Sonic CineVision & VC1 HDDVD [Archive]

Toti

17th March 2007, 05:00

I've been testing Sonic's CineVision 1.2 encoding in VC1 & AVC for HD-DVD.

I have already tried MainConcept in an attemp to create HD-DVD compliant AVC files in this thread
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123409

I was really impressed to see the quality of AVC compared to MPEG2. Now, VC1 is even more efficient meaning that you can squeezed even better quality out of those HD-DVDs on Dual layers.

How good is VC1 compared to AVC see for yourself. First get CineVision 1.2 (lots of bugs fixed from V1.1).

The Problem: CineVision keeps encoding the VC1 file as 4:3 therefore Scenarist HD will create a video that looks squeezed.

However, you can play back the .vc1 file using PowerDVD 6.5 and see the quality at the original 16:9 ratio.

Does anyone know of a program that can change the aspect ratio on a .vc1 file? I know of WMV aspect changer by Crypto
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=116761 but it only works with VC1 files that are wrapped around ASF.

Any Ideas?

If anyone can tell me how to upload a small .vc1 file for everyone to see.

Toti

17th March 2007, 13:33

It turns out that Sonic's CineVision 1.2 works fine in VC1 but only at resolution 1280X720 & 1920X1080. The quality of VC1 is impressive, you can reduce the bitrate to an impressive 4~5Mbps and still not notice any bad compression.

This is good news for sources like:

HD-DVD & Bluray 1920X1080
OTA CBS 1920X1080
OTA FOX 1280X1080

Bad News for DirecTVHD which is 1280X1080 meaning that only AVC is supported at that exact resolution and AVC has a bug with the pulldown http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123409 meaning you will either upscale to fullHD or drop it to 720p. You will need a dual layer for 1920X1080 in order to preserve the quality.

It seems not many people interested on this or they can't get CineVision because I don't see comments but to those interested here are the script that works with each type of video.

1280X720 running at 59.96fps like OTA FoxHD, DirecTVHD ESPN & National GeographicHD.
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5.7\plugins\DGDecode.dll")

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5.7\plugins\Decomb521.dll")

mpeg2source("C:\24 Season 6\Day 6 6to7AM.d2v", upConv=1)

Telecide(1,guide=1,vthresh=25)

Decimate(cycle=2)
Decimate(cycle=5)

FieldDeinterlace(Full=False,threshold=15,dthreshold=9)

HD-DVD, Bluray & OTA CBS 1920X1080p (telecined)
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5.7\plugins\DGDecode.dll")

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5.7\plugins\Decomb521.dll")

mpeg2source("C:\Back To The Future\MainMovie.d2v", upConv=1)

Telecide(1,guide=1,vthresh=25)

Decimate(cycle=5)

FieldDeinterlace(Full=False,threshold=15,dthreshold=9)

Crop(4,4,-4,-4) //DirecTVHD ONLY

BilinearResize(1920,1080) //DirecTVHD ONLY

OTA 1920X1080i True Interlace
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5.7\plugins\DGDecode.dll")

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5.7\plugins\Decomb521.dll")

mpeg2source("C:\SuperBowl\MainMovie.d2v", upConv=1)

FieldDeinterlace(Full=True,threshold=15,dthreshold=9)

To Input into CineVision you have to use VFAPIConv 1.05 and how to use it
In order to have VFAPICon to work. It is requires as VFAPI has to be registered as a
video codec to be recognized the by application on the receiving end. To do this

1. Run proxyoff.reg which comes with VirtualDub (it's in your plugins
subdirectory to the directory where you copied VirtualDub into) and answer yes to
the question that will pop up.

2. Run vifpset.bat that comes in the VFAPI distribution.

I'll be testing some of my HD-DVD library later. For now there is a proven solution for HD-DVD encoding. Ofcourse, I have to get myself an HD-DVD recorder.

zambelli

18th March 2007, 00:54

It turns out that Sonic's CineVision 1.2 works fine in VC1 but only at resolution 1280X720 & 1920X1080. The quality of VC1 is impressive, you can reduce the bitrate to an impressive 4~5Mbps and still not notice any bad compression.
Actually, I think it might be just the Microsoft WMV decoder that doesn't respect aspect ratio flags set in the .vc1 bitstrems. I think it only knows to respect aspect ratio set in ASF metadata.

It seems not many people interested on this or they can't get CineVision because I don't see comments but to those interested here are the script that works with each type of video.
Depends what the price is. If the product is expensive and no trial version is freely available for download, it's likely most people can't afford it.

