Another 3 months development needed?

All right,yestoday we know that M8 specs still pending,today we know
maybe,we have to wait 3 months more for the B-frame
link

The link above is a voting J.W started it to asking users on the official forum.

Can you accept that M8 can't playback B-frame video signals?

A、I accept it,waiting is torment,I hope that M8 could on the market,ASAP.

B、I do not! even it means I will suffer another 3-month delay,I prefer a perfect M8.


You guys could see the results in that link.

Ha Ha HA, once again we get another delay, but this time he is trying to throw it as our choice. If we say we want to be able to playback B-frame video signals then they will delay it by 3 months but will say it is not their fault as it was the customer who chose it.

The little fate I had that this will come out with specs anywhere near what was originally said, is getting smaller and smaller everytime he opens his mouth.

sigh

who cares, release it already and update sw on the go

What's the B frame?

Originally Posted by SteveMB93

What's the B frame?

It's the reason you have to convert your videos for use with the M6.

Originally Posted by darkado

who cares, release it already and update sw on the go

Good idea darkado, let's hope they make a good decision about this. And let's hope even more that firmware updates will be much simpler than on the M6. Their firmware updates need to be more user friendly as not everyone wh might buy this will be tech savvy like us.

Originally Posted by SteveMB93

What's the B frame?

Also a good question SteveMB93, so i check google and this came up:

Originally Posted by webopedia

Short for bi-directional frame, or bi-directional predictive frame, a video compression method used by the MPEG standard. In a motion sequence, individual frames of pictures are grouped together (called a group of pictures, or GOP) and played back so that the viewer registers the video’s spatial motion. As the name suggests, B-frames rely on the frames preceding and following them. B-frames contain only the data that have changed from the preceding frame or are different from the data in the very next frame.

P-frames and B-frames are also referred to as delta frames.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Bi-directional predicted frames (or slices)

• Require the prior decoding of some other picture(s) in order to be decoded.
• May contain both image data and motion vector displacements and combinations of the two.
• Include some prediction modes that form a prediction of a motion region (e.g., a macroblock or a smaller area) by averaging the predictions obtained using two different previously-decoded reference regions.
• In older standard designs (such as MPEG-2), B pictures are never used as references for the prediction of other pictures. As a result, a lower quality encoding (resulting in the use of fewer bits than would otherwise be the case) can be used for such B pictures because the loss of detail will not harm the prediction quality for subsequent pictures.
• In H.264, may or may not be used as references for the decoding of other pictures (at the discretion of the encoder).
• In older standard designs (such as MPEG-2), use exactly two previously-decoded pictures as references during decoding, and require one of those pictures to precede the B picture in display order and the other one to follow it.
• In H.264, can use one, two, or more than two previously-decoded pictures as references during decoding, and can have any arbitrary display-order relationship relative to the picture(s) used for its prediction.
• Typically require fewer bits for encoding than either I or P pictures do.

Originally Posted by Th3_uN1Qu3

It's the reason you have to convert your videos for use with the M6.

Does this mean that playback will not be possible if it is not included?

From reading on the web, it says it is required for use in showing the difference between frames in a movie.

There is some misinformation here.. I was following the huge amount of new posts by J.Wong, and it seems that this is in fact an hardware issue.

The problem is that the 6410 processor cannot do hardware decoding of B-frames. This is a problem because most video content found on the internet uses B-frames to improve compression ratio. One member asked if B-frames can be decoded using software-based codecs, but JW says that software decoding at full 720x480 will not be smooth. So basically there are two alternatives on that poll:

(1)
Don't change anything in hardware, and forget about hardware decoded B-frames. Software decoding is still possible but is unlikely to look good at full 720x480.

(2)
Use another processor, which would mean a 3 month delay. The Tegra APX2500 was mentioned, and it seems that Meizu has already contacted NVIDIA regarding the detailed specs (and decoding of B-frames in particular),

Personally, I'm shocked that Meizu has taken so long to realize that the 6410 can't do B-frames. They should be close to releasing a product, this is not the time to realize and react to this sort of problems!
Anyway, the answer seems clear to me: the 6410 is still one of the most advanced ARM CPUs in the market (there are still no smart-phones out there with processors this powerful)... so they should just forget about hardware decoding limitations and hurry the M8 out! It's not feasible to keep delaying it indefinitely, since you can't create a perfect machine!

PS: I read the threads where JW made his posts, but I used google-translation so there's a chance that I didn't understand everything clearly. Please correct me if I said anything that isn't true.

EDIT: I hope the fans choose (1), because (2) is a road to perdition IMO..

Google can help sometimes, although this has been a difficult one!

<frustratingly difficult information>

B-frames is the short hand for "bi-directional interpolated prediction frames". What that technically means is something even beyond my comprehention (great that Wong asks such a question that probably nobody understands), but I can get close I think.

It's a way of encoding video in which the keyframes contain not only information about the previous frame but also of the next frame. This is supposed to achieve more efficiënt encoding, using less bits to store the same information. Also it results in better quality(?) Negative aspects are that it requires twice the RAM to perform because of cashing and that it uses potentially higher CPU-usage.

From a more practical point of view, h.264 is a format which seems to support and (more importantly) push the usage of these b-frames. The AVI format seems to lack any rule that makes B-frames illegal, so encoders can use it. I have no idea about the other various formats, but it is likely that it will be a mix of b-frames and non-b-frames.

</frustratingly difficult information>

To say it easy, you won't be able to playback some video without b-frame support. You will need to reëncode the videos on your computer that has it in order to play them on your m8. How important this is depends on the unknown distribution of b-frame-video.

