[iptv-users] Open Source x264 Encoder

[Thomas Kernen]

I think that you need to take into account more than the raw video 
processing capabilities (it being CPU based or hardware based).

What is the cost for building, maintaining and upgrading such a solution?

Does it work for scaling, 10, 100, 300 channels?

Does it support all the "advanced" audio formats you may need (Dolby 
Digital/Dolby Digital Plus/ HE-AACv1 & HE-AACv2)?

Does it support the different closed captioned formats or DVB subtitles?

Does it support XDS data?

Can it be integrated into a Statmux pool?

As for the comment on low latency, some video markets such as 
professional contribution networks do consider low latency as being very 
important. Much less in secondary distribution (IPTV/Cable).

Thomas

On 1/22/10 3:34 AM, João Serra wrote:
> I noticed that almost all of you are working at some IPTV provider,
> I'm just an IPTV application Developer and i don't deal with encoders
> at all, so i have a question for all of you:
>
> Have you tried the open-source X264 H.264 encoder? According to the
> things i read on the net, x264 can out perform every hardware encoder
> on the market, even in real-time, both in quality and speed... In the
> last version it can even encoder in real time without latency, making
> it suitable for video-conferencing applications...
> I suggest you to read this post in one of the x264 developers blog -
> http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=249&cpage=1#comment-2427 According to
> him, there are no h264 encoders in the market(both software and
> hardware) that can achieve that level of low-latency... (I know IPTV
> doesn't care much about latency, I'm just trying to illustrate the
> power of x264)
>
> My IPTV provider, for instance, uses 2 MB/s(in average, they use VBR)
> h264 streams for SD content(they're using Harmonic's Divicom Electra
> 8000) and it really looks awful when compared to a couple of x264
> files i have encoded with x264 at 500kb/s(average - VBR encoded) Yes,
> i know i can't compare off-line encoding with real-time encoding, so i
> did another test: I encoded a video in real-time on a Core 2 Duo with
> the same average bitrate of 2mb/s and again, my provider hardware
> encoder looses again in quality... I tried Sports, Movies, News, etc
> and looking to my Samsung LCD, o difference is very visible, x264
> wins!
>
> So, my question to you is: why do you use those very very expensive
> hardware encoders that produce mediocre results, if Software encoders
> can easily outperform them? And they are much more cheaper(they are a
> just standard servers, you can even add SDI/ASI PCI cards if you
> want)...
>
> I know x264 can be a pain in the ass to configure, given the bazillion
> features and options it supports, however, i think it's a fair
> trade-off, if you consider it's price...
> I only think i cannot test is it's stability, have any of you tested
> it? For instance, letting a Red Hat Enterprise Linux box real time
> encoding a stream for a couple of months without interruption?
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