As for the scripts... Check out the Avisynth usage forum - there are now much better deinterlacers available than Decomb.

To Input into CineVision you have to use VFAPIConv 1.05 and how to use it
If the app only takes AVI input, you might not need VFAPI after all - it might be enough to just use Ffdshow and the MakeAVIS utility that comes with it.

dvdboy

18th March 2007, 03:17

It turns out that Sonic's CineVision 1.2 works fine in VC1 but only at resolution 1280X720 & 1920X1080. The quality of VC1 is impressive, you can reduce the bitrate to an impressive 4~5Mbps and still not notice any bad compression.

Really? As I stated in another thread, I noticed pixellation on video in the 7 - 8Mbps range at 1920x1080 on a 2-pass encode via Sonic Cinevision 1.1 - it was especially noticable on areas of red.

Maybe they've improved the encoder... Haven't upgraded yet as I'm halfway through a project on 1.1.

bond

18th March 2007, 11:00

obviously the quality doesnt only depend on the bitrate used, but also the complexity of the content

so there can be ugly encodes and nice ones even at the same bitrate...

Sagittaire

18th March 2007, 11:56

It turns out that Sonic's CineVision 1.2 works fine in VC1 but only at resolution 1280X720 & 1920X1080. The quality of VC1 is impressive, you can reduce the bitrate to an impressive 4~5Mbps and still not notice any bad compression.

hmmm ... VC1 from Mainconcept SDK seem a very basic compliant implementation if you compare with VC1 from MS. H264 from Mainconcept SDK done by far better quality at medium/high quantisation level.

Clown shoes

18th March 2007, 18:03

I have already tried MainConcept in an attemp to create HD-DVD compliant AVC files in this thread
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123409

As I mentioned to you in the Mainconcept bugs thread, I think the probelms you are having may not just be down to the software. I have more testing to do but I can confirm my output is smooth and my output running time matches my source running time. However that I am having some muxing issues within Scenarist that I need to examine.

Bad News for DirecTVHD which is 1280X1080 meaning that only AVC is supported at that exact resolution and AVC has a bug with the pulldown

The AVC codec does not have a bug with pulldown. The Elecard page you linked to mentions a GUI limitation not an encoder one. This easy to workaround using a profile in the Elecard software and similarly with an avisynth script within the mainconcept software. Also remember there are already commercial HD releases using .h264 so it can be done.

It seems not many people interested on this or they can't get CineVision because I don't see comments

LOL that's because my boss will spend £600.00 on the Mainconcept software but he is slightly more reluctant to fork out about £30,000.00 on a peice of software that appears to currently have many teething problems of it's own. You will definately find less people in a possition to test out Cinevision. I am lucky as a friend of mine works at a larger authoring house that have most of the Scenarist HD suite, and he lets me play around after hours when it's not in use :) Another point to remember is the Mainconcept encoder is able to use all 8 threads on my machine but the Cinevision encoder only appeared to use 2 threads on the rig I tested (which also had 8 processors)

I was really impressed to see the quality of AVC compared to MPEG2. Now, VC1 is even more efficient meaning that you can squeezed even better quality out of those HD-DVDs on Dual layers.

Do you really find VC1 to be that much more efficient? Can I ask what your basing this on? Not that I doubt you, I am just keen to find the best solution for transfering to DVD9.

However, you can play back the .vc1 file using PowerDVD 6.5 and see the quality at the original 16:9 ratio.

The problem is, the ultimate output destination for many of us is standalone players. Therfore a 4:3 ratio is just not practical.

Toti

18th March 2007, 23:30

Hello Clown,

I have tested the following

From DirecTVHD:

Sunrise Earth - this video contains lots of almost still images so on both AVC and VC1 there is almost no difference 8436 Mbps enough for a single layer DVD of one Episode of Sunrise Earth Alaska.

SAW 2, Back To The Future 1,2 & 3, StarWars 2,3,4 & 5, Serenity, Apocalypse Now Redux, Kingdom Of Heavens, The Transporter 2. Only Apocalypse Now Redux showed less compression than AVC at 8 Mbps.

From Comcast HDTV: I only have a The Incredibles. Looks identical to the original in AVC not much to report here.

From HD-DVD:

The Hulk, Superman Returns & King Kong. Still testing these but I won't encode AVC on these. I'll post the results when I finished.

Over The Air: I'll test it next after HD-DVDs.

