which of the two freeware x264 encoders recomended for Tiger is better?

[Cox Orange]

Hello,

there are two x264 encoders, which work under OS X 10.4.11.

1) Version 1.1.10 from MyCometG3 http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/
2) Version 1.1 from Henry Mason http://download.cnet.com/x264-QuickTime-Codec/3000-2170_4-127324.html?tag=mncol;1 alternative link http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20273/x264-quicktime-codec

on 1. it seems there a more options to be chosen and there a higher potential to do something wrong and some picked preferences can cause incompatibility with the normal Quicktime (not Pro). I know it is newer, but is it better than the second one?


Did anyone compare?

 

[dizzie1]

Are you unsatisfied with the one that comes with Quicktime and/ or Perian?

 

[Cox Orange]

actually I am not, but I was told that x264 was better than h.264.

When I said that x264 is h.264 the person told me, that there is a difference.

When I now open iMovie and want to convert something I get the list of codecs one can choose and it says:

...
h.264
(h.264) x264
...
divx
...
etc.

so I am a bit confused. (By the way I do have perian installed so I guess the first h.264 I had was from this, and further I do only have the normal Quicktime (not pro))

When I try the perian and the "x264", the only thing I notice, that is different is, that the x264 has just about 1MB in a file of 28MB size.

 

[MisterMe]

actually I am not, but I was told that x264 was better than h.264.

When I said that x264 is h.264 the person told me, that there is a difference.

...

so I am a bit confused....

H.264 aka MPEG-4 Part 10 aka Advanced Video Coding (AVC) is a published standard for video compression. x264 is an opensource clone of the H.264 standard. The major difference between H.264 and x264 is that x264 lacks support for Adaptive Macroblock-Adaptive Frame/Field for interlace video.

 

[KeithPratt]

When I said that x264 is h.264 the person told me, that there is a difference.

There are several organisations making their own version of the H.264 codec — Apple, MainConcept, Sorenson, Dicas, x264, etc. The one that comes with your Mac and is named simply "H.264" is Apple's version. I don't think they've done much to improve it since it was released in 2005, whereas x264 is constantly being updated.

x264 comes into its own when you are aiming for a really low bit rate, or compressing difficult (that's a big topic) material. If you give decent bit rates to both Apple's H.264 and x264, there won't be much difference.

I've only tried the MyComet Quicktime component. I've had it fail to encode on one occasion, and in several instances take a lot longer to compress than Apple H.264. Other than that it's been pretty good. If you don't know what you're doing, the downsides are the intimidating number of configurable parameters, and how it can be easy to end up configuring your way into a video that's incompatible with certain playback devices (iPhone being a prime example). You can do that with Apple's H.264 too, but there are so many more opportunities to do it with x264.

Handbrake uses x264 but is a lot less intimidating.

 

[Cox Orange]

The major difference between H.264 and x264 is that x264 lacks support for Adaptive Macroblock-Adaptive Frame/Field for interlace video.

is this a big downside?
I read wikipedia, too, but that only ensured me, that h.264 and x264 are pretty much the same (or x264 being within the h.264 standard, that was set)

(...)Apple's version. I don't think they've done much to improve it since it was released in 2005, whereas x264 is constantly being updated.

Well the MyComet version I can use under 10.4.11 is from 2009 I think, but as you said it seems to be intimidatiing because of the mutliple options. The one from Henry Manson is from 2006, so it is probably not up to date, too (like Apple's).

I've only tried the MyComet Quicktime component. (...) If you don't know what you're doing, the downsides are the intimidating number of configurable parameters, and how it can be easy to end up configuring your way into a video that's incompatible with certain playback devices (iPhone being a prime example). You can do that with Apple's H.264 too, but there are so many more opportunities to do it with x264.

...and I don't really know what I am doing, I'd say. So I'd be better of with apple's h.264.

Handbrake uses x264 but is a lot less intimidating.

ok, but, with handbrake I would have another step of converting. First from iMovie DV to mpeg and then in handbrake to x264...