RMVB: Why not use it?

[Kaka]

I seriously don't mind rmvb
I try to dl things in rmvb whenever I find it avaliable
(yup, from chinese torrent sites)
since it takes less time to dl plus the quality isn't bad

if I really like the show, I will eventually find the one in avi for the better quality

[eMpTy265]

Originally Posted by randomlurker123

use ur eyes? i have a 1600x1200 monitor ... jus expand the rmvb file and h264 file to full screen and u can see the diff

Unfortunately most of us don't have 1600x1200 moniters.

Not to mention that it's rare to have subs at that quality level.

Also, if files were at those resolutions, you'd need a pretty new comp to handle the h264 files.

(Sadly, I get 0.5s audio lag when I play Haruhi in 1280*760 )


***

Off the top of my head, a few reasons why 'rmvb' sucks:

1.) Bad reputation (in the past)...

2.) With the general availability of broadband, there is little need to conserve 100MB / week (unless you download 10+ shows / day)

3.) The fact that (chinese) speed-subbers prefer it doesn't help that much... since the scene becomes "either speedsubbed rmvb or HQ h264 files"

[ladholyman]

RMVBs are nice to translate from. Fast and easy.

[guest]

Originally Posted by eMpTy265

Unfortunately most of us don't have 1600x1200 moniters.

Not to mention that it's rare to have subs at that quality level.

Also, if files were at those resolutions, you'd need a pretty new comp to handle the h264 files.

(Sadly, I get 0.5s audio lag when I play Haruhi in 1280*760 )

I don't think you need a 1600x1200 moniter to see the difference. You don't even have to blow it to full screen to see that. Well, well, well, or it could be just me.

[Maceart]

Not only communists, but chinese fansubbers from Taiwan use it too, so that point's moot.

RMVB is probably not widely used here because it's a proprietery format and probably VirtualDub doesn't work with it? I dunno, never tried encoding anything in RMVB.

[Catgirls]

Originally Posted by Maceart

RMVB is probably not widely used here because it's a proprietery format and probably VirtualDub doesn't work with it?

I can get RMVB files into VirtualDub and extract the frames for avatars, but I've never encoded or re-encoded from a RMVB sources. For example this Yoshimune avatar I made was originally a RMVB source pulled through VirtualDub(Mod).

[randomlurker123]

i tried converting RMVB direct to VCD files-mpeg1 a long long time ago.. always will get audio syn problems after conversion , which occurs later on in the show. it has something to do with the variable bit rate/audio thing ... very irritating.

there's some way to overcome it after reading up on doom9 and other techie sites but its irritating and hard for amauter like me
anyway even w/o the audio syn problem , the qual still sucks when u see it on TV.

[physics223]

Personally, I don't mind using RMVB - if Chinese speedsubs in RMVB are the only sources where I can have my anime fix - for example, Gambler Legend Tetsuya has been subbed in ONLY Chinese RMVBs, so I don't mind procuring RMVBs, really. Bottom line, however, I love AVIs, OGMs, and MKVs, definitely.

[ffdshow]

I am Chinese as well. I used to watch only English subs,
but now I watch Chinese subs, too. The quality is OK for its size,
and it fits well for the quickly-die bitcomet swam.

It is just a bit slow in mac,
and my windows firewall popup when system starts,
and linux friends won't install it.

I feel that encode in RMVB, would lead to death threats
and I would be replaced immediately. Argh...

I DEFINATELY won't try to do it.

[Tsu]

Originally Posted by Xiao Feng

cause i see 100MB encode that was good as the xvid 175mb encode.

Not really. Although the resolution is the same, the quality is definitely lower (though I doubt a 100 MiB XviD encode would be much better... a good h264 encode that size definitely would be, though).
Back when I finally gave up waiting for Fushigiboshi no Futago Hime subs and started watching raws, none of the earlier episodes were seeded, so I downloaded Chinese fansubs instead. Once I cought up with the seeded raw episodes and started watching those, the quality difference became quite evident. One good example I remember was in the eyecatch; there is this rotating disc with some low-contrast text on it (Futago Hime Fine Rein ...I think). In the XviD files these were clearly visible. In the RMVB files it was hard to see if there was text there in the first place.
At any rate, from this, I doubt RealMedia has much (if any) of an advantage over XviD in terms of the filesize:quality ratio. Combined with the fact that people simply don't like Real and the increasing popularity of h264 (which can produce some very nice looking ~135 MiB files), I doubt English subbers will be switching to RMVB any time soon.

