Animated GIF - 441,88 KBytes
172,82 sec at 28.8 Kbps
87,94 sec at 56.6 Kbps
256 Color Palette

note;this test is completely consistant with the methods described in mpeg4 DCT.htm (and shown as animated gif in mpeg4 DCT_anim-gif.htm ) if production of video files is concerned [same source,same avs script,same target bitrate (1,5Mbit/s) ], but they just differ in one thing ; here the screenshots were taken directly from the player window (with "HyperSnap" as you can see)....i used gabest's "mpclassic 6.4.4.2" as a video player for all of the screenshots.......

decoding;NANDUB SBC and FFVFW video is decoded (played) by "ffdshow-20030103"(Jan 03 2003 build), RV is played by mpclassic using the realoneplayer decoding dll's, WMV9 also mpclassic but using wmplayer decoding dll's(WMVideo decoder DMO)

encoding;for RV9 i used HelixProducerBasic 9.0.0.972 which produced "Video Codec: 1447.1 Kbps (RealVideo)" stream (1,5Mbit "audit" file was used)

for WMV9 i used "WMV9-VCM" (ie. i used a version that can put WMV9 to .avi) and encoded with virtualdub 1.4.10 [i have tried the "100" smooth-sharp setting (as i know what that is from the MP42 and MP43 usage), but as files had a tendency to get oversized (cca.1,8-2Mbit/s) i didn't included that screenshot (ie. i removed it from final .gif) ,as that wouldn't be fair to other codecs (ie. it's not fair to compare WMV9 @2Mbit/s to SBC (or others)@1,5Mbit/s ).............i skipped the WMEncoder9 as it can't load avs scripts]

[and another note on WMV9;neither VCM nor WMEncoder9 allow precise control over codec's most important function previously called "DRF" (quantizer scale)...]

i used same SBC .avi as was used in previous mpeg4 test.........

ffvfw(ffvfw-20030816) uses pretty straight forward setting likewise;same as with xvid i picked MPEG quantisation type,and 2-7 min-max P-fame quantizer......other settings are defaults....

my impressions;the only codec which can beat the sbc is ffmpeg project's FFVFW (made by milan cutka,the author of ffdshow)......as is visible,it produces streams that are sharper than sbc(at this particular bitrate),but it has another advantage;it DOESN'T produce nasty "jelly-waving" artefacts that xvid has (at least not when P frames are used,as i DID saw this problem with FFVFW when b-frames and significanlty lower bitrate (1,2Mbit/s) was used....).this build of ffvfw has a bug where 1st frame of video (ie. keyframe) gets to be overcompressed,so that frame looks nasty,but this doesn't mater much as it's just 1 frame flaw......ffvfw is also the codec with most options that user can access........the next step will be to ask the author of "Divx DRF Analyzer" to add the support for ffvfw (it already supports divx5,xvid,sbc...) so we can better see what the codec is doing.....

rv9 completely cuts-off the higher frequency image data,WMV9 shows that it's very much ms-mpeg4 derivated codec (@quality of "90", the image looks OK,but same as with xvid previously , some blocks are simply too much smeared,sharpness is uneven...the feature i don't like....)
WMV9 would need total control over codec to test it's strengths thoroughly, but i doubt MS will allow that......(even mp43 needed to be completely hacked for us to get total control by using it with nandub)

in conclusion,i believe i'll still do nandub for some time,but hopefully soon i'll convert to ffvfw after i do some more tests with it as first results look very promising....it has all the good sides of mpeg4 standard and lacks the very annoying xvid bugs

30.09.2003 by i4004