[MPlayer-users] How to identify missing video-codec?

[Jeff Clagg]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 11:53:40AM -0500, Ivan Kowalenko wrote:

> No, I'm just saying that until Apple made a big deal out of it, your  
> average user was more concerned with a new version of XviD than the  
> latest release of x264. Besides, no one really produced a lot of H. 
> 264 content, so there wasn't much demand for a decoder. I'm not  
> saying that Apple made H.264 a reality, nor that people were ignoring  
> it until Apple brought it up. I'm just simply saying that until Apple  
> advertised the hell out of it with QuickTime 7, most people didn't  
> know it existed.

This is a pretty idiosynchratic view of history. I really doubt that
most people learn of new video codecs just because of qt7. Windows
users usually HATE quicktime, because the Windows port sucks in a lot
of ways. Most of them would even choose WMP or Realplayer before using
Quicktime.

> Correction: I meant the decoder. However, x264 still has a way to go  
> before being 100% complaint, otherwise we would have seen x264  
> version 1.0. As a side note, I've used QuickTime 7 to encode H.264  
> material. True, it's noticably slower than x264, but 10-50 times  
> slower, definitely not.

Compliancy has nothing to do with the lack of x264 releases. Can you
name a single bug it has that produces noncompliant bitstreams? As for
x264 having a long way to go, it's a hell of a lot better encoder than
quicktime, seeing as how quicktime is dozens of times slower. Can you name
a single advantage that quicktime's encoder has over x264?  Can you name a
single feature that's present in quicktime's encoder but missing in x264?
If not, then why are we arguing over whether or not x264 "still has a
way to go"?  Can you name an important feature that x264 needs to add
before you'll consider it up to snuff? (Possibly there is some important
feature, but I get the idea you wouldn't know what it is, if so.)

And what do you think about the fact that qt7's decoder doesn't even
come close to complying with main profile? It can't even handle 2
consecutive B-frames, last I heard. ffmpeg is way ahead of it in this
respect. Who really has a long way to go, here? Which one is more ready
for primetime?