[CarrierZ]

I think RMVB shouldn't be used.






This reply is so useless.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by ffdshow

I feel that encode in RMVB, would lead to death threats and I would be replaced immediately. Argh...

I DEFINATELY won't try to do it.

Ultimately, this is probably the truth. I encoded video in RM 5/6 years ago (not anime), but it has certainly fallen out of favour in the overall English community since then. Even though Real claims same quality at 15% less bitrate than H.264, few video players are more vocally hated than RealPlayer, whether that hatred is rational or not. Sure there are other ways to use the codec without installing RealPlayer, but the stigma remains. So, the answer to the thread question ("Why not use it?") probably has as much to do with "I don't want to be mocked" as anything else.

There are still a lot of people in the English fansub community that pre-judge the quality of a fansub by the size of the video file; unlike the Chinese fansub community, I don't think keeping file sizes down has ever been a real priority. In fact, even with H.264, increasing quality at the same filesize seems to the more popular choice. So the 15% claimed bitrate savings aren't that big of a draw to those people. When you compound that with the hatred towards Real, the lack of playback support on set-top devices, and the whole "going against the grain" factor, it's pretty easy to imagine why it hasn't been used so far.

With all the people posting random image replies and death threats, I feel like I'm on some other infamous message/b/oard. Was this is a serious question or not?

[iluid]

First of all, codecs aren't the only thing that determines quality. A skilled encoder can produce a better looking 100mb file with xvid than a noob encoder using rmvb or h.264. Second, using encodes of different shows or episodes to compare codecs is useless. Unless you’re looking at two encodes of the same episode of the same show encoded from the same raw with the same filtering scripts applied, the comparison isn’t fair at all. Some video simply compresses better, and some raws suck to begin with. Saying rmvb is bad because you’re watching a blocky fansub isn’t fair; it’s not rmvb’s fault. The encoder either should’ve used a higher bitrate and/or better encoder settings, filtered better, or was stuck with a crappy raw. Or the encoder may simply be aiming for small file sizes with fair quality rather than a high quality encode with the smallest size they can get.

Anyway, from what I know about rmvb (not too much), it’s not a bad codec and is more in a class with h.264 than xvid. If you want a comparison of the compression abilities of different codecs, go to doom9… seriously; the information is already there. As for the original question, English subbers don’t use it because there’s no reason to use it. I think Chinese fansubbers started using it because they didn’t want to wait for h.264. RMVB was, afaik, available before any reasonably usable h.264 encoders/decoders. Apparently they wanted to get away from xvid/divx as soon as possible, so they switched to rmvb. Since they already use rmvb and it produces results they are satisfied with, they have no reason to switch to h.264. On the other hand, English subbers decided to wait for h.264 since they knew it was coming (and didn’t like the idea of proprietary codecs and the crappiness of their players). Now h.264 is available and in use, therefore we have no reason to switch to rmvb now. If h.264 were available in a stable, usable form when Chinese subbers decided they needed a new codec, they may very well have gone with h.264 over rmvb. Also, if h.264 didn’t exist or was still far from usable, English subbers might have very well switched to rmvb or some flavor of WMV. But, as long as we have h.264, there’s just no benefit to switching to rmvb.

[DaFool]

I think RMVB is a distinctly Chinese thing.

Couple of months back I was working with a chinese studio. We had the same client, so as per industry standard our linetests should either be Quicktime or AVI. Guess what they sent? RMVB. I mean, wtf. I was able to transcode it to quicktime, but static crept in. In the end, I had to resort to recommending install realalt (and lord knows we should use FREEWARE....oh noz!) Pretty insanely small size, by the way.