EDIT: read the post above this one, they supplement eachother pretty nicely

So does this mean that one of the main PLUS points people were trying to make in favour of the M8, not having to encode/re encode file for playback, will be lost if they don't change the hardware?

all may not be that black and white. let's look at this from all angles. face it there are not a lot of video files that are encoded in that odd m8 resolution so reencoding may be the only way to get full res videos. on another hand lower res upscaling might not be that bad, dvd (640x480) movies still look quite good to me, m8 could possibly handle that resolution with sw decoding, most probably not but lower res videos have a great chance of playing right with the right kind of hw implementation, heck maybe even full m8 res video playback would be possible with the right software.

it may not be the and of the world, take PSP for example, originaly you could only play mp4 which were a pain to encode, anyone that has a PSP will know what i'm talking about, than came the homebrew scene and now you can play native resolution AVI files great (any resolution in theory), btw PSP's native resolution is 480x272 (a little lower than the iphone) the best part is, it looks great on a 4.5 INCH SCREEN with an average movie at about 450mb in size. the best part is this, psp (phat-aka older model with less ram) does software decoding great with it's 333MHZ CPU and 32MB of RAM.

the whole point is, if you plan on using m8 as a video player, lower resolution are not that bad on m8 sized screen and software solutions for those that want full res will surely emerge. but than again if meizu goes for the hw change i think it will be the end of m8's story mainly because meizu can't possibly implement everything and release the thing in three months and (this really makes me sad) m8 may end up being nothing more than a cool concept and a bunch of vaporware.

i'm sure meizu can't afford to let that happen

But will it be as easy as say taking a download of someones favourite tv show and putting it straight onto the M8 and it working, or will there be some kind of re encoding involved?

The whole point people were trying to pull across with the M8 was that you didnt have to do any re encoding at all.

What will happen now?

I hope all worrks out well.

But what are everyone's opinion's going to become if it does indeed get delayed yet again, and by 3 more months(which will probably be extended to maybe 4 or 5 more months)

They should certainly not change the processor.

They are way to deep into it now.

They should go for the one they got (at 800mhz to help on this problem) and use software decoding and downscaling.

It sucks, but I don't think the way to go is waiting for another unreleased CPU.

Changing the one they got would also certainly give them lots of troubles -> more delay.

Originally Posted by tails2

But will it be as easy as say taking a download of someones favourite tv show and putting it straight onto the M8 and it working, or will there be some kind of re encoding involved?

if they put sw encoding than it should work fine with resolutions cpu and ram can handle

Originally Posted by darkado

if they put sw encoding than it should work fine with resolutions cpu and ram can handle

Here's hoping you are right on the ball darkado, cos I fear the worst for Meizu at this point.

If they admit to one more delay by a few months, I honestly cannot see them coming out of this alive(or at least without some of their limbs).

Originally Posted by tails2

Here's hoping you are right on the ball darkado, cos I fear the worst for Meizu at this point.

If they admit to one more delay by a few months, I honestly cannot see them coming out of this alive(or at least without some of their limbs).

Future is dark for Meizu as it is: I have the feeling that the processor question Wong asked to meizu fans is an another attempt to justify delay that is already present: if they discover only now the problem about B-frame, it means they are still in deep development of their media player. They are also in deep development of the UI, given they are struggling to support 32 bit color depth and 2D hardware acceleration. Both of this seems to indicate they just begining to use the special hardware features of the 6410, and are not successfull at it...
Given that, I would really be surprised if there are no additional delays, even without changing the processors...

BTW, the 3 month delay proposed for changing the proc are relative to what release date?

They are too late.
They were too late compared to their anouncements already, but this was not a big problem, it only meant the hype has gone down and the release would have less free advertising.
Now they are late compared to the competition: many new phones, OS and new ARM-based mobile processors have been anounced for end 2008/ early 2009, if those competitor do not have delays, m8 and Meizu are in deep troubles...especially as they can not really compete using very low prices, as the price hike has proven...

after all i've waiting for another 3 months it's nothing and for a tegra APX2500 sure it's worth the time and money so A or B we win

Originally Posted by adamL

after all i've waiting for another 3 months it's nothing and for a tegra APX2500 sure it's worth the time and money so A or B we win

I will wait till there is a smartphone that fit my bill, sure, and for now there is none.
With the various delays, it is just more and more unlikely that the first smartphone that fit my bill will be the m8. At this point, I would say it has become extremely unlikely... ;-)

BTW, on APX2500 webpage Nvidia say that the first devices using APX2500 are expected late 2008. I wonder which one that could be: HTC? it would make a lot of new devices in a short time...Acer/Eten? Dell? HP? Korean PMP?...:-)

I prefer A, cos' Meizu can put B frame in a second version of M8, just like the 3G iphone, what we need now is the M8 that we can see, not in our mind!

I think the right choice is clearly A, because:

(1) the 6410 is still a great processor: if M8 would be released right now using it, it would be the smartphone with most powerful hardware out there;
(2) according to JW's posts, it's still not clear that even the Tegra APX2500 supports B-frames;
(3) keeping the 6410 means an initial phase where users might need to convert movies that use B-frames, but eventually a good software solution will appear;
(4) Meizu are already way behind schedule, and each month that passes means losses on market share, and big development expenses. At some point this may become unrecoverable, and destroy Meizu as a company;

Anyway, I think (hope) that JW doesn't really want option B himself. Of course no one really wants another 3 month delay (especially because that estimation sounds awfully unrealistic), so people will choose A. Most likely he just put up that poll to get a grasp on the public opinion about this issue, and relieve Meizu's responsibility about this limitation. This is an easier way to announce it, rather than just saying "hey, the M8 won't be able to decode B-frames after all".

Anyway, please hurry up and show a working M8, Meizu. We're loosing faith here.