I have just finished my Back To The Future VC1 encode. Honestly, I can't tell the difference from the original. Note: DirecTV HD HDNET total size was 9.5 gigs so the source is not prestine like HD-DVDs. Example, Superman Returns the movie alone is 21Gigs. Let me do some more encodes and I'll tell you then......but try it. VC1 is really good!

Anybody else have performed encodes in AVC and VC1 then created a HD-DVD with Scenarist? I just wish I had Advanced Content. I also have the Scenarist HDMV Bluray but I really want to stay away from bluray. I heard that HD-DVD is going to be natively supported by Vista when the update comes.

oberon

22nd March 2007, 19:59

Toti

23rd March 2007, 03:54

@toti
I have been playing around with reencoding hd-dvd using vc-1 in cinevision. Playtime and frames are the same as the source but the audio and video are always out of sync. Pts data for both tracks are the same so they should sync up. I think clownshoes states he had the same issue using cinemaster 4.2. Can you show me exactly how you are setting up your reencode?

Hi Oberon, on #2 on this thread I explain and even put the Script. If you tell me what versions of CineVision & Scenarist you are using along with what source & avs script I might be able to help you.

Right now, I am extremelly happy with my VC1 results. It works awesome I am currently learning how to use Scenarist Advanced Content 4.1. Encoding the Super Bowl now but so far the quality is outstanding the most impressive is that 8 Gigs is way than enough. It makes me think what's the buzz about blu-ray and its 50 gigs. Do they really need that much space? I think 30 gigs is even too much, single layer HD-DVDs is good enough. Anybody else has comments?

Clown shoes

23rd March 2007, 12:10

Hi Oberon,

It is strange that we are both getting the same issue when re-encoding HD-DVD material. Like you my PTS data tells me there is only milliseconds difference, but in reality it is more like 11 seconds!

Can I ask your process for preparing the HD-DVD material and also the title you are having problems with?

ACrowley

23rd March 2007, 13:59

Are you guys having the DTS HD (Pro Series)and Cinevision Audio Transcoder (AC3) included in Sonic Cinevision 1.2 ?

It has to be included ,according to the Sonic Website

http://www.sonic.com/products/Professional/CineVision/faqs.aspx

In the Docs you can read both Encoders are included on the Sonic installationDisc a a seperate Apps with own installer.

Clown shoes

23rd March 2007, 15:13

Sorry Crowley, I'm not sure. I'm using Cinevision at my friends work and I've only been working with video so far.

oberon

24th March 2007, 01:01

Toti

25th March 2007, 05:20

I am trying to reencode accepted I demuxed with evodemux .623b and in graphedit its the mpv-elecard demuxer-sonic cinemaster video 4.2 avs script is
directshowsource("f:\accepted.grf"fps-23.976,audio=false,seekzero=false,seek=true,framecount=133920)

I did enter the dragon a while back and everything went ok when I encoded it with mainconcept avc. But this has me stumped.

@Oberon, I didn't want to answer anything till I did some testing, muxing and authoring. You have to tell me what program you are using to author your HD-DVDs and what versions of MainConcept.

HD-DVD & CineVision findings:

CineVision 1.2
Scenarist Standard Content 4.12
VC1 works only at 1920X1080 (23.976 pulldown) or 29.97 no pulldown
VC1 at any other resolution will give you a 4:3 picture or pulldown looks choppy or missing frames.

AVC does not work at any resolution with pulldown. If you encode with no pulldown works fine. Ex. 1280X720 at 59.96 fps progressive no pulldown.

CineVision 1.2
Scenarist Advanced Content 4.11
Works fine with any resolution either (I tested 1280X720, 1280X1080 & 1920X1080)VC1 or AVC with pulldown or without pulldown. However, .ac3 audio has small distortion at volume peaks (muxing problem?).

This makes me believe that the problem does not lies with the encoded video but with Scenarist muxer. Hard for me to believe but true.

I still have not yet tested HD-DVDs source but I assume the same results. Now the problem I have is does anyone knows a tutorial or at least a guide how to do Advanced Content menus? Scenarist manual does not help just tells you how to drop the Advance content into the timeline but I still don't know if the programming is done inside Scenarist or...? I am not looking for an "idiot's guide" but at least point me in the right direction.

Toti

25th March 2007, 05:42

I forgot to mention the quality of VC1. Hands down the quality of VC1 is superior to that of AVC.

It's true at some bitrate like 8~11 Mbps Average you can't tell the difference between the two but when you drop it down to 4~8 Mbps.