[guest]

Originally Posted by iluid

First of all, codecs aren't the only thing that determines quality. A skilled encoder can produce a better looking 100mb file with xvid than a noob encoder using rmvb or h.264. Second, using encodes of different shows or episodes to compare codecs is useless. Unless you’re looking at two encodes of the same episode of the same show encoded from the same raw with the same filtering scripts applied, the comparison isn’t fair at all. Some video simply compresses better, and some raws suck to begin with. Saying rmvb is bad because you’re watching a blocky fansub isn’t fair; it’s not rmvb’s fault. The encoder either should’ve used a higher bitrate and/or better encoder settings, filtered better, or was stuck with a crappy raw. Or the encoder may simply be aiming for small file sizes with fair quality rather than a high quality encode with the smallest size they can get.

Anyway, from what I know about rmvb (not too much), it’s not a bad codec and is more in a class with h.264 than xvid. If you want a comparison of the compression abilities of different codecs, go to doom9… seriously; the information is already there. As for the original question, English subbers don’t use it because there’s no reason to use it. I think Chinese fansubbers started using it because they didn’t want to wait for h.264. RMVB was, afaik, available before any reasonably usable h.264 encoders/decoders. Apparently they wanted to get away from xvid/divx as soon as possible, so they switched to rmvb. Since they already use rmvb and it produces results they are satisfied with, they have no reason to switch to h.264. On the other hand, English subbers decided to wait for h.264 since they knew it was coming (and didn’t like the idea of proprietary codecs and the crappiness of their players). Now h.264 is available and in use, therefore we have no reason to switch to rmvb now. If h.264 were available in a stable, usable form when Chinese subbers decided they needed a new codec, they may very well have gone with h.264 over rmvb. Also, if h.264 didn’t exist or was still far from usable, English subbers might have very well switched to rmvb or some flavor of WMV. But, as long as we have h.264, there’s just no benefit to switching to rmvb.

But I thought rmvb is very old. I don't know how old but very old. So no patience for the wait for .h264 is probably not a reason?

[Ishi]

I don't want to hear a word about RMVB...

[Zero1]

Originally Posted by Starks

Chinese fansubbers use it almost exclusively...

Why don't we?

Other than being a technology created by Real, why all the hate?

From what I can tell, files are easily compressed when encoded in an RMVB container.

It's enough work trying to introduce H.264, AAC/Vorbis, MKV/MP4 to people let alone RMVB. You will find that people coding videos for mass distribution will tend to lean toward ISO standard or open standard codecs (or alternatively, those that will reach a large user base or be interoperable), rather than closed source corpware like WMV, RMVB or ironically, MOV/Sorenson(?) (even though some aspects of MOV were the basis for MP4).

I guess if Microsoft wanted to be a bitch about it, they could tell Apple to STFU and deny them the license and ability to play back WMV files (which may well be MS shooting themselves in the foot, but it's something to think about). On the other hand, I believe anyone can buy and implement an MPEG spec (but I do think there is a seperate certification if you want to be "officially MPEG compliant", but is not mandatory). This is quite important, this is where the interoperability of MPEG standards stem from.

MPEG exists basically to say "Hey, fuck these whack corporate formats that no one knows how to deal with, or needs crazy money/licenses to be able to work with, we will create open standards". MPEG aim to provide interoperability, which is why VCD/SVCD/DVD/DVB have all used MPEG 1/2, and now HD-DVD and Bluray which support H.264 (among other formats, but I will guess MPEG-2 and H.264 will be the dominant; I don't think VC1 will get too much of a look in). IIRC, one thing about MPEG is they don't charge stupid licensing fees, I believe they get their money through sales of the specifications, which anyone can buy from their website.

You see the reason ISO standardised codecs and open standards tend to be more popular than something that is public domain for instance is because corporate bodies on it and produce products based on it, kind of like how everyone wanted to produce H.264 encoders and such; they want to cash in on the new craze or buzzword.

