why blue ray for h264 hd films???

[fenomeno83]

Why high definition films will be in hd-dvd & blue ray support(up to 50 or 100 gb!!!)?Using H264 encoding a DVD-9 will be adequate to contain High Definition,or not?For me,this is a bad business :angry:

[Sharktooth]

Coz the blue-ray and hd-dvd standards have more advanced copy protections schemes (AKA DRM) so the content providers can earn more money from crappy products, impose higher prices and the users cannot exercise their fair use right.

[fenomeno83]

yes,but for example microsoft sells HD films in WMV-HD in DVD support!!!

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yeah, but how many of those are there? And they're full of DRM.

Look at it from the perspective of a content provider. You've got a choice

1) Do the technically elegant thing and use existing red laser media to deliver HD material at lower bitrates using new compression methods, with no additional DRM - and face people trading stuff online easily, as is done today with DVD

2) Use a new media, with new DRM and massive space, so that they can continue to utilize their MPEG-2 encoding systems, and prevent (at least temporarily) unauthorized copying.

Now, I would love it if #1 is what happened, because it's so much better for people who want to backup their material. This is the real downside to #2, but that's what really happened. Of course, there's a lot more to the DRM than simple copy protection, like HDCP grrrr...

Still, I don't see a way to differentiate between people like us who want to make legitimate copies for personal backup, and the script kiddies online who rip and trade. We're both technically doing the same thing, from the provider's perspective.

What a shame.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Indeed,

There's no practical need for "blue laser" disc technology as current DVD-9 disc's provide more than adequate storage for high-def movies using high quality compression codecs such as MPEG-4 Part-10....

Sony of-course want to shove Blu-ray down out throats because they'll make both the high-def movies and new players to spin them in!

So in reality, it all about forcing us consumers to use new and more secure types of copy protection :devil:

[foxyshadis]

Actually, AACS can be combined with DVD-9 easily, the same way CSS-encrypted files can be stored on the hard drive. It's applied to the files, not a function of the medium. I'm sure the AACS keys could be put into the same unavailable area that current CSS keys are, if there was any desire to, but most likely the studios will drop DVD, and of course hardly anyone else wants to use DRM.

I'm quite certain that as soon as HD players become popular, there will be a thriving market for HD DVD-9, the same way VCDs and SVCDs have been popular on DVD players, even to the present.

As for quality, well, the quality of a 1080p film on a DVD-9 in the one-pass encoders studios usually use, is the HD version of one-cd backups autogk makes. It's watchable, but if you've spent $500+ on an HD player now, it's not going to impress you at all. The codecs we use are much slower but better. (Although I've yet to see a head-to-head of codecs configured for realtime or super-realtime encoding, it would be cool to see where x264 comes out.)

[Jay Bee]

Yeah, but how many of those are there? And they're full of DRM.

Look at it from the perspective of a content provider. You've got a choice

1) Do the technically elegant thing and use existing red laser media to deliver HD material at lower bitrates using new compression methods, with no additional DRM - and face people trading stuff online easily, as is done today with DVD

2) Use a new media, with new DRM and massive space, so that they can continue to utilize their MPEG-2 encoding systems, and prevent (at least temporarily) unauthorized copying.

Now, I would love it if #1 is what happened, because it's so much better for people who want to backup their material. This is the real downside to #2, but that's what really happened. Of course, there's a lot more to the DRM than simple copy protection, like HDCP grrrr...

Still, I don't see a way to differentiate between people like us who want to make legitimate copies for personal backup, and the script kiddies online who rip and trade. We're both technically doing the same thing, from the provider's perspective.

What a shame.

This may sound like a silly question but why is doing backups so important? If you buy a DVD you have it right there, on a medium that will last for about 100 years if you're careful. Making a "backup" usually means transfering it to a medium with a lifetime of only a handful of years while compromising the quality due to reencoding. :confused:

For the record, I do think the new protection systems are way over the top, I'm just wondering why "backups" are so important to a lot of people here. Personally I'm interested in video encoding as a means to archive PAL TV recordings (not movies) to harddisk instead of DVD-R's. Judging by the lack of interest in interlaced encoding and decoding I have come to the conclusion that most people here encode mainly Hollywood Movies and Animees. Why?

Again, this is a sincere question, not some kind of troll or flame.

[SeeMoreDigital]

As for quality, well, the quality of a 1080p film on a DVD-9 in the one-pass encoders studios usually use, is the HD version of one-cd backups autogk makes. It's watchable, but if you've spent $500+ on an HD player now, it's not going to impress you at all. I hear what you're saying... But there's really no excuss for HD disc's not to be encoded to the highest possible standard - technology permiting at the time.

