[Asterisk-video] MPEG4 part 2 video support

[Michael (qq12345)]

Hi Florian,

nice to see, that you emphasized some video coding theory.
Yes, H.263 is very old and very poor. A lot of artefacts are usually seen.
Fast movement with very low bitrate is a mess.
So, not ideal for video telephony with today's requirements according
to quality.

MPEG-4 SP at L0 is the easiest MPEG-4 encoding and a lot of
tools inside MPEG-4 are disabled. But it is the closest toolset
to H.263.

Perhaps you have doubts, why so many mobile phones upload H.263
streams as Web 2.0 User Generated Content UGC to your ViiF platform?
It is a very easy reason. Licensing costs:

For every MPEG-4 _stream_, _encoder_, _decoder_, _stored content_ you
have to pay royalty fees for "System", "Video", and "Audio". 
All mobile phone manufacturers pay
fees for decoding MPEG-video for every sold mobile. 
But they reject paying fees for encoding video, too. There is not really a
user requirement.
Therefore they use the fallback and use for encoding H.263.
All H.-standards are from ITU-T and they take care of royalty free
algorithms. Good luck.
So, if you change your offer for streams of MPEG-4 content to a broad
publicity, 
you should sign a contract with MPEG LA. Therefore I assume, you should
speak
with your CFO first.... :-)

Besides these legal issues: The quality of the encoded streams
depend heavily on the experience people stick into the video and audio
encoders. Some companies have very good video quality
for mobile 2G networks, while big operators do that with
3G and a lot more bandwidth. Of course, companies like Akamai,
Limelight, Dr. Materna claim to be the best, but there are some
small booths being better, but not so well known, of course.

But all of this is out of scope of the business analysts
while making money.

(Hm, sounds like I am a little bit bored...)

More inline...
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-video-bounces at lists.digium.com 
> [mailto:asterisk-video-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of 
> Florian Greb ViiF
> Cc: floriangreb at web.de
> Subject: [Asterisk-video] MPEG4 part 2 video support

> Hello list,
> we've had some trouble with video quality with H.263, which 
> does not seem to be optimal.
:-)

> A guy from radvision states here
> ( http://www.commsdesign.com/design_corner/OEG20030128S0010 ): 
> "The 3G-324M standard calls out the H.263 codec as mandatory 
> and MPEG-4 as recommended codec for video processing. 
True. (I have in mind H.261 is mandatory? And even h.263 is already
optional? Correct?)

> However, MPEG-4 is the 3G-324M standard de-facto used by all 
> major supporting vendors.
Yes, but ... look before...

> Resiliency and high efficiency make MPEG-4 codec particularly 
> well suited for 3G-324M."
[...]
> Having read that, we'd like to use MPEG4 part 2 simple 
> profile 1 level 0 as the video codec. 
Which is more or less H.263.

> Looking at this patch 
> (http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=8663) from 2006, Asterisk 
> should already be able to pass MPEG4 part2 video.
> As support for this MPEG4 part 2 codec is not mandatory, 
> every video played must be available in both formats, and 
> there must be a way to select the respective file according 
> to the video codec negotiated by H.245.
Florian, if it is the de-facto standard, you can focus on MPEG-4. :-)

> Furthermore, there is the need for an asterisk app to play 
> and save MPEG4.
MP4Play plays and stores MPEG-4 files. 3GP containers.
One of your core business features.

> The only mails I found in the Asterisk Video archive ( 
> http://www.asteriskguru.com/archives/asterisk-video-how-to-int
> egrate-mpeg4visual-h264-mpeg4-p-vt108615.html?highlight=mpeg4 
> and 
> http://www.asteriskguru.com/archives/asterisk-video-integratin
> g-mpeg4-video-codec-in-asterisk-vt85784.html?highlight=mpeg4 
> ) are not really helpful.

> So, my questions are:
> Has anybody ever done it? 
> Is there any patch?
> Are there any Experiences?
There is another branch in Digium.
> Are there other things needed to change?
Capabilities exchange procedure. Signalling on Layer 1,2,3 or so.

> Is this guy from radvision right? Do most mobile phones really support
> MPEG4 part2 and has it really better video quality?
Yes.
But you have to distinguish: local playback, streaming, video call, java.
It is not said, that they support all 4 items. Marketing always claims
MPEG-4 support.

> Kind regards,
> 
> Florian

Greetings from germany,
Michael