You see, Joe Average isn't an audiophile. Joe Average isn't as tech savvy as you or I. This means that as good as Vorbis is (though itunes AAC encoder is practically neck and neck these days), it has failed to penetrate the market as much as AAC because your average person is not an encoder; they will just accept whatever software a company provides them with. Take the iPod for example, now I don't have one, so I don't know if it supports Vorbis, or is capable of supporting Vorbis. If it can, how many average people do you know that would go to the trouble of finding this out, finding a Vorbis encoder, encoding their own tracks outside of iTunes (presumably) and uploading them to the iPod (by whatever means)? Not a lot, the average person will select MP3 since they are familliar with it, or adventurous people, or people who keep in touch with music but are not really enthusiasts as such may use AAC (since it's easy, available and interoperable). Joe average requires an idiot proof format pushed right under their nose. iTunes fills that purpose nicely.

In a similar vein, what about Mini Disc/first gen HD Walman? How many average people know of ATRAC3, or how to encode it? Few to none, yet the Sonic stage software integrates the transcoding for them, so they can just take out their brain and "press butan receive ATRAC3"

This is partly like how people didn't want fansubs to move to H.264/MKV/MP4. They found AVI easy and audio support was already there, all they needed was a single decoder. Now they are required to install a splitter, video decoder and audio decoder. This is hard work for a non tech savvy Joe Average. Fortunately, CCCP provides such an "idiot proof format" for fansub viewing (provides video decoder, audio decoder and MKV/MP4 splitter among other cool things) and CoreAVC provides a partial "idiot proof format" (installs the splitter and H.264 decoder, but not audio decoder; a shame). Since CoreAVC and CCCP aren't worldwide known names like Apple or Microsoft, they have to promote stuff of their own accord, which brings the codecs to Joe Average, rather than Joe Average going to the CODECs (how can he look for what he doesn't know he needs?).


So basically, interoperability is one of the reasons why people do not use RMVB; and they do not like the idea of being confined to a player or two. It's probably possible to view RMVB via RealAlternative, but again not everyone is tech savvy enough to know about RealAlternative and will just assume you need Real Player.

Originally Posted by SWPIGWANG

I don't think DivX have ever come close to RM in terms of annoyance.....

Not as much for the end user, but DivX has really fouled things up with MPEG-4 ASP and it's usage in general. It's like follow the leader, but the leader was doing it wrong all along, and now the damage is done, so we carry on not caring anyway (Fortunately H.264 has been seen as a fresh start, and people are producing non whack encodes now).

Originally Posted by Xiao Feng

i really want to see some group to use, casue that format is not bad. it just got a bad rep from the past. cause i see 100MB encode that was good as the xvid 175mb encode. but why? chinese people use it?

1. file size are small even for good encode, if they use 175mb on rmvb then it will kill the xvid one.

2. codec!!!! omfg, people, real player plays this and no more other f***ing codec to dl. chinese people are simple minded ^^;; ( i am chinese so, don't say i am racist)

3. casue... everyone use it in china ( can't beat the power of bililon)

p.s. me (my) are bad at english, so dont' mind my grammar.

Your first argument applies for H.264 also, it's more efficient so similar quality encodes can be made at a lower filesize, or keep the same filesize and it can look better than the XviD encode.

Yes, it seems quite simple to look at it like that, but a lot of people don't like Real Player and won't install it. In this case I'd rather install a codec so I can watch it in any of my favourite media players.

Originally Posted by Starks

Lest we all forget, the AVI container was created by Microsoft...

Indeed, back in 1992 or so when I was 8 years old and didn't have a PC. God AVI is old It's as I was saying though, evil it may be (well it only officially became evil when DivX started off the trend of hacking B-frames into AVI), it was installed on every version of Windows since 1992, and from 95SE and onwards, to watch the typical XviD fansub, all you would need would be the video decoder (since 95SE was bundled with a Fraunhofer MPEG1 Layer 3 (MP3) decoder. God MP3 is old
Of course AVI is so old now that information is pretty much freely available, it has a huge userbase considering how many computers have Windows installed, so it has a sense of interoperability (hell, even my mobile phone plays XviD+MP3 in AVI encodes with a 3rd party player. It plays SP/ASP + MP3/AAC in MP4 off the bat).