They've got the money to buy and/or develop their own encoding equipment. And access to either the original film masters or uncompressed/lossless digital masters. And should have the know-how, to do the job right.

[Sirber]

Easier to share a 9GB disc than a 30GB disc :)

[foxyshadis]

I hear what you're saying... But there's really no excuss for HD disc's not to be encoded to the highest possible standard - technology permiting at the time.

They've got the money to buy and/or develop their own encoding equipment. And access to either the original film masters or uncompressed/lossless digital masters. And should have the know-how, to do the job right.

It would be nice. The extremely subpar initial bluray releases showed they weren't really ready (or just didn't care?) to deliver the HD "experience". I do fully agree with you that after all the weeks or months of filming and post-processing, they should think nothing of spending some money and time for the best encoder. Some do, but certainly not all. =\

Once tools like Scenarist really improve their codecs the problem will diminish, and studios will probably end up pushing a lot of HD discs filled with barely more than what a DVD can hold. =p

[Sharktooth]

This may sound like a silly question but why is doing backups so important? If you buy a DVD you have it right there, on a medium that will last for about 100 years if you're careful. Making a "backup" usually means transfering it to a medium with a lifetime of only a handful of years while compromising the quality due to reencoding. :confused:

For the record, I do think the new protection systems are way over the top, I'm just wondering why "backups" are so important to a lot of people here. Personally I'm interested in video encoding as a means to archive PAL TV recordings (not movies) to harddisk instead of DVD-R's. Judging by the lack of interest in interlaced encoding and decoding I have come to the conclusion that most people here encode mainly Hollywood Movies and Animees. Why?

Again, this is a sincere question, not some kind of troll or flame.
Are you kidding or what?
There are hundreds of reasons to backup what you legally obtained.
Starting from backing it up to ensure the "life" of the product (accidents happen... and you may scratch your disk) or just to remove all protections and convert the content into a particular format to make it play on your preferred devices (portable media players or cell phones for example)...
There are laws in every countries that give the end-user the right to do it while COMPANIES WANT YOU TO ACT LIKE A MARIONETTE and DO ONLY WHAT THEY TELL YOU TO DO with your regularly bought product.

[Jay Bee]

Are you kidding or what?
There are hundreds of reasons to backup what you legally obtained.
Starting from backing it up to ensure the "life" of the product (accidents happen... and you may scratch your disk)...

If I bought a DVD and it broke, a reencoded DVD-R version wouldn't really make me happy. I think I'd rather buy a new DVD off eBay. Mabe it's just me.


...or just to remove all protections and convert the content into a particular format to make it play on my preferred devices (portable media players or cell phones for example)...


I was thinking that maybe this is an important reason but I wouldn't have called this process "making a backup". Maybe I'm taking the term "Backup" too literally.


There are laws in every countries that give the end-user the right to do it while COMPANIES WANT YOU TO ACT LIKE A MARIONETTE and DO ONLY WHAT THEY TELL YOU TO DO with your regularly bought product.

I am aware that I have the right to make a Backup of a legally bought DVD but that doesn't automatically explain (to me) why it is important.

[giandrea]

I perfectly understand what you are saying, that the big companies want to enforce upon us a stricter DRM system, but let's have a look at the facts:
a DVD-9 holds 7.92 GiB
this, for a two hour movie, is an equivalent bitrate of 9448 kbps.
Now you tell me that I can compress a 1080p movie with multiple 7.1 channels audio tracks, and still have enough space for the DVD menu and eventually some special contents, at that bitrate?

Let's be sincere, the new disk supports (Blue Ray and HD DVD) were a natural evolution and were infact needed.
If the companies decided to keep the DVD-9 format, they would have included AACS anyway, and the disks would not be compatible with the actual stand alone players, so let's not blame everything on the supports... :rolleyes:

[SeeMoreDigital]

I perfectly understand what you are saying, that the big companies want to enforce upon us a stricter DRM system, but let's have a look at the facts:
a DVD-9 holds 7.92 GiB
this, for a two hour movie, is an equivalent bitrate of 9448 kbps.
Now you tell me that I can compress a 1080p movie with multiple 7.1 channels audio tracks, and still have enough space for the DVD menu and eventually some special contents, at that bitrate?Menu's should not create a "space" problem.... But as for special features, makings of, deleted scenes and other non "main movie" stuff. In my opinion, this kind of stuff should "always" be placed on a separate disc!

