[MPlayer-users] lossless codecs make bigger files than raw DV ?!

[The Wanderer]

Matthew W. Miller wrote:

>> On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 03:36:39PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
>> 
>>> I've never heard anything which suggests that trell has a
>>> downside (or even an alternative against which to compete), aside
>>> from the increased CPU requirements.
> 
> Well, the increased CPU requirement is a downside right there.

Indeed - but if it can be toggled off, as I suggested, this is less of a
problem.

>> I'm just going by 2 basic principles: 1. Default should be
>> bare-bones minimal mpeg4 without fancy stuff. 2. If the default is
>> _bad_ quality, newbies will have to rtfm and learn how to encode
>> properly.
> 
> I think I agree with Mr Felker here (not that I expect a perfectly
> adequate default to change any time soon *anyway*).  The defaults
> pretty much all yield top speed with decent encoding quality; many
> things like trell, mbd=X, v4mv, cbp, mv0 cause greatly increased CPU
> use for only small quality improvements; if you have more CPU cycles
> to throw at an encode, great, you can read the documentation and
> learn how best to use them.

Assuming that you know about the possibility of improvement, which not
everyone does, those who are unlikely to read the manual and find out
least among them.

> The "FF" in "FFMpeg" is there for a reason: FFMpeg (and thus 
> libavcodec) is intended to be useful for good-quality realtime
> encoding and decoding with a minimal CPU hit (unless, of course, you
> want the better quality).  I don't know what the FFMpeg or MPlayer
> developers may think about this, but I personally think that making
> the defaults higher-quality/greater-CPU-use would detract from that
> goal.

That's an opinion, on which people can I think reasonably differ; the
question is what should be the priority, higher quality or lower CPU
usage, and the answer to *that* one is not at all clear.

I am at this point continuing this largely for the sake of argument,
however, as I understand the question to have been addressed as far as
MPlayer is concerned. The discussion can be dropped at any time without
that bothering me.

Incidentally, what *does* the "FF" in "FFmpeg" indicate? I've never been
able to find anything that indicated that it was anything other than an
arbitrary because-it-sounds-good pair of letters...

-- 
       The Wanderer

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.