Hi there, I have a few queries. 1. What are the various video formats & their salient features e.g AVI, WMF, MPEG – 1 etc. 2. Which format presents the best video output? 3. Are DVDs MPEG-4 format video? 4. How can one transform various formats into others& MPEG -1 Layer 2 into MPEG -4? 5. How many Layers does MPEG-1, 2, 4 have & their features? 5. Which is the most versatile media player e.g. like Power DVD, Nero Show, Roxio media player…..one which would require the least codec if needed & play most formats? Hoping to hear from you, Regards, TIA.
Hi there. Sorry about the delay responding. I'll answer your questions as best I can. 1. As you put it, there are various video formats out there. The most popular being AVI and MPEG mostly. The most popular compression for those formats is now DivX & XVid. They are both two forms of MPEG-4 compression. the main difference between MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 is the size of the file. Generally, for movies of the same length, movies compressed in MPEG-2 format are bigger in file size than movies encoded in MPEG-4 compression. In the end, it comes down to the bitrate of the video playback. Generally, MPEG-4 movies average a bitrate of 1.5 mb/s while MPEG-2 encoded video is approx. 4 - 6 mb/s. The outcome is that although MPEG-2 is bigger, the quality of the pictuce is essentially better. This site has a glossary page which is great to explain most formats in detail. Here is the link... http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/ 2. To my opinion, the current usable format that offers the best video output is DVD-Video, which is compressed with a MPEG-2 codec. This will eventually change as HD video becomes more popular. High definition (HD) video, as I hear, will still be using MPEG-2 compression. The difference with DVD-video is that they will have an average bitrate of 25 mb/s, resulting in much bigger file sizes but a far better image quality than the current DVD. 3. As mentionned above DVD-video uses MPEG-2 compression. 4. In order to change the format of a video, you will need to use special software which convert the video files and encode them with a different codec. For instance, converting DVD-video to a DivX AVI file or vice versa. The guides section of this site contains several guides to do this with the many different programs that exist for this need. Here is the link... http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/ 5. I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly. Do you mean disc layer? ... Such as a dual layer DVD disc? ... 6?. This depends on your personal preference and also which type of video you need to play. For AVI, WMF and anything other than DVD, I simply use Windows media player. For DVD-Video, I use this program called Cyberlink PowerDVD. It is not free but it is a most excellent program. Please note you will need the appropriate codec to playback any video format. I don't believe windows comes with the DVD-Video codec. Neither does it come with DivX and Xvid. There are codec packages available for free download, which can be easily installed and run just fine. Klite codec pack contains most codec you need. (DivX, Xvid and other MPEG-4 codecs. It also contains the DVD-video codec). Hope this helps!
Hello there, Thanks for your very detailed, comprehensive, in depth reply to the queries. By Layers, I meant that when I check a file/CD/DVD etc, by GSpot software, it at times shows MPEG-2, Layer 2.(I dont mean DL media). In your personal experience, what are a few quality/versatile soft wares for transforming one format to another? Sorry to have bothered you. Hoping to hear from you, Regards!
That would be MPEG-1 Layer 2 which is an audio format. mp3 is MPEG-1 Layer 3. aac is the newer MPEG audio codec (MPEG-4 Part 3). If you are really interested in this stuff, I would suggest that you have a look on wikipedia. There are some nice entries on MPEG standards/formats as well as other audio/video formats.
The only thing I now do to backup my DVD movies is use either Shrink or Decrypter to backup to a DVD. I have however converted DivX movies to DVD using Cocusoft Avi2DVD and DVD Lab studio to do the authoring, which I though were excellent programs to do that. They are not free unfortunately. It can also convert DivX to VCD / SVCD in you needed to. I have also converted some of my DVD movies to xVid MPEG-4 using another program but I can't quite recall the name of the software right now. I'll have to get back to you on that. The reason I don't really do this anymore is that it is a longer, more complicated process than copying DVD to DVD. Also, it will alter the quality of the picture. P.S. : Don't worry. It's never a bother. This site is here for a reason and I was glad to help And thanks to you celtic_d for the additional explanation.
... The program I used to rip DVD to xVid was catually Tinysoft's Super DVD ripper. The downer is I thought it was free but I just tried to run it and it told me my trial period was over... ... 'Sigh' I guess nothing's free nowadays.