[Sagittaire]

I perfectly understand what you are saying, that the big companies want to enforce upon us a stricter DRM system, but let's have a look at the facts:
a DVD-9 holds 7.92 GiB
this, for a two hour movie, is an equivalent bitrate of 9448 kbps.
Now you tell me that I can compress a 1080p movie with multiple 7.1 channels audio tracks, and still have enough space for the DVD menu and eventually some special contents, at that bitrate?


1) Movie are really compressible source. 1080p with H264 at 6-8 Mbps done very high quality.

2) LC-AAC at 448 Kbps done extremely high quality for 7.1 audio. Very higher quality for each chanel than DD 5.1 448 Kbps.

It's easy to make HD (audio and video) with advanced audio and video codec on simple DVD9.

[IgorC]

1) Movie are really compressible source. 1080p with H264 at 6-8 Mbps done very high quality.

2) LC-AAC at 448 Kbps done extremely high quality for 7.1 audio. Very higher quality for each chanel than DD 5.1 448 Kbps.

It's easy to make HD (audio and video) with advanced audio and video codec on simple DVD9.

That's true if they will use a high quality encoder like Ateme, x264 and Elecard for video. Apple or Nero audio encoders for LC-AAC.
With very optimal settings for source.

[fenomeno83]

I encodec an mpeg2 1920x1080 interlaced movie (audio stereo) of 803 mb (5min and 44 seconds).I use automkv and set audio aac nero mp4 to 0.35 (about 96-100 kbit/s) video encoder to x264,set width resolution to 1280(to get a 1280x720 progressive final movie),profile cq_asp_q2_eq_crf with crf set to 18.
Result:
my final movie size is 272 mb!!(vs. 803 mb of source movie!!).
on my eyes video quality and audio quality are the same of original movie(monitor lcd 19' and 7.1 speakers set).
to decode I use media player classic and codec coreavc(for h264) set prefer as external filetr in the player!!for audio aac internal filters are good!
ps:with others player or codec for h264 video is slow!with coreavc+media player classic perfect!!!

[giandrea]

1) Movie are really compressible source. 1080p with H264 at 6-8 Mbps done very high quality.

2) LC-AAC at 448 Kbps done extremely high quality for 7.1 audio. Very higher quality for each chanel than DD 5.1 448 Kbps.

It's easy to make HD (audio and video) with advanced audio and video codec on simple DVD9.

Yes, it may be possible (even tought that AAC is not an official audio codec for Blue Ray or HD DVD), but it is an extremely border line situation.

Would you prefer your 1080p movie to be encoded to 6Mbps, with some artefacts certainly showing up in some part of the movie, or would you prefer a transparent high quality encode at 10-12 Mbps (I'm talking about AVC in both cases).

I prefer the latter, and with all that space you can fit longer movies on a single DVD,... well Blue Ray, without sacrifying the quality; and you can have as many language track as you want, no problem with space; and lots of special contents, etc...

And off course, much more space for personal backup on Blue Ray disks :) And then think, if you trade a bit of quality, you will be able to fit multiple HD movies on a single Blue Ray disk... ;) ;)

[Blue_MiSfit]

Are you kidding or what?
There are hundreds of reasons to backup what you legally obtained.
Starting from backing it up to ensure the "life" of the product (accidents happen... and you may scratch your disk) or just to remove all protections and convert the content into a particular format to make it play on your preferred devices (portable media players or cell phones for example)...
There are laws in every countries that give the end-user the right to do it while COMPANIES WANT YOU TO ACT LIKE A MARIONETTE and DO ONLY WHAT THEY TELL YOU TO DO with your regularly bought product.

Seriously. Have any of you ever lived with kids, or college students?

Forget about holding on to original copies of ANYTHING. They will NOT survive. They simply will not. You will keep having to buy more and more copies.

I would never purchase the same content on more than one format.

[Egladil]

1) Movie are really compressible source. 1080p with H264 at 6-8 Mbps done very high quality.


i don't see how 8 Mbps could be enough for 1080p. maybe if the source is SDTV upscaled to 1080p, but if you have really good 1080p material with say, a little film grain, 8 Mbps will not be enough. not at all.

long movies like troy, lotr, alexander, gladiator won't fit on a dvd9. i had problems (picture quality degradation) getting gladiator to fit on a dvd9 in 720p. with real sharp 1080p... no way

EDIT: I mean you can compress 1080p with 8 Mbps, but then it will look compressed, and a trained eye will spot the atrifacts - you don't want that (at least I don't want)

[Sharktooth]

dont underestimate AVC...

[SeeMoreDigital]

EDIT: I mean you can compress 1080p with 8 Mbps, but then it will look compressed, and a trained eye will spot the atrifacts - you don't want that (at least I don't want)Indeed a "trained eye" can already spot artefacts in long movies (such as: Troy, Lord of the Rings, Alexander, Gladiator) when encoded to std-def MPEG-2 DVD... But the vast majority of viewers don't have trained eyes!

