[X4U] Most advanced Video Codec WMV?

Stroller macmonster at myrealbox.com
Thu Jan 18 06:12:12 PST 2007


On 18 Jan 2007, at 00:59, Eddie Hargreaves wrote:

> On 1/17/07 4:00 PM, Neil_ Pollack <lists at mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, but if you are encoding the file for the web, keep in mind  
>> that there are
>> still a lot of people running G3 and G4 class computers out  
>> there.  H.265 is
>> very CPU intensive.
>
> I just watched a 480x204 resolution movie trailer from Apple's web  
> site and
> it didn't use more than 39% of the processor in my G4 iBook. Also,  
> it's
> still H.264, not H.265 (yet)

This is EXTREMELY low resolution by current video standards, however.  
An NTSC DVD has 480 vertical lines (so 583 x 480 at 16:9), a PAL 576  
(1024 x 576); these contain c 4x as many pixels as the H.264 trailer  
you tested.

Compare the 480x204 trailer with a fully hi-def one. The one you  
tested contains 97,920 pixels per frame; a 1920 x 1080 movie contains  
2,073,600 pixels per frame - about 20x as many!!

I can tell you a little bit about this as I'm currently doing my  
homework in preparation of building a MythTV system. Any second-hand  
old Pentium 3 is good enough to play back standard-definition ("SD")  
video like the DVD resolutions I outlined above, but many posters to  
the mailing list report stuttering when playing back HD movies.  
There's VERY little broadcast content using H.264 / H.265; the BBC's  
pilot program (of only one channel) is one of them and it has about  
half the bit-rate you might get from your US HD cable box for the  
same video quality. It is said to be EVEN MORE demanding to decode  
(you basically don't have a chance without the latest Core 2 Duo)

Stroller.



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