[MPlayer-users] Very preliminary x264 vs. lavc test

[snacky at ikaruga.co.uk]

Bernhard Rosenkraenzer has lately submitted a patch to include an
interface to the x264 encoder in mencoder. x264 is an experimental h.264
implementation. It needs a lot of work but it's basically usable.

I have a little comparison up at http://ikaruga.co.uk/testy/test.html

It features links to two 14mb sample files, and some discussion of what
was done to generate them. The short story is it looks like x264 can
already give results as good as lavc's mpeg4, even though lavc is much
more complete and mature.

If you want to try the x264 patch, I suggest reading
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.mplayer.devel/19396 - and you
can also get the patch from that URL. Download x264 with the command:

$ svn co svn://svn.videolan.org/x264/trunk x264

and make the changes suggested in Rosenkraenzer's email. Build x264,
install x264.h and libx264.a somewhere reasonable, then build the
patched mplayer.

It is quite rough around the edges, and very few players will play the
files that result, but I think the comparison is enough to demonstrate
that x264 is worth playing around with.