[HyperDrive]

This may be too much to ask, but is there any way to capture truly uncompressed (1920*1080 or higher resolution, 24 bits/pixel, wide gamut color space at 4:4:4 sampling, at at least 24 frames/second) digital video for encoder testing? As far as I have seen, everyone is using MPEG-2 source data for H.264 conversion. I would very much like to see a comparison between uncompressed -> MPEG-2 -> H.264 video and uncompressed -> H.264. :(

[alanzeratul]

Transcoding 20Mb/s MPEG-2 1080p to AVC, maybe 8Mb/s will be far enough for transparency.

But i don't even think 20Mb/s MPEG-2 is enough for 1080p meterials. That's why digital tv programs have been encoded with H.264/AVC codec at same bandwidth/bitrate instead of MPEG-2 recently.

[foxyshadis]

Hyperdrive: See http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=114928

The MPEG-2 HD signals are pretty widely regarded as being quite bad source quality, but if it's all you have you make do.

[Trahald]

If I bought a DVD and it broke, a reencoded DVD-R version wouldn't really make me happy. I think I'd rather buy a new DVD off eBay. Mabe it's just me.Thats probably the issue there. if you dont like the quality of dvd-r backups then backing up probably isnt for you. (although you can certainly split the movie or just use a dvd-r9) people that do do backups think the dvd-r backups are good enough. An old dvd player made a terrible scratch in my 'family man' dvd a few years ago, before i got a chance to back it up. so i bought another one (bought a previously viewed one at block buster) but it was still like $10 bux. id rather have broken the backup then i could just back up the original again. (i dont watch the originals.. i put the wear on the backup) some of my dvds have never been in my dvd player. just my pc. but as i stated. this only works for me because i think my backups look like or very close to the original. also i can kill logos and warning that make it take longer to get to the movie.

[mrcorbo]

I encodec an mpeg2 1920x1080 interlaced movie (audio stereo) of 803 mb (5min and 44 seconds).I use automkv and set audio aac nero mp4 to 0.35 (about 96-100 kbit/s) video encoder to x264,set width resolution to 1280(to get a 1280x720 progressive final movie),profile cq_asp_q2_eq_crf with crf set to 18.
Result:
my final movie size is 272 mb!!(vs. 803 mb of source movie!!).
on my eyes video quality and audio quality are the same of original movie(monitor lcd 19' and 7.1 speakers set).
to decode I use media player classic and codec coreavc(for h264) set prefer as external filetr in the player!!for audio aac internal filters are good!
ps:with others player or codec for h264 video is slow!with coreavc+media player classic perfect!!!

I think the fact that you are viewing these on a 19' monitor factors into your ability to perceive compression artifacts. Even given the close viewing distance.

Keep in mind the ideal of these new disc formats should be to be perceptually lossless and that there will be people that will be displaying these on 100'+ screens with digital projectors.

I think that perceptually lossless video that can stand up to this level of scrutiny would be a tough proposition on a DVD9. And that's not even considering that fact that even if it is possible, there's no way you get this and truly lossless audio, which to me is just as important of an addition to the new disc formats.

Since the DRM was happening either way (this has nothing to do with the disc format in the case of HD-DVD, at least) and you were also going to have to buy the movies again in the new format either way these are non-starters as to why a new disc format was deemed necessary.

The only thing I really accept as a plausible non-technical reason for moving away from the red-laser formats is the fact that they get to sell you a whole series of electronic devices to play/record them. Given how poor the margins are on DVD-related devices, this is, no doubt a contributing factor.

I just believe that there truly are tangible benefits to the consumer in the new disc formats, as well.

Edit:

Just to add, though, that I do think BR @ 50GB is pretty much overkill for a movie delivery medium. Nice for data backup, though. Might be nice for "collections" like multi-movie series or TV shows, too.

[plonk420]

i calculated 13 or 14 mbps for a movie the length of The Matrix on a DVD9... hrm...

edit: oh, oops, i get 7.8mbit. was misrecalling my argument with a friend that 13mbit (The Matrix on a Single Layer HDDVD) was insufficient let alone 25-26mbit for 720p or 1080p. i dared him to look for artifacts (altho all i had to check for artifacts with before posing the challenge was a 480p DLP projector...)

[travisbell]

Indeed a "trained eye" can already spot artefacts in long movies (such as: Troy, Lord of the Rings, Alexander, Gladiator) when encoded to std-def MPEG-2 DVD... But the vast majority of viewers don't have trained eyes!

