Sanyo HD1 footage!

[Marc Louis]

Wow great news steven, but what is a command line tool (i guess it's this kind of thing that has to do with the Dos menu of my PC ?

i downloaded the file that you talk about (MP4box.7z) but i have to confess i never saw such extension and don't know what to do with it...

would you explain to me cause my knowledge is kinda limited
that's so cool that we can have a tool to convert HD mp4 to AVI

is it as easy as with MP4CAM2AVI, and what about image loss quality ?

thanx again (and what means "demux" the video track ?)

[Marc Louis]

Well i went on google to try to get more info on mp4box, but it seems a bit complicated to manipulate for those not familiar with the command line tools

[Steven Mingam]

Yes, you have to use it in a "dos" mode. Use Start > Execute > type "cmd" to have the windows command line. From then, it's like in the good old DOS days.

"7z" is the extension for the "7-Zip" format, it's supported by the 3.40+ Winrar software, but it's an open format so free tools are available at http://www.7-zip.org/
Use the rareware link for an older version (which works too) in plain zip format.

Now the technical explaination :)
First you have to make the distinction between the codec used to compress a video and the "container" used to store this compressed stream. AVI and MP4 are two standards that discribe how to put video and audio streams in the same file (this processus is called "muxing"). That mean going back and forth between this two format cause no quality loss because it's just ordering the compressed data differently. Now what's confusing here is that "MPEG 4" is a whole standard that describe how to compress video AND how to store it, so you have to make the distinction. Here, the video is encoded in MPEG4 Simple Profile, while the audio is encoded in (LC)AAC and everything is stored in a MP4 file.
You can perfectly put the mpeg4-encoded video stream in an AVI, for AAC it is also possible but it's quite a hack and absolutly not recommended if you want to use it in a general editing software like Premiere.

And i'm lucky, i won't have to code a little gui for you guys, there is already one that does the job : http://yamb.unite-video.com/download.html
Use the extract fonction ;)

[Marc Louis]

yiiiik !!! well thanx for your time but it seems a bit too tricky for me at this point...and thinking of spending that much convertion time in every single .mp4 file i would shot before even beginning the editing job seem a bit too much time consuming

i will wait for an update of MP4CAM2AVI or i will pass on the HD1

[Graham Jones]

Steven that's great - so we don't need to worry about dos and all that!

I've downloaded it and added a HD1 MP4 clip.

I press mux but it spits out another MP4 file.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

[Marc Louis]

WOW that's super great steven, i spoke too fast in my previous post

actualy the application you showed us do the trick quite easily and fastly

once you "demuxed" the mp4 file with this yamb application, then just put it through MP4CAM2AVI and it would convert it to .avi

(and i tried to import that .avi file into windows movie maker and it worked just fine :) :)

A BIG THANK YOU TO you steve !! you pushed my decision to buy the HD1 a bit more into the YES direction :)

i still have to know if there is a loss in quality though (at first sight i would say NO)

PS: one small drawback i'm just noticing is that the video file obtained after an edition in Windows movie maker is a bit distorsed, but i know it's due to the HD format----> windows movie maker changed the HD definition video into a 640 x 480 movie so i need to work that out...

[Marc Louis]

after some playing around with the yamb application conversion, i notice 2 litlle drawback :

-it seems that the mp4 files can only be imported into the window one by one

if you try to add 2 or more files into the "audio video" section, it will only demux the first one...can be quite long if you have dozens of mp4 files

but maybe there is a way to change that (there is a divide option but it doesn't do the trick when you wannna do 3 separate conversions of 3 different mp4 at the same time)

-the second thing is that it seems that once the .avi file is edited through Windows movie maker it loses a large part of its High Definition feel...i don't know if it's due to the yamb application or due to the Sanyo HD1 not much compatible with windows movie maker but that's pity.

i didn't really notice such a lose in quality with other non HD files...

[Joseph Aurili]

I'm thinking that good quality hd1 video can make great downsized SD. I was messing around with Vegas today and put together some of the best hd1 clips I have into a 720 x 480 resolution movie. I included one horrible hd1 clip for good measure ;) It is 37MB in size. Please right click and download. Let me know what you think about the quality. Previewing the MP4 files in Vegas on a P4 2.5 was very choppy, but it rendered very quickly. I am impressed in how clear DV can look.

http://www.gamersden.com/hd1test/clips.mpg

[Wayne Morellini]

Hey guys, you realise you have your own sub-forum now.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=115

Thanks Chris.

[Marc Louis]

GOOD video Joseph, the music is cool

i'm quite impressed by the quality and somehow it sounds strange when you read the very bad review from the forum akihabara quoted in another thread...BUT that's true that the HD1 gives best results in conditions when camera does not move, which is the case for most of your video.

i have to imagine what it would be like without a tripod because you seem to have used that much...

on the akihabara review they say that the Image stabilizer is useless ! because it has no effect, what do u think of that ?

i'm still hesitating between buying a C6 and buying that one...but your video put the HD1 back in the game whereas i was about to give it up !

thanx

[Joseph Aurili]

Quite a few shots in the video don't use a tripod and don't look bad, but of course you will get the best shots with a tripod. I agree the Image stabilizer does not seem to do much.

[Wayne Morellini]

You notice that the first footage done here was poor too, but there is a way to shoot clean video with it, that Joseph subsequently used.

Thanks

Wayne.

[Wayne Morellini]

Lets hope that the next version of this camera has h264 19Mb/s or at least Mpeg4 19Mb/s.

On motion compensation:
Have a look at this comparison between H264 quality and mpeg2, even though it is not a DB measured difference stat I would like to see, but you see with the human viewers, complex motion clips had less difference with human viewers, even on h264, this either proves that humans notice less during motion, and/or that real bandwidth still matters. The good news is that water is clearly perceived as better on h264.

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/paper...estResults.pdf

[Graham Jones]

"the second thing is that it seems that once the .avi file is edited through Windows movie maker it loses a large part of its High Definition feel...i don't know if it's due to the yamb application or due to the Sanyo HD1 not much compatible with windows movie maker but that's pity."

I'm just guessing here, but isn't that because Windows Movie Maker is a really poor quality programme?

[Marc Louis]

^^^^maybe...but i have to admit that the high quality programs which are FREE are very rare nowadays