[MPlayer-users] Re: encoding quality - bpp, resolution, quantsand quality

[D Richard Felker III]

On Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 10:25:42PM +0200, HR wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> 
> > > > Is there a reason you are using Xvid instead of ffmpeg's 
> > MPEG-4 coder? 
> > > > I thought the latter would be better, or is there significant
> > > > difference anyway?
> > > 
> > > The latter _was_ better. Ther are no recent comparisons 
> > between both but  
> > > Xvid is better than many other modern codecs, so Xvid has 
> > probably become 
> > > better than libavc.
> > 
> > Doubtful. You could try a comparison (PSNR or better yet double-blind
> > :), but it's generally accepted by mplayer developers that lavc is the
> > encoder of choice...
> This is getting really educational, thanks for all the good input! The
> reason why I was using XViD was mainly the open source argument, while
> observing the commersial direction of the DivX on windofz. I've been
> assuming that DivX on any platform would be subject to that "closing" of
> the source, ie that lavc mpeg4 would be somewhat less reliable as open
> source in the future compared to XViD. This is propably just ignorance
> on my part? Whats the licence status on lavc (mpeg4)?

Free of course. LGPL.

> Acknowledged; I'm keeping my sws 2 and considering switching to lavc for
> vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:.....
> 
> There is vhq for XViD in the unstable HEAD it seems, does anyone have
> any experience with that?

IIRC it's different from lavc's vhq (it turns on several options for
better quality or something). It's been a while since I used xvid,
tho, so I could be mistaken.

Rich