That is true BUT let's face it... while the studios might not be using the best encoders around (x264 is arguably the best, even when compared to the studio encoders) a 22mbps 1080p does look a hell of a lot sharper than a 10mbps version. That's a a fact, you can't dispute that.

Sure, a lot of people wouldn't notice but I bet if you gave "the poeple without trained eyes" a side by side comparison they would.

Regardless though, with bigger and better 1080p displays arriving on the market every single day, the need for higher bitrate videos was a given. Could they have stretched DVD9 a bit farther? Sure, but probably only with 720p... I truly don't believe DVD9 has enough space to accomodate 1080p at a decent bitrate.

It was a case of salvage what we have or let go and start fresh with a medium that CAN support the higher resolution and bitrates we appreciate.

I truly don't know if I feel as though we, as consumers, are getting the shaft. At the end of the day, HD-DVD/Bluray arrived early in the game. We have to still realize there are still 10x the amount of SD TVs on the planet anyways. It will be years before these formats are truly appreicated.

[Sagittaire]

That is true BUT let's face it... while the studios might not be using the best encoders around (x264 is arguably the best, even when compared to the studio encoders) a 22mbps 1080p does look a hell of a lot sharper than a 10mbps version. That's a a fact, you can't dispute that.


No, No and No. You don't understand how work really video compression for HDDVD or BD.

1) HDDVD and BD must use vbv because there are physical limitation for the optical disk support. For exemple HDDVD use 29.4 Mbps for the all muxed stream (principal video stream, secondary video stream, multiple audio stream). In the most case at this time the max peak bitrate for principal HD stream is 20 Mbps for HDDVD movie.

2) In the most cases artefact are in the difficult part and use 18 Mbps for average bitrate is simply useless with max bitrate at 20 Mbps. In these difficult part the Rate Control will use same local bitrate for 18 mbps encoding or for 12 Mbps encoding (just a particular example here)

3) Actually in the most cases 20 Mbps for 1080p movie mean certainely something like less than average quantizer 10 (with x264 and unconstrained RC). It's completely useless. You can see H264 trailers at ~10 Mbps on apple web site. Apple H264 is not a really powerfull H264 codec. Trailer are always really uncompressible source if you compare with the complete movie. With good H264 codec and with complete movie you can certainely reach the same quality with 5-6 Mbps.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Sure, a lot of people wouldn't notice but I bet if you gave "the poeple without trained eyes" a side by side comparison they would. Agreed, if you compared a 1920x1080 10Mbps MPEG-4 AVC encode against 1920x1080 20Mbps MPEG-4 AVC encode you would see a difference in certain scenes.... But at the end of the day, the very nature of "lossly" encoding is... what you can get away with.

Personally I would be interested to see side-by-side comparisons of high-def MPEG-4 AVC encoded at an average bit-rate of say 10Mbps against, high-def MPEG-2 encoded at an average bit-rate of 25Mbps - Both having been generated from the same (lossless or nead lossless) digital master...


Cheers

[travisbell]

3) Actually in the most cases 20 Mbps for 1080p movie mean certainely something like less than average quantizer 10 (with x264 and unconstrained RC). It's completely useless. You can see H264 trailers at ~10 Mbps on apple web site. Apple H264 is not a really powerfull H264 codec. Trailer are always really uncompressible source if you compare with the complete movie. With good H264 codec and with complete movie you can certainely reach the same quality with 5-6 Mbps.

Right, but I think we're getting our lines crossed. Let's use the Apple trailers as an example. Yeah, most of the 1080p trailers are in the ~10mbps range. Are we saying that's the average, or peak?

Let's say average for a 120min movie... that's still ~9000MB for just the video stream and would not fit on a DVD9... So, really what we're saying here is a new medium for storage was certainly welcome, but the studios are in essence wasting the space right now.

Bottom line, AVC still has some ways to go... I mean, I am not doubting it has that much potential but so far, no one is really taking advantage of it. Atleast, I haven't seen any good, full 2 hour movies done @ 1080p.

Here's a question for ya, I have some D-Theater tapes that are usually an average bitrate of ~22mbps and they look spectacular. Arguably better than HD-DVD. I, Robot especially. At the end of the day though, given the size of HD-DVD/Bluray discs, MPEG2 can still do a mean job of encoding.

Although, I guess that's the point of this thread. If no one is using AVC to it's potential, why use it at all?

[kappa]

N
3) Actually in the most cases 20 Mbps for 1080p movie mean certainely something like less than average quantizer 10 (with x264 and unconstrained RC). It's completely useless. You can see H264 trailers at ~10 Mbps on apple web site. Apple H264 is not a really powerfull H264 codec. Trailer are always really uncompressible source if you compare with the complete movie. With good H264 codec and with complete movie you can certainely reach the same quality with 5-6 Mbps.

