Using the right decoder for your video content
Dec/090
One thing that appears obvious to us after more than 10 years of working with the various solutions that can be used on Mac and Windows to decompress video is that not all solutions are equal.
We believe that our users should be able to play almost any kind of media with the ArKaos software and at the same time we do everything a team of developer can to get the best performance on the platforms supported.
Practically the ArKaos software can play media files through the following decoders: QuickTime, FFmpeg, the Flash plugin, Quartz Composer and Windows Media Player. Currently (December 2009) we don’t allow the user to decide through which solution a media will be decoded, instead we try to make the best decision based on our many years of experience and tests. In the case where several video codecs (such as Mpeg4) can be played through different decoders like QuickTime, FFmpeg and Windows Media Player, we always prefer, no matter the platform, to first try to handle those codecs with FFmpeg as we have always had the best results with FFmpeg during our tests, and here’s why..
GrandVJ 1.2b4 with support for audio
Dec/090
We’ve been a bit quiet lately but we’ve been working hard trying to move sound support from the old system (based on QuickTime) to an implementation using FFMPeg. This is because the QT support is getting worse and worse and we think it’s important we move to a more controllable medium.
The Beta 3 released last week on our forums contained the first result of this implementation but wasn’t very smooth or even stable especially with backward/forward playback.
The Beta 4 fixes the backward playback bug and relies on a new FFMPeg build that supports AC3. This means you can now drop VOB’s & MKV and get proper audio running… If the vob is 5.1, we also do stereo mixdown.
Surf to the forum post for more details about this Beta and the download links..
Using QuickTime or FFMPEG on a PC?
Jul/090
Here’s a quick tip for PC users: if you use a multi-core/multi-processor machine with GrandVJ or MediaMaster, you will benefit a lot to use codecs that are played through our FFMPEG player rather than through QuickTime.
This is due to the fact that on a PC, the internal QuickTime decoding routines are not capable of multi-threading, which makes it impossible to decode frames in parallel. So even if one layer can run properly using QuickTime libraries, the more layer you pile up, the more the decoding bottleneck will show up.
On Mac OSX, QuickTime is now mostly multi-threaded decoding so it’s not such an issue but we recommend to try to use codec supported by our FFMPEG player in any case.
Important: make sure you understand we refer to the internal QuickTime player and NOT to QuickTime files in general. Some QuickTime files (for example, files based on mpeg/mpeg2/mpeg4/PhotoJPEG/Motion JPEG/H.264 codec) are played through the FFMPEG player.
To know what internal player is used for what file, use the information shown in the visual library:
Visuals library
In this case, both movies are QuickTime files. The first one is read through QuickTime because the Cinepak Codec is not handled by FFMPEG.It will play but it is not optimal.
The second is read through FFMPEG because it’s using H.264 codec, it is therefore better for performances.
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