Originally Posted by Potatochobit

h264/mp4 is probably going to be the best way to move forward. rmvb is really made for streaming video. that is why its simple and no hassle to deal with.

Indeed, but H.264/MP4 is streamable too

Originally Posted by TougeSil80

RMVB will never catch on in English fansub scene. Most fansub groups rather use H264 with uses lot more cpu resource. I don't get it either but that's just the way it is.

I can't comment on the CPU usage for RMVB encodes, but H.264 isn't as insane requirements wise as people think. CoreAVC has shown that. FFDShow on the other hand is/was rather unoptimised until recently, because the person working on H.264 decoding in FFDshow/libavcodec, is the same guy (pengvado) who is working on x264 and Snow.

Originally Posted by jpwong

Even if it's a good codec now, most people who were around for the RealPlayer G2, RealOne days have it etched into their memories about how absolutely horrible and unplayable a 640x480 RealMedia encode was. It's reputation preceeds it no matter what it's like now. Kinda like how it seems almost a given to associate the former AnimeJunkies fansub group with poor quality translations even if they did get a lot better later on.

Yeah, MKV used to have a similar sort of stigma to it (still has with some leechers), a lot of people would see MKV encodes and be like "LOL stay away, get teh AVI instead lol". This was probably because back in the days when you had OGM and MKV, you might get an OGM give you an explorer.exe crash and the newbie leecher being like "non AVI = crash". Perhaps they had an incomplete/unstable build of FFDShow which would cause something to go ass up with one of the streams in the MKV or OGM and they would just assume it was MKV/OGM's fault. Things like that are hard to shake off, but I see a lot more MKV's around these days, so it looks like people are warming to it (by choice or not). Thankfully OGM usage seems to have completely died. One thing to remember though, is that it's maybe not all OGM's fault. IIRC OGM wasn't even designed to store such things as XviD encodes and MP3 (AFAIK it's Vorbis and Theora).

Originally Posted by Sides

IIRC one of the things about rm, was vfr, which some people disliked
and of course the limitation of tools in the beginning.
Obviously vfr isn't really a problem anymore, unless you want to convert it to a DVD.
And as for tools, there are some good helix gui out there, plus avs input support

I suspected it would natively use VFR, just like WMV (forced VFR is a cheap trick IMO). If VFR is what gives RMVB the "edge" over H.264 encodes, then it should be noted that you can produce much VFR H.264 encodes in MP4 or MKV, and also is more flexible; you can override bad decisions so that you don't decimate more than you want (with stuff like WMV you have no say in what gets chopped out).

Originally Posted by Maceart

RMVB is probably not widely used here because it's a proprietery format and probably VirtualDub doesn't work with it? I dunno, never tried encoding anything in RMVB.

Yes, I would say you've hit the nail on the head. How could I neglect the fact that Virtualdub plays such a huge part in fansubbing (or it did). I barely use Virtualdub anymore, I only use Virtualdubmod to preview my avisynth scripts and output a lossless. Encoding is then done in the x264 command line, or encraw, which is the XviD command line.

Originally Posted by Catgirls

I can get RMVB files into VirtualDub and extract the frames for avatars, but I've never encoded or re-encoded from a RMVB sources. For example this Yoshimune avatar I made was originally a RMVB source pulled through VirtualDub(Mod).

I think he means encode to it using Virtualdub, ie there is no VfW encoder for it, accessible in Virtualdub. Extracting or transcoding is easy, you can do that with practically any file as long as you have the decoder/splitter and avisynth.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

With all the people posting random image replies and death threats, I feel like I'm on some other infamous message/b/oard. Was this is a serious question or not?

I see what you did there, but I missed the drama posts :<

Originally Posted by DaFool

I think RMVB is a distinctly Chinese thing.

Hmm, I think my "theory" applies here too.