I am trying to transcode a 1080p stream of Gladiator, in order to fit it in a DVD-9 @ 7200Mbps. First I tried with Nero, then x264, then added decomb and undot to the equation. Still, even after three passes with x264, settings set to slow (four days of encoding on a Athlon X2 5000+), one can still see clear and very disturbing artifacts in the very first scene where the hand passes through the hay and clear degradation between keyframes. I was hoping to fit this movie on a DVD-9, but it is not feasible, it is no where near the quality of the original MPEG2 stream.

[Sagittaire]

Right, but I think we're getting our lines crossed. Let's use the Apple trailers as an example. Yeah, most of the 1080p trailers are in the ~10mbps range. Are we saying that's the average, or peak?

Average bitrate. I don't know the RC limitation for QT AVC.


Let's say average for a 120min movie... that's still ~9000MB for just the video stream and would not fit on a DVD9... So, really what we're saying here is a new medium for storage was certainly welcome, but the studios are in essence wasting the space right now.

Well it's simple:

8500 MB HDDVD structure on DVD9 for 120 min movie
simple authoring with menu, chapters, subtitles, languages : ~500 MB
Multiple (3 for exemple) DD+ audio stream at 640 Kbps (7.1 and 48 Khz) : ~1750 MB
1080p Video stream : ~6250 MB

You must use 7 Mbps for the 1080p video stream. Good H264 codec for complete movie will done higher quality than apple trailers.

At this time extra storage HDDVD capacity is really usefull simply for complexe authoring:
- DD TrueHD lossless encoding for audio stream mean average ~3 Mbps for each audio stream
- Secondary video stream for "picture in picture" bonus mean ~3 Mbps for this secondary video stream
- Principal video stream with VC1 (not the best codec at "low bitrate") and extra high quality encoding mean actualy ~15 Mbps for the principal video stream


Here's a question for ya, I have some D-Theater tapes that are usually an average bitrate of ~22mbps and they look spectacular. Arguably better than HD-DVD. I, Robot especially. At the end of the day though, given the size of HD-DVD/Bluray discs, MPEG2 can still do a mean job of encoding.

Actually the best quality for HDDVD encoding is "Batman Begin" transfert. MS use 12 Mbps with VC1 for this movie. Recent improved VC1 codec done impressive result for 9 Mbps and in practice "transparent result".


I am trying to transcode a 1080p stream of Gladiator, in order to fit it in a DVD-9 @ 7200Mbps

Crappy source done always crappy enconding. HDTV MPEG2 source are always crappy source:

- Low average bitrate for MPEG2
- Very agressive vbv specification done in most case very bad IFrame (with short GOP)
- Real Time hardware encoding with ~CBR in practice

In most case users see the artefacts for the encoding but not for the source. Make screenshoot and see the result if you want.

[fenomeno83]

I am trying to transcode a 1080p stream of Gladiator, in order to fit it in a DVD-9 @ 7200Mbps. First I tried with Nero, then x264, then added decomb and undot to the equation. Still, even after three passes with x264, settings set to slow (four days of encoding on a Athlon X2 5000+), one can still see clear and very disturbing artifacts in the very first scene where the hand passes through the hay and clear degradation between keyframes. I was hoping to fit this movie on a DVD-9, but it is not feasible, it is no where near the quality of the original MPEG2 stream.

try to use media player classic + coreavc decoder to see your movie!

[Mug Funky]

If you buy a DVD you have it right there, on a medium that will last for about 100 years if you're careful.

bwahaha! not even close, i'm afraid. back in the day when they used gold (instead of aluminium) and decent adhesives, better tolerances, etc then you were probably looking at that long. but today you're not going to get 100 years out of a DVD and actually get to watch it.

those things scratch so easily, and scratch-resistant coatings may protect it from scratches, but tend to actually decrease readability in standalones a little.

also, if the disc came in one of those cases that require you to bend the disc to get it out, then you're going to damage the disc every time you watch it.

i know of one replication house that doesn't check the calibration/alignments on their stampers unless there's (lots of) complaints from authoring houses. hell, they probably haven't properly serviced their machines since the early days of DVD. i wont name names though... that'd be poor form :) the problem is the replicators don't cop the returned discs, so they often don't have any idea what crap they're stamping.

there's a lot of cut corners in DVD (and CD) replication these days. all in the name of getting the per-unit price down while still paying all those MPEG-LA fees :)

[DarkZell666]

Just to give myself an idea, I went on to encode some HD material (DVD source upscaled to 1920x1088) at crf18 with x264: this gave me 8900kbps.
I didn't check any settings, I just used this bogus cmdline: x264 "whatever.avs" --crf 18 -o "whatever.avi"

I didn't even denoise the source, so the noise from the DVD had a very fat grain once upscaled. I'm pretty sure that at that resolution, crf 20 would be just as watchable, and give a rather 7500-ish bitrate. (tweaking reference frames, bframes, and the like would also help a lot).

