comparison DOCS/tech/formats.txt @ 7831:6e1c3a66d554

updated docs on realmedia

7830:8807df434a34

  - plain file, with seeking
  - STDIN, without seeking backward
  - network streaming (currently plain wget-like HTTP and MMS (.asx))
  - VCD (Video CD) track, by direct CDROM device access (not requires mounting disc)
  - DVD titles using .IFO structure, by direct DVD device access (not requires mounting disc)
  - DVD titles using menu navigation (experimental/alpha, not yet finished)

2. Demuxer/parser layer, supported file/media formats:

  - MPEG streams (ES,PES,PS. no TS support yet)
    note: mpeg demuxer silently ignore non-mpeg content, and find mpeg packets

    FPS: mpeg2 content allows variable framerate, in form of delayed frames.
    It's mostly used for playback 24fps content at 29.97/30 fps (NTSC) rate.
    (so called Telecine or 3:2 pulldown effect)
    It means you see 30 frames per second, but there are only 24 different
    pictures and some of them are shown longer to fill 30 frame time.
    If you encode such files with mencoder, using -ofps 24 or -ofps 23.98
    is recommended.

  - AVI streams.
    Two kind of RIFF AVI files exists:
    1. interleaved: audio and video content is interleaved. it's faster and

    variant of ASF, v1.0 and v2.0. v1.0 is used by their media tools (wmp and
    wme) and v2.0 is published and patented :). of course, they differ,
    no compatibility at all. (it's just a legality game)
    MPlayer supports only v1.0, as nobody ever seen v2.0 files :)
    Note, that .ASF files are nowdays come with extension .WMA or .WMV.

    Headers: Stream headers (codecs parameters) can be everywhere (in theory),
    but all files i've seen had it at the beginning of the file.
    Asf uses fixed packet size, so it is seekable without any INDEX block,
    and broken files are playable well.

    h.263), audio is either standard g.723 or Vivo Siren codec.
    
    Note, that microsoft licensed vivo stuff, and included in their netshow
    v2.0 program, so there are VfW/ACM codecs for vivo video and audio.

7831:6e1c3a66d554

  - plain file, with seeking
  - STDIN, without seeking backward
  - network streaming (currently plain wget-like HTTP and MMS (.asx))
  - VCD (Video CD) track, by direct CDROM device access (not requires mounting disc)
  - DVD titles using .IFO structure, by direct DVD device access (not requires mounting disc)
  - DVD titles using menu navigation (experimental/alpha, not yet finished!!!)
  - CDDA - raw audio from audio CD-ROM discs (using cdparanoia libs)
  - RTP streaming (mpeg-ps over multicast only)
  - Live.com streaming - support SDP/RTSP (using the live.com libs)
  - SMB - file access over samba (experimental)

2. Demuxer/parser layer, supported file/media formats:

  - MPEG streams (ES,PES,PS. no TS support yet)
    note: mpeg demuxer silently ignore non-mpeg content, and find mpeg packets

    FPS: mpeg2 content allows variable framerate, in form of delayed frames.
    It's mostly used for playback 24fps content at 29.97/30 fps (NTSC) rate.
    (so called Telecine or 3:2 pulldown effect)
    It means you see 30 frames per second, but there are only 24 different
    pictures and some of them are shown longer to fill 30 frame time.
    If you encode such files with mencoder, using -ofps 24 or -ofps 23.976
    is recommended.

  - AVI streams.
    Two kind of RIFF AVI files exists:
    1. interleaved: audio and video content is interleaved. it's faster and

    variant of ASF, v1.0 and v2.0. v1.0 is used by their media tools (wmp and
    wme) and v2.0 is published and patented :). of course, they differ,
    no compatibility at all. (it's just a legality game)
    MPlayer supports only v1.0, as nobody ever seen v2.0 files :)
    Note, that .ASF files are nowdays come with extension .WMA or .WMV.
    UPDATE: MS recently released the ASF v1.0 specs too, but it has some
    restrictions making it illegal to read by us :)

    Headers: Stream headers (codecs parameters) can be everywhere (in theory),
    but all files i've seen had it at the beginning of the file.
    Asf uses fixed packet size, so it is seekable without any INDEX block,
    and broken files are playable well.

    h.263), audio is either standard g.723 or Vivo Siren codec.
    
    Note, that microsoft licensed vivo stuff, and included in their netshow
    v2.0 program, so there are VfW/ACM codecs for vivo video and audio.

  - RealMedia files:
    A mixture of AVI and ASF features. It has mandatory headers at the
    beginning and an optional INDEX (missing in most files).
    The file is constructed of variable size chunks, with small header
    telling the stream ID, timestamp, flags (keyframe...) and size.
    But it has some features found in ASF files:
    The video is actually double-muxed, the video chunks are really
    appended fragments of the video frame. RV30+ supports B frames, so
    you have to parse some bits of the first fragment to get the real PTS.
    The audio frames are fixed size (CBR) but using the same scrambling
    (out-of-order interleaving) as in the ASF files. 
    
    Codecs: Audio is either COOK(er), SIPR(o), ATRAC3 or DNET.
    The DNET is actually a byte-swapped low-bitrate Dolby AC3 variant :)
    Video is RV10 (h263 variant), RV20 (rp G2), RV30 (rp v8) or RV40 (rp v9).
    
    FPS: variable, just like in ASF.
    
    Note, that similarity of real and asf has some background - they worked
    together on the (never finished/used) ASF v2 spec for some time.