you want to encode HD video i really suggest checking out a very, very handy program called "AutoGK"

AutoGK Website (http://www.autogk.net)

It's a great automated program for converting many many types of video (including MPEG2 TS files) to XviD or DivX. It will also support H.264 very soon, so is definitely worth a look. It does all the necessary steps (including choosing a good size) for excellent quality encoding.

Highly recommended!