Question: Next-gen Video Decoding & media support

[AlNom]

This should be a solved problem next-gen right? AMD's AvivoHD should pretty much take care of it all compared to 360/PS3? I'm not too up-to-date on support for advanced profiles. I'm missing something about why it's been such a hassle to support MKV or only certain mpeg-4 profiles.

Shouldn't this mean that we ought to see game developers use these advanced codecs instead of Bink since decoding will no longer be done on the CPU

 

[patsu]

In this gen, video are usually used to cover up load time. KZ3 ended up using low bitrate Bink video to minimize the cutscene overhead (memory and Blu-ray streaming bandwidth). Some other games use higher quality videos and AC3 but I don't expect anyone to use 40mbps BR quality video anyhow.

There is also codec royalties involved.

 

[AlNom]

Right, but I thought we identified that one of the reasons they used Bink was because of the low CPU overhead. Streaming bandwidth should be better with the higher compressed video instead of Bink, no?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah, low bitrate stuff should look better on h.264 than Bink. If the only advantage to Bink is low overhead, you should be right about hardware support consigning Bink to the history books.

 

[Jabjabs]

One would assume that a low CPU overhead would only be an issue if you are running high performance code at the same time. Considering that the only time video decoding ever seems to be used for it cut scene's or hiding load times it still does't seem like h.264 would be much of a burden even if the data stream is being decompressed and sorted in the background.

I am still shocked to see Bink being used, it should of died over a decade ago.

 

[TheWretched]

Well... Killzone wasn't soooo low bitrate either. Given that all cutscenes had to be included twice (one set of 2D and one for 3D), it still filled up a full dual layer blu ray.

 

[patsu]

Right, but I thought we identified that one of the reasons they used Bink was because of the low CPU overhead. Streaming bandwidth should be better with the higher compressed video instead of Bink, no?

I have no idea. Someone else also mentioned royalty $$$.

 

[AlNom]

Well, how about VC-1 on Microsoft's side?

 

[patsu]

I believe VC-1 needs royalty fees too since it infringes on MPEG-LA patent pool. Was told Bink is very cheap to license. May be VP8 next ? ^_^

 

[bkilian]

Bink is cheap to license, and cheap to decode. It's also ugly as hell.

I'm hoping to see more in-engine stuff, especially as the engines get to the point where the difference between pre-rendered and in-engine is one of degrees, not huge leaps like it currently is.

 

[TheWretched]

I agree... I really prefer in engine stuff, as it allows the developers to include better character customization. In my opinion, Mass Effect and Dragon Age solved it pretty well. Some cutscenes used video (although the UGLIEST encoding ever, due to DVD size contraints, even with the Steam version on PC). Yet others like Uncharted don't. Well, the customization is pretty limited, too, but still. As far as I know, ND mostly did it to lower load times. Though now with the 3D option it has the disadvantage of having to include a second encode... though I do think they could implement it as blu ray movies do it (left eye at "full resolution" and right eye as a difference image), but that'd mean an increased decoding complexity, which Bink might not be able to do.

Also, they said that Bink uses extremely little memory, which is probably the biggest concern on PS3, as they also have bandwidth to throw with, alleviating the issues of low resolution video... but usually most mp games use the same encodes on both systems, so the PS3 can't really use the BDROM to its advantage.