Mayayana wrote:
"Bill in Co" wrote

I'm not sure there really is an *equivalent* of Photoshop.

Paint Shop Pro

I respectfully disagree that it is equivalent (but see my comment below on
equivalence). (And just for the record, I do like PSP, and actually use it,
but only an older version, which satisfies me just fine). I have no need or
use for Photoshop and all it's "elegance" and bloat. That said, I well
imagine a graphics designer or artist most likely would. (I could probably
make a similar comment about the old Adobe Audition 3, but I'll stop here
:-)

For MS Office I'd say the same thing too,
although there are some pretty good clones. WPS Office or Softmaker
Free Office comes to mind. Or maybe LibreOffice. But, let's be honest
- none of these are *equivalent*.

I'd agree Libre Office is not equal, but I would
say it's equivalent. If you're in a corporate job

Equivalent to me means equal to.

where you need 100% consistency with MS Office
then you need MS Office. But if you just need to
do what MS Office can do then there's Libre Office.

Similarly with PSP. I think there's another option,
too, that used to be Mac-only, but I can't think of
the name now. I've been using PSP for 20 years.
I'm sure there's a filter or two that PS has and PSP
doesn't. But the main reason PS is a success is
the same reason MS Office is a success. They've
established a standard in business, with people
for whom wasting hundreds of dollars on overpriced
software is a bargain compared to not using the
standard.

As I said, I use an older version of PSP and really like it. (And I have no
use for Photoshop, either). I'm just not into it. (But audio
restoration - that's another story).

Yes, it means smaller files. A LOT smaller files due to *much* better
compression. Something similar applies to WMV files, too: WMV9 is
vastly superior to WMV7.

If these freebie programs are using the old codecs, then you're really
not getting much. But ok, I'll concede they're at least better than MPG
(mpeg2), for what that's worth. :-)


Interesting. I'd be curious to see someone do a
test, comparing the two. It sounds like you're
not sure whether it's old or not, but if something
else makes smaller files I'd be interested. Though at
this point, of all the things I tried that work on XP,
only Cute and the ByteScout program were without
problems. Bytescout also uses its own libraries
and saves as WMV9. But it did try to call an IP
at Cloudflare.

From what I recall, the difference between h.264 (or x264), and say h.263 or
Xvid, is about comparable to the difference between WMV9 and WMV7 (which
probably makes sense, given the differences in their implementation and when
they came out). I can't recall how much difference in compressibility and
filesize there was, but I distinctly recall it was very significant when I
tried saving some video files using either one. But if you want a
guessestimate, just from memory, I'd say it was on the order of 25-50%
(reduction in filesize for comparable appearance).

There are a lot of articles on the web covering these different codecs for
the interested reader, and the design and understanding of what goes into
each of these different compression modalities. It is *quite* complicated
(on how the macroblocks are encoded, etc, etc), and a bit above my paygrade.
One general tradeoff is the tradeoff made between the required processing
power, compression level, resultant artifacts, and the resultant filesize -
for comparable visual results. The newer codecs require a bit more
processing power (and time) - and that's one big tradeoff. But the ones
I've mentioned aren't even that new anymore. We're now heading into h.265
territory, which offers double the data compression of h.264 (I did find
that documented).

When I open the Cute video I made in Avidemux it
says codec 4CC: DIVX. VLC just says it's MPEG-4.
Encoded by Lavf54.63.104. That's all Greek to me.
I don't know anything about video encoding options.
You're saying that's outdated and much bigger than
it needs to be?

Maybe somebody can
investigate a few of their programs further.

Like you, perhaps? If everyone tries some
of them, we get a good sample.

I'll think about it - perhaps moreso with regards to the "mp4 video
converter", which I'd probably have more use for, since I'm not doing
much "screencasting" these days. :-)

I was thinking more that you could try some of
these screen recorders. So far no one but me is
reporting tests. As for converting, I think Avidemux
or VLC can do most of that sort of thing.

If compression is the most important factor to you, I don't think this is
all that great. As I mentioned, it's not even using the h264 codec for
its mp4 files, from what was posted, so I feel it's a bit stuck in the
stone age. :-) But it also might be why it is free, too.


Yes, but are you sure? It sounds like you
haven't actually tried it. And what's the stone
age? Are we talking 10% bigger? 500% bigger?
If you know about video formats then maybe
you can explain the difference here.

Around 25-50% as my guessestimate from memory (i.e. not 10%, and certainly
NOT 500%!). You might be able to find a good and more accurate comparison
on some websites. (I took a quick look, but didn't).

As I mentioned before, I had worked with some mp4 and wmv video files that
used those types of codecs, and the results were significant enough that I
basically gave up on anything that used either wmv7 or h263, due to the
concominant larger filesizes and poorer compression ratios.