I'll try encoding more material to give myself an idea (an upscaled DVD isn't ideal of course ;)), but I think 1080p material will need such high bitrates to achieve transparence in high-motion scenes (dunno if BluRay or HDDVD releases will be CBR or VBR..., this can change a lot of things).

[giandrea]

Just to give myself an idea, I went on to encode some HD material (DVD source upscaled to 1920x1088) at crf18 with x264: this gave me 8900kbps.
I didn't check any settings, I just used this bogus cmdline: x264 "whatever.avs" --crf 18 -o "whatever.avi"

I didn't even denoise the source, so the noise from the DVD had a very fat grain once upscaled. I'm pretty sure that at that resolution, crf 20 would be just as watchable, and give a rather 7500-ish bitrate. (tweaking reference frames, bframes, and the like would also help a lot).

I'll try encoding more material to give myself an idea (an upscaled DVD isn't ideal of course ;)), but I think 1080p material will need such high bitrates to achieve transparence in high-motion scenes (dunno if BluRay or HDDVD releases will be CBR or VBR..., this can change a lot of things).

Can you make the test with all the High Profile options turned on and tell us the difference in bitrate? I am quite confident that the quality gain of High Profile compared to Simple Profile will make a difference.
Thanks ;)

[reepa]

For me the answer is really simple. Would you rather watch a 36mbps or 9mbps AVC stream?

Hopefully by the time combo HD-DVD / Blu-Ray drives cost $30 a piece better display technology is available. That's when I'll make the jump.

As for discs getting scratched... I really hoped Blu-Ray would retain those caddies they used before they developed the coating. Handling cartridges, cassettes, and diskettes is much more comfortable than handling discs.

[akupenguin]

I didn't check any settings, I just used this bogus cmdline: x264 "whatever.avs" --crf 18 -o "whatever.avi"
Does "bogus" refer to the lack of hq settings, or to the fact that whatever.avi won't be an avi?

[DarkZell666]

@aku: Huhu, I was indeed mentionning the lack of hq settings, but I knew mplayer would decode the resulting file, so wether it was really avi or not (raw h.264) wasn't too much of a concern for what I was doing (thx for pointing it out though, I'll be more careful next time :p).

I'll run the hq version tonite (the previous version ran at 1.5fps, so not doubt this one might not even be finished tomorrow morning ;)) btw, I didn't encode the full movie, I added ".SelectRangeEvery(1000,50)" at the end, which I believe represents nicely the rest of the movie :)

Here's what I'm planning on using : x264 "garfield.avs" -o garfield.mkv -8 -A all -t 2 --crf 18 -b 2 -r 4 -w -m 7 --b-rdo --mixed-refs

I might denoise and sharpen the source a bit to get closer to what a real HD source looks like (won't be perfect but ...).

[akupenguin]

missing an argument for -A (I should make that check stricter; it currently accepts any old garbage, such as "-t")

[DarkZell666]

Oops, I mistaken -A for a shortcut for "--analyse all" :o (post edited)

[Jay Bee]

Mug Funky:
Woah, that sounds bad. So how long would you estimate the life of a stamped DVD? Does poor calibration shorten all disks' life in general or does it just make specific batches produce a lot of non-working DVD's?

[Sharktooth]

humidity, temperature and laser light cant be avoided... those factors will shorten the media life by A LOT.
A frequently used disc (like for games that require the disc to be inserted to play) even with all precautions will live 2 or 3 years...

[DarkZell666]

Here goes:

---- AVS Script -----
import("LimitedSharpenFaster.avsi")
loadplugin("DGDecode.dll")
loadplugin("hqdn3d.dll")
loadplugin("Undot.dll")

video = mpeg2source("garfield.d2v").KillAudio().SelectRangeEvery(1000,50)
video = video.BicubicResize(1920,1088).hqdn3d(2,2,2).LimitedSharpenFaster().Undot()

