Hope this is the right board for this. Recently,encoded my first attempt at a DV to mpg compression using the mainconcept H264 v2.0 encoder. Using more or less default settings, the playback stutters. To be more precise, depending on the player, the playback either breaks up into into vigorous blocks every several seconds and is smooth, or does not break up but plays with that jerky stutter we've all occasionally come across with xvid. The phenomenon exist whether or not I deinterlace. Demuxing has no effect either. No smoothing has been applied so the encoder has captured (and perhaps amplified)all the glory of the original video noise. So is this an anomaly inherent to H264/X264? Is it a configuration problem or do I have a hardware issue? I have Sempron 2200 processor that runs at 1.5ghz and an Nvidia Geforce 2 Mmx card. thanks
AVC generally requires more power to decode. Still at SD resolutions I would have thought that you would be ok. What decoder are you using though? CoreAVC is still about the most efficent and I believe Haali's splitter can handle the TS that MainConcept uses. When I think of DV to mpg though I don't think of AVC which is generally stored in an mp4 container other than for BluRay/HD-DVD.
Celtic, the decoder in zoomplayer is both ffdshow h264 and mainconcept 264. Yep, at the same time in same player. Mainconcept J264 v2.0 only encodes to mpeg not mp4.
Guess ffdshow is being used for audio then? Not sure how the speed of MainConcept's decoder compares to others. I think I read that in their press release for the new decoder that it is the fastest. I'd be willing to bet money that coreAVC is still a fair margin faster though. x264 can encode to mp4 and is free. Also better quality and possible faster than MainConcept. Are you encoding Interlaced or de-interlacing? x264 I think still requires a patch for interlaced encoding.
So in short, Celtic, your feeling is it's a decoding issue. Could well be, since I've compared my clip with that of another correspondent (using supposedly the same .mef settings)and his clip does not manifest these problems. I can make a stab at running it through CoreAvc. I've hesitated to x264 use since it's user interface isn't particularly inviting. But if that's what it takes...
cli does take some getting used to. Especially if you never used DOS, linux, etc. Plenty of GUI's out there though.