Originally Posted by Zero1 @ www.animemusicvideos.org

It is/was quite a mystery to me, but a while ago I gave it some thought and it's quite possible that it simply comes down to the language barrier. Think about it; Virtualdub is relatively simple to set up, there are only a few things you need to know for basic tasks and most of those can be accessed by shortcut keys, this makes the fact that it's in English pretty much a moot point, not to mention that they probably have their own equivalent to Virtualdub, or a translation of it (or even a translated screenshot/guide like how we get for Winny).
Now lets come to the CODECs; the terminology used in them isn't as general as you might find in Virtualdub; I mean most if no all programs have file and edit tabs, save as commands and such, but CODECs can be very technical and confusing even for native english speakers.
XviD and DivX are coded in English, and I don't think they have Japanese versions, now consider Microsoft, a huge, worldwide company. The Japanese probably use WMV9 because MS has a Japanese version of the ACM codec, so it's easier for them to use than an English version of DivX etc.

So that's my theory, Japanese people use WMV9 because Microsoft provide a Japanese version, but they don't use XviD or DivX as much because it's English. You will get some Japanese using English programs, who obviously speak the language, or are able enough to fumble through it just like we do with Winny or Share, or any other Japanese games/programs/products.

So yeah, I'm hazarding a guess that Realmedia's encoding tools are available in Chinese, and the above difficulties for Japanese raw cappers remain the same for Chinese fansubbers. I could be way off, but being an outsider, it seems like a logical explanation to me.

[Kaoru Chujo]

The problem for me is the player. RealPlayer is so awful to use (can't navigate easily) that I wouldn't wish it on people. MPC can be great with .rmvb files, but most people would use RealPlayer, unfortunately. If that weren't the case, I think .rmvb would be a real possibility. Decent files are very small. But perhaps now that there is x264, there isn't as much reason to try it.

[Thelastguardian]

I hate it when people bash a technology just because it is a proprietery standard.

Proprietery != bad technology

From my actual experience-

RV10 is excellent if you are aiming for low bit-rate encodes.
If I had to compare the quality of the formats, I would compare a typical RV10 anime episode (<100mb) to Divx4 (~200mb?).


This is assuming that both encoders know what they are doing. It is very easy for encoders to screwed up RM encoding for some unknown reasons. I have seen some very horrible RM encodings: even mpeg2 looks better with the same file size.

Even when you compared it to xvid, RV10 is not bad*. Most xvid encodes are about ~175 mb; I dare to say that RV10 is only 20% worse in color, blockiness, and fluidity.

Oh and RM is a container: I have seen people put xvid, divx, along with mp3, AAC etc. into RM. As for Real format, you have RMVB(I never tried it), RV9, RV10, and RV11(is not out yet, but some groups said they encode in it.

I don't know about h264, though. Every h264 anime encoder has some sort of mentality that he has to caps his encodes at ~170mb. I have yet to see a h264 anime episode encoded at 100mb, so I don't know how good a "professional" encoder can push it.
Whatever it is, though, I am pretty sure my cpu can't handle it. (jk

As for why chinese people use RM, I have 1 simple answer: file size. As I have said before, RV doesn't look that bad compared to xvid/h264. In fact, RV encoded files look the same as a traditional CRT TV. Remember, we are talking about China: we don't have high quality cable/satellite services here ^_^ People see no reason to download an encode 40% larger just so that they watch anime. RV is good enough for them. That is why most big groups release an AVI(collection) and a RM(viewing) version for most series.

/rant start
I appreciate the efforts going to h264/mp4/mkv. Yes h264 looks better than XVID, but the increase in quality doesn't justify me upgrading my computer. It doesn't matter how good h264 looks if I can't play it smoothly on my laptop**. /my 2 cents

*I hate Real as much as the next geek; But you have to give credit where it is due and, frankly, R10 is an excellent format.
**yeah I got burned with the Superman Return + 911 whatever h264 (qt) trailers on apple's website.

RM - RealMedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealMedia
RV - RealVideo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealVideo

[Starks]

Arbitrary filesize caps such as 175MB and 233MB are a consequence of our reliance on archaic 700MB CDs for storage and a reasonable denominator to divide the space to maintain quality. With DVDs in the mainstream and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray on the way, why haven't we adapted to a more efficient division of disk space?

As an encoder, I can't understand why we can't put the CDs of the past behind us and venture deeper in our skills and explore the possibilities of lower filesizes. Why are we so afraid?