Re: ANYONE got any idea how to use Toast (version 8)?

DManzaluni wrote:

Again I think I am oversimplifying here: The Archos gives the option
to record as mpeg or avi files. I chose avi as a default. Arent I
entitled to assume these avi files will play on any computer which has
either quick time installed or whichever version of media player plays
avi files?

No. An avi file is like a sausage. It can be stuffed with many things, within
some limits. The limits are one video and one audio stream, but I think the
audio stream can have substreams. There some other things such as indexes and
a maximum size of 2gigabytes per "chunk", meaning a file bigger than 2gig
is really internally split into 2g parts, but it has little or no meaning to
the user.

The encoding of the file an be anything, and there is are lots of encoding
schemes that can be used, not every program can play all (or even most)
of them. Quicktime only plays a few encoding schemes, and media player
even less.

You can add decoder programs (called codecs from Coder/Decoder) externally
so that these programs can decode more video files. VLC has many, you can
also add to Windows the k-lite codec pack which adds over 100 of them.

It is important to note that this is a contest, codec developers are always
working on codecs that run faster (so they can be ported to cheaper devices),
use less memory, and produce smaller files. Where as codec users are trying
to stick with simple codecs that are universally available, so someone does
not have to download a new codec just to play your video.

Anyone remember the Sorenson codec (I may have spelled his name wrong) that
Apple went "whole hog" over a few years ago? The eventually dropped the idea
they wanted everthing to be encoded with it, because not everyone wanted to
watch videos using quicktime, or even worse, quicktime pro.


I THINK I have played them on some standalone dvd players
but am not too concerned with this UNLESS someone tells me that the
quality of the re-played avi file isnt going to be as good as that of
some encoded file created with ffmpeg or videolan or adobe video etc
etc?


I kind of does not matter. In almost every case, you can not improve a
file by re-encoding it. You may be able to make it smaller, but if there is
any loss in the coding/decoding process (which is just about all of them), then
it will be magnified. For example, if your original file is encoded with a 90%
quality codec and you re-encode it with a 95%, you end up with 95% of 90%,
not 95% of 100% and so on.

Sometimes you can do signal processing on a file to enhance something, such
as contrast, or brightness, etc, but you are giving something else up to
compensate. For example, more brightness means more shadow detail, but
less highlight detail and vice-versa. On the other hand increasing the
brightness to make the shadows more visible, won't create detail that is not
there, you get lighter shades of "black".

So don't worry about it unless someone complains their playback system has
trouble with a specific codec.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx N3OWJ/4X1GM
.

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