H.264/AVC levels of DVD Ripper Affect Your Conversion Effects

These days, I did an implementation of Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum and Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate. When it’s done, my eyes are dropped into a tiny spot, where a set of options of Video Level ranking would be presented on both of them if specific output file profile was one of AVC videos. That is an interesting setting and I just dimly recalled something similar to what I had read on a tech article about audio and video coding.

From a sweaty work on searching, I eventually retrieve that presentation naming of The Emerging H.264/AVC Standard. It represents H.264/AVC, the current video coding standard especially in comparison to the former one – MPEG-2, Bla Bla Bla…… Suddenly, one paragraph flips onto my sight perfectly matching what I’m seeking. It’s been said, “Eleven levels are defined, specifying upper limits for the picture size (in macroblocks), the decoder-processing rate (in macroblocks per second), the size of the multi-picture buffers, the video bit-rate and the video buffer size.”

We can see the levels essentially specify the conformance points designed to facilitate interoperability and correlations between various applications of the H.264/AVC standard. In terms of that article, detailed references for the level specification relate to maximum number of macroblocks per picture, the maximum number of macroblocks per second, maximum decoded picture buffer size, maximum bit rate, maximum coded picture buffer size and vertical motion vector ranges.

Maybe it’s a little hard to understand these technical terms, let me tell you some. For example, frame means an image captured at some instant in time and a field is the set of every-other line that would form an image at some instant in time; macroblock is an area less than 16 by 16 pixels in a frame; buffer is defined as compensation for a difference in rate of flow of data, or time of occurrence of events, when transferring data from one to another, and so on. And I find out a parameter comparison between the level rankings of these two DVD rippers as below:
http://www.mp4converter.net/images/upload/H264_DVD_02.jpg
Tips: Output video quality would be capable for digital TV applications with parameters of level 40 chosen.

http://www.mp4converter.net/images/upload/H264_DVD_01.jpg
I hope it helps. And you may find more deservings, if you try these two DVD rippers (http://www.xilisoft.com/dvd-ripper-platinum.html & http://www.xilisoft.com/dvd-ripper-ultimate.html ) and contrast the difference of conversion effects affected with each level.


--Post edited on 14/01/2008 09:52:00