VC1 still keeps the crispness to the extent that I decided to "test, what if?" I put my DirecTVHD encodes on a single layer DVD to see how they look. I was "wowed" since I expected some compression to be obvious and they look identical at the same res 1280X1080. AVC at that low bitrate starts to show some compression artifacts. I was really impressed!

Over the air like CSINY I keep it at two episodes per single layer at 1920X1080p @ 23.976 and they look even better in VC1 than the original (probably CineVision filters?)

Comparison is extremelly easy with CineVision. After it finishes to encode you can SYNC both videos and go frame by frame (you even have a bitrate graph to show you where the bitrate goes off the roof to keep an eye on those scenes).

Since is true, the quality depends greatly on the video content and bitrate but a movie where you don't have much movement bitrate can drop. Why is most people encoding on AVC? Try VC1 and see for yourself.

I want to hear other people's finding (actual encoding) not assumptions.

Clown shoes

25th March 2007, 12:14

I am trying to reencode accepted I demuxed with evodemux .623b and in graphedit its the mpv-elecard demuxer-sonic cinemaster video 4.2 avs script is
directshowsource("f:\accepted.grf"fps-23.976,audio=false,seekzero=false,seek=true,framecount=133920)

I did enter the dragon a while back and everything went ok when I encoded it with mainconcept avc. But this has me stumped.

Hi Oberon, that's the same graph set up and script that I use. I am strating to wonder if this might be an issue with evodemux on certain titles.

@Toti

You will need to do a lot of reading if you want to start working with Advanced content. A good knowledge of HTML would also be a help. There is a great blog by Peter Torr to get you started as well.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/tags/HD+DVD/default.aspx

If you need help with XML, check some of these tutorials

http://www.w3schools.com/

I also recommend downloading the IHD jumpstart kit from the Microsoft website.

With regard to VC1 encoding with Cinevision, I encoded a two hour feature with a max bitrate of 22,000 kbps and an average bitrate of 8,500 kbps. It imported without problems into Scenarist standard content, but failed on the mux giving a maximum bitrate exceeded error. I think it could be a VBV problem which is very annoying seeing as both products are made by Sonic meaning an HD-DVD template should work perfectly.

Could you test out an encode for me Toti, just to see if you get the same results? 1920 x 1080p, 23.976 with pulldown, 2 x pass, average bitrate of 8,500 kbps and a max bitrate of 22,000 kbps. It should import fine into Scenarist Standard content, but I want to know if you can mux it.

Cheers

Toti

25th March 2007, 14:13

Could you test out an encode for me Toti, just to see if you get the same results? 1920 x 1080p, 23.976 with pulldown, 2 x pass, average bitrate of 8,500 kbps and a max bitrate of 22,000 kbps. It should import fine into Scenarist Standard content, but I want to know if you can mux it.
Cheers

Hello Clown, Thanks for the links I'll be doing the reading what's cool is that I know alot about web page building so this should not be that hard.

I have already encoded VC1 at 1920X1080p 23.976fps with pulldown (CineVision 1.2) and used Scenarist Standard Content 4.1 and it worked good. However, the bit rate was different I used
Peak 20 Mbps
Average 8.5 Mbps

I'll encode a piece of video at those bitrate. By the way, what's your version of Scenarist & Cinevision and the problem you got it tells you "Total Bitrate is Too High"? weird. The Total max should be around 29Mbps with all the streams.

oberon

25th March 2007, 17:01

CineVision 1.2
Scenarist Standard Content 4.12
VC1 works only at 1920X1080 (23.976 pulldown) or 29.97 no pulldown
VC1 at any other resolution will give you a 4:3 picture or pulldown looks choppy or missing frames.

AVC does not work at any resolution with pulldown. If you encode with no pulldown works fine. Ex. 1280X720 at 59.96 fps progressive no pulldown.
[/QUOTE]

I guess thats why when I encoded enter the dragon @ 1280x720 59.96fps It worked.

I am trying a different route. That looked like it worked in a 3 min sample.

Instead of building a a graph, I am rebuilding the evo with just the vc-1 video in evodemux. Then using Haali Media Splitter and latest ffdshow.

Then using DirectShowSource ("C:\Movie\Backup.evo",video=true,audio=false,fps=23.976,framecount=NNNNNN,seek=false,seekzero=false)

This way I can bypass cinemaster 4.2 wich may be causing a framerate issue.

But on a diffent note. When I try using cinevision 1.2 to encode vc-1 using cbr 9000kbps and vbv setting 14811 the encoding will run and when its close to finishing I get vbv buffer too small please reduce bitrate.