return video


----- x264 log ---------
D:\garfield>x264 "garfield.avs" -o garfield.mkv -8 -A all -t 2 --crf 18 -b 2 -r 4 -w -m 7 --b-rdo --mixed-refs --progress
avis [info]: 1920x1088 @ 25.00 fps (7950 frames)
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2 3DNow!
x264 [info]: slice I:244 Avg QP:16.77 size:107712 PSNR Mean Y:50.23 U:53.54 V:53.90 Avg:50.77 Global:50.25
x264 [info]: slice P:3384 Avg QP:18.52 size: 51165 PSNR Mean Y:48.47 U:52.61 V:53.05 Avg:49.45 Global:48.66
x264 [info]: slice B:4322 Avg QP:20.72 size: 18675 PSNR Mean Y:47.51 U:51.94 V:52.45 Avg:48.50 Global:47.57
x264 [info]: mb I I16..4: 21.6% 64.0% 14.4%
x264 [info]: mb P I16..4: 9.9% 22.8% 2.3% P16..4: 35.4% 11.6% 1.8% 0.0% 0.0% skip:16.0%
x264 [info]: mb B I16..4: 0.8% 2.0% 0.2% B16..8: 27.8% 1.1% 2.5% direct: 8.2% skip:57.4%
x264 [info]: 8x8 transform intra:65.1% inter:87.8%
x264 [info]: ref P 74.0% 13.7% 7.8% 4.4%
x264 [info]: ref B 85.4% 8.9% 3.6% 2.1%
x264 [info]: SSIM Mean Y:0.9882346
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:48.001 U:52.274 V:52.748 Avg:48.975 Global:48.071 kb/s:7047.48

encoded 7950 frames, 0.40 fps, 7047.71 kb/s

I say: not bad at all ;)

[foxyshadis]

In my opinion, that applies only to exactly what you did - resizing up. You pay a huge speed and size penalty for almost no extra detail (in fact, probably less overall, with the two denoisers), whereas real HD has real detail improvements. (Most satelite broadcast doesn't count, they have less or only marginally more detail than DVDs, even if they have sharper diagonals.) Admittedly studios will probably try to pawn such junk off on people eventually.

Just watch both the test you made (if your system can handle it) and the original; can you tell which looks more detailed? (Without mistaking oversharpening for real detail.) I guarantee you would be able to if you had access to a master of the movie, but I doubt you will here.

If you were to use one of the EEDI2 methods, you'd probably get enough detail out to fake your way up to a good 720p estimation, but not 1080p. And remember, the whole idea is to not denoise too hard, or all you get is DVD-res with better diagonals.

[lexor]

foxy, I don't think he was testing quality, he just upsized (to make it HD-like pixel cost) and did filtering to simulate real world use (of filters). His point was that something he believes a decent bitrate can in fact be reached on a decently longish movie. He wasn't attempting to gain quality by wasting cycles so he doesn't need all that eedi and such.

as for backup, I only compress with mpeg4 (asp/avc) for tv shows, I moved away from encoding movies, simply because even DVD5 of x264 and hq-slow + best filtering I could come up after quite some time of experimentation, just doesn't preserve enough of orignal DVD (non HD here). Now for a movie, I just make a copy to DVD-DL (i.e. DVD9 -> DVD9) and call it quits, which is actually a good thing in itself, since my aging DVD players started to skip a bit, but aparently removing the CSS removes enough of strain to prevent skipping :) funky.

[DarkZell666]

lol sorry for not being clear concerning "why" I was doing this, I'll clarify a bit more:

This thread is about an apparently useless utilisation of BluRay for encoding h264 hd material (since apparently many people argue that a DVD9 is well enough, considering AVC's efficiency).
When I mean useless, I mean "studios ain't gonna do anything this stupid right ?" (at least this is what I've read several times on the net).

All I wanted to do, is "recreate" some HD content (and foxyshadis pointed out why my method wasn't as accurate as I thought), and see what bitrate the content really needs (thus proving or disapproving the statement about studios being stupid xD). My test shows that upscaled DVD content only needs around 8mbps, but true HD content contains much more detail to begin with, so it'll need more bitrate than an upscaled DVD (it's all about artificially recreating visual information that wasn't there VS. true detail that can't be recreated no matter what we try). That's why I sharpened the picture a bit to compensate, but hqdn3d probably destroyed more detail than LimitedSharpenFaster could "simulate".

I'll have another try later on, doing something like: .UpsizeAbit().LSF().Undot().UpsizeAbit().LSF().Undot().UpsizeAbit().LSF().Undot() ... and see what that looks like :)

Edit: I'll come back on what reepa said: For me the answer is really simple. Would you rather watch a 36mbps or 9mbps AVC stream?In either case, would one of them really look better than the other ? This is what I'm desperately trying to find out :p

[Sagittaire]

If you want real comparison then quality for 1080p 120 min movie on DVD9 will be better than QT AVC trailers.