Sorenson video rocks
I had no idea it has become so good. To hell with Mpeg 4 and the H264 stuff. Wavelet based compression is killer, especially if you have lots of subtitles and edges in your video. Even so, the quality is awesome, and the file size is small. The Sorenson output files are better than the DVPro source files I'm using.
Comments
I have some examples I could should you, but they are fairly large, and are probably confidential as well.
Amen!
Originally posted by Placebo
Can these be played back on an online client's machine without requiring additional software?
If you count Quicktime as additional software, then yes. Otherwise, no.
As far as getting the DVD video into QUicktime, you're on your own, but I know it's possible. You have to demultiplex the stream, and I don't think it requires much else. However, as your source format is MPEG2, I don't think you'll see a quality improvement by switching to Sorenson. Qulaity never gets better with successive stages of lossy compression.
The work I was doing was an addenda to an animation. I had part of the animation already done, stored as a DVPro file. I added a segment to it, which was a few seconds of additional animation, RLE compressed (lossless). When I saved the modified video with sorenson, the DVPro parts didn't seem compressed at all, and the edges of the new part of video were extremely crisp: better quality than what was in the DVPro video. And yes, the DVPro source file I was using came originally from a lossless video. So the bottom line is that Lossless->Sorenson yields better output than lossless->DVPro. The Sorenson file ended up being 7MB opposed to 350MB for DVPro and 4.7MB for a quarter-sized MPEG4 version. Granted there was a great deal of potential for temporal and spatial compression with the animation.
Do you know of any good resources for using QTPro for compression? I have some video work to do for work and would like to be able to get some really professional looking output.
Sorenson 3 was introduced in QuickTime 5 and it's really starting to show its age...
Sorenson 3 is probably the best codec built into QuickTime, but that's not saying much.
Originally posted by mikef
Is there an easy way of encoding DVDs using QT Pro? Say I rip the DVD with Mactheripper, how do I make use of this Sorenson encoder? My goal is to rip some DVDs and put on the HD of my iBook for when I am traveling. (I am the legal owner of the DVDs)
There is an App called DVDxDV that will convert your DVD files to a QT DV movie. Then you could use whatever codec you wanted in QT Pro to compress it.
Originally posted by blue2kdave
There is an App called DVDxDV that will convert your DVD files to a QT DV movie. Then you could use whatever codec you wanted in QT Pro to compress it.
Looks interesting, but expensive... I'll experiment with MPEG-4 first and see how that goes. Unlike most others, I have never seriously used MPEG-4 before.
Thanks for the info!
Originally posted by Eugene
I can't really find any good reason to use Sorenson 3 Pro over Xvid or similar MPEG-4 codecs. Xvid can produce nice sharp edges if you use lanczos or bicubic spline interpolation.
I've tried most codecs out there. Somehow, subtitles and animations just work so much better in Sorenson. That's why I suspect it's wavelet-based, rather than just patching a hole by using spline interpolation on top of a basic spectrum filter. I'm pretty sure that Sorenson also uses a spline interpolator, but it has slightly different reaction to scaling than do the other codecs. It actually doesn't scale as well, but damn. . . the image output is insane at the target resolution.
bunge: If you have to do editing, then you'll want to get FCP or something like it. Otherwise, if you have no problem with staying in the Quciktime world, just open the video in Quicktime Player and File->Export the new video. The rest of the process is somewhat self explanatory, though it sounds like you want to start with the ""Movie to Quicktime Movie" option. Play around a bit with the codecs.
Lastly, here's what I see. It's a big file (nearly 500k) since I needed to use PNG format in order to preserve the image quality.
That is a good quality comparison, but how about file size? If all files were roughly 60MB, what would they look like?
Originally posted by Eugene
Using the Apple MPEG-4 Codec isn't a good baseline for comparing Sorenson 3 to MPEG-4. The Apple codec is pitiful. Someting like Xvid, Divx 5, 3ivx, Sorenson MPEG-4 Pro, etc. would make for a much better comparison...
Well, that's great. I have QuickTime. It would be nice to test the other stuff, but I don't really do very much with video, and I think the results I have are very applicable for the generic mac user trying to make some video.
but video encoding is a delicate proces, in which a small size difference can make a huge quality difference. In order to do any quality comparison, your files need to be the same size. The example screenshots you provide come from files differing 30%-40% in size, which is huge!! look on http://forum.doom9.org for a decent comparison between state-of-the-art video codecs.
Dutch Pear.
Originally posted by dutch pear
I'm sorry,
but video encoding is a delicate proces, in which a small size difference can make a huge quality difference. In order to do any quality comparison, your files need to be the same size. The example screenshots you provide come from files differing 30%-40% in size, which is huge!! look on http://forum.doom9.org for a decent comparison between state-of-the-art video codecs.
Dutch Pear.
Not entirely true. I was using MPEG4 at the highest level it allowed. For the second video, the Sorenson file had four times the frame resolution, and was 50% larger in file size, in addition to having much better quality. I don't doubt that MPEG4 isn't an excellent codec, but as far as QuickTime can compress with it, it's not that great. Since my point from the beginning has been that Sorenson offers good quality for animation, right out of the QTPro Box, I think I have been vindicated. If you're worried about 6.2MB vs. 4.2MB, then you have different concerns than I have. I'm worried prmarily about image quality, and if MPEG4 can't possibly do better (for QTPro), then it loses.
I had no idea it has become so good. To hell with Mpeg 4 and the H264 stuff.
This is what you said at first... Sorenson 3 is adequate, but it isn't 'so good.' It's only good when you compare it to the shittiest MPEG-4 codec out there.
http://www.3ivx.com/
Check it out and run some tests