Quality comparison between standard/hq/hq2/streaming profiles
For many popular devices, DVD Catalyst 4 offers a variety of profiles, such as Standard and HQ, and for some even Fast and HQ2, and selecting one that fits your needs can be a little confusing. This article is intended to clear some things up and also contains (streaming) links to a trailer converted using the settings for the profile.
* Standard profile. These are settings we (would) use ourselves for our own conversions. For the different devices, the default settings using the standard profile (nothing behind the device name) are capable of producing good looking video at a reasonable file-size. For our own mobile video experience, we prefer to have a fairly large collection of movies and episodes available, which enables us to choose something to watch based on our mood or interest at the time.By watching a movie or TV show on a portable device, you are already aware of the fact that you could also watch the movie at home on your (HD)TV, so by watching it on the go, you already made a compromise. With that in mind, having a perfect replica (while possible) is not really a top priority.
For the Droid 1/Droid 2/Droid X Standard profiles, DVD Catalyst 4 converts your movies to 800Kbps H264 video format at a resolution of 848×480. Audio is encoded at 128 Kbps Stereo
streaming sample
(note, watching this trailer over 3G will work, but due to the quality settings used, you might experience buffering every few seconds. We recommend connecting to WiFi for optimal results)
As you can tell from the sample clip, the quality is actually quite good. We often hear from people that files created with DVD Catalyst, even when similar settings are used, are created with a better quality and convert faster than when converting the same video using different software products.
* HQ/HQ1 profile. The settings used in the HQ profiles are intended to produce great looking video files, but while you gain a slightly better quality, the conversions are a bit slower and the resulting filesize is a bit bigger. For most movies, the standard profile has our own personal preference, however, for “faster” movies, such as ones that contain car chases and/or explosions, the HQ profile will result in a better quality during these scenes.
For the Droid 1/Droid 2/Droid X HQ1 profiles, DVD Catalyst 4 converts your movies to 1000Kbps H264_HQ video format at a resolution of 848×480. Audio is encoded at 160 Kbps Stereo
streaming sample
(note, watching this trailer over 3G will work, but due to the quality settings used, you will likely experience buffering every few seconds. We recommend connecting to WiFi for optimal results)
* HQ2 profile. The settings used in the HQ2 profile are near the maximum capabilities of the selected device in terms of video playback. They produce video files that are basically identical to the original video source, and are perfect to be used for playback on TV using either a HD Media Player device or an HDMI cable (if the option is available). Quality isn’t that much different from the HQ profile, but if you look close enough, you can see the difference.
For the Droid 1/Droid 2/Droid X HQ1 profiles, DVD Catalyst 4 converts your movies to 1500Kbps H264_HQ video format at a resolution of 848×480. Audio is encoded at 160 Kbps Stereo
streaming sample
(note, watching this trailer over 3G will work, but due to the quality settings used, you will experience buffering every few seconds. We recommend connecting to WiFi for optimal results)
Streaming:
The previous video samples were created using quality settings not really intended for streaming. While possible, you will need a good reception to be able to play them without buffering. With the release of our free MP4 Streaming Server application, we added some streaming profiles for a variety of different devices.
Because streaming over the internet greatly depends on the upload speed of your internet connection for the computer that provides access to the files, as well as the download speed, the settings for these profiles are based on certain commonly used internet speeds. The quality indication, Kbps, used for video files directly translates into your internet connection. For streaming files created using the standard Droid profile, you will need 800Kbps (for video) + 128Kbps (for audio) totaling 928Kbps, or almost 1Mbit. The HQ2 profile, 1500Kbps + 160Kbps totals to over 1.5Mbit required as UPLOAD to be able to stream properly.
Unless you are among the lucky few to have an internet connection capable of handling such a datarate, some compromises have to be made. The most obvious settings to modify are the quality settings. By lowering the video and audio quality, the total bitrate required lowers as well, resulting in a better playback experience. However, by lowering the quality setting of the video, the actual quality of the video will suffer as well. To overcome this, you can adjust the screen resolution of the video to match the quality setting. While the video portion will become smaller (it will be upscaled to fit your device screen during playback though) the quality of the video will go up.
sample video fully optimized for 512Kbps (custom screen resolution 456×256, same aspect ratio as the Droid screen)
sample video at original resolution encoded for 512Kbps streaming (original 848×480 Droid resolution)
*Streaming 768Kbps. As the name suggests, this setting is optimized to stream video at an upload speed (host computer) of 768Kbps. Video is encoded at 500Kbps at a resolution of 512×288, audio at 128Kbps Stereo, totaling at 628Kbps, leaving s0me room for internet inconsistencies. A 2 hour movie requires about 550MB (almost 60 hours of video on a 16GB memorycard).
Sample video
*Streaming 512Kbps. This setting is optimized to stream video at an upload speed (host computer) of 512Kbps. Video is encoded at 380Kbps at a resolution of 456×256, audio at 128Kbps Stereo, totaling at 508Kbps. A 2 hour movie requires about 450MB (almost 70 hours of video on a 16GB memorycard).
Sample video
*Streaming 256 Kbps. Optimized for streaming over a 256Kbps internet upload speed. Video is encoded at 180Kbps with a resolution of 256×144 , audio at 64Kbps mono, totaling 244Kbps. A 2 hour movie requires about 220MB (almost 150 hours of video on a 16GB memorycard).
Sample video
(note: by selecting Mono for audio, you can basically cut the audio quality in half. 128Kbps Stereo is basically 64Kbps on each side. With mono, both left and right side are merged into 1, which is then played on both sides, making the sound quality of 64Kbps mono the same as 128Kbps Stereo, but at half the size needed. During playback, the only difference is that stereo fx such as hearing a car moving from one side to the other are lost. You will just hear a car.
*Streaming 128 Kbps. Optimized for streaming over a 128Kbps internet upload speed. Video is encoded at 80Kbps with a resolution of 200×112 , audio at 32Kbps mono, totaling 112Kbps. A 2hour movie takes up about 115MB (almost 280 hours of video on a 16GB memorycard).
Sample video
(note: Yes, the quality in the last few samples is not amazing. However, keep in mind that the last one, 128Kbps requires an internet connection only double that of Dial-Up! Almost 20 years ago there was ISDN, a digital phone-internet connection that was capable of bundling 2 phone lines to enhance your internet experience. This 20 year old technology is enough to stream video. Of course most people now have either cable or DSL internet, so I doubt that anyone would use the 128Kbps Streaming Profile, but still, if you want streaming video on your phone, and do not have an unlimited dataplan, it might just be what you need.