Toti

25th March 2007, 19:51

@ Oberon & Clown,

It seems you both are getting "Total Bitrate is Too High" when encoding VC1 in CineVision. I don't really set my max bitrate too high (18~25 Mbps) because my source is DirecTVHD. On OTA quality is good so I do max it out at 20 Mbps because the source's max bitrate is 19 Mbps. Quality is outstanding, now I know that you guys probably have another source like Bluray or HDDVD which explains why you want to get as close to the peak as possible.

If you use CineVision after you encode look at the bitrate graph and see if the actual bitrate goes over your max (it shouldn't) but if it does you can re-encode just that piece. Also, it could be that the bitrate of the audio is way too high? DirecTVHD peaks its AC3 at 384kbps which is nothing compared to TrueHD or DTSHD.

I think is that your audio bitrate is high and when you add the video it goes over. Anyway, if you are using VC1 (trust me on this) lower the max bitrate say 20 or 19 and then look at the results in a big HDTV and let your eye be the judge.

I also forgot to mention when encoding VC1 is about 40 percent faster than AVC but during playback AVC consumes less cpu.

I'll be encoding one of my HDDVDs right after this one finishes (MI3 DirecTVHD PPV) so I'll post the results. Does anyone knows the bitrate of Dolby Digital Plus & TrueHD? HD-DVDs does not support DTS only DTSHD :(

Clown shoes

25th March 2007, 22:29

Like Oberon mentioned Toti, our max bitrate error is probably caused by incorrect VBV settings. 22,000 kbps is well within VC1 spec and I am testing without audio, so that is not the problem.

With regard to speed, In Cinevision VC1 is faster than AVC encoding but the software still doesn't utilise more than 2 cores as far as I can see. With Mainconcept AVC encoder all 8 of my cores are utillised, meaning I can encode a 1920 x 1080p 2 hour movie with the highest settings in 13 hours. The VC1 in Cinevision takes 24 hours to complete. I just need to find out why Scenarist is having problems muxing with pulldown.

@Oberon, I still have a feeling that our problems may be coming from evodemux, but I will have to investigate more.

guada2

26th March 2007, 13:22

Does anyone knows the bitrate of Dolby Digital Plus & TrueHD? HD-DVDs does not support DTS only DTSHD

As for the less lossy schemes, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD High Resolution can encode up to eight channels on the new formats, and both will offer scalable data rates that can operate at much higher than anything available on current DVD. DTS-HD High Resolution will have a bitrate ceiling of 3Mbps for HD DVD and 6Mbps on Blu-ray. According to Dolby's literature Dolby Digital Plus is spec'd for bitrates of up to 3Mbps for HD DVD, and will max out at 1.7Mbps on Blu-ray for reasons that aren't yet apparent.

Bye.

arfster

26th March 2007, 16:23

I forgot to mention the quality of VC1. Hands down the quality of VC1 is superior to that of AVC.

It's true at some bitrate like 8~11 Mbps Average you can't tell the difference between the two but when you drop it down to 4~8 Mbps.

That's odd, because with x264 vs MS vc1 it's the other way round. At near-transparency bitrates (say 15-20mbit for most material) there isn't much difference, but 6-12mbit h264 usually wins out.

That's the reason why all broadcasters chose h264, despite it having _much_ higher encoding hardware requirements, and more importantly needing much more expensive decoder boxes.

Toti

27th March 2007, 03:15

Sagittaire

27th March 2007, 03:27

Clown shoes

27th March 2007, 11:41

@ Clown, I have just finished testing encoding video VC1 @ 22 Mbps max - 8.5 Mbps Average. I created an HD-DVD using Advanced Content & Standard Content with AC3 audio 384 kbps. Muxed fine, working great. Source is CSIMiami at 1920X1080/23.976fps/ w pulldown. :confused:

Really? How odd. Can you tell me what the software versions you are using are? Also did you get a chance to check out the advanced authoring links I gave you?

@Sagittaire, Yes that's what I was thinking until Toti succesfully managed the same encode. How are your tests going? Have you had any success with AVC pulldown and Scenarist yet?

Sagittaire

27th March 2007, 12:08

@Sagittaire, Yes that's what I was thinking until Toti succesfully managed the same encode. How are your tests going? Have you had any success with AVC pulldown and Scenarist yet?

Well all the source are simply different (complexity, duration). Encoding can be good for source A and fail for source B. Make test with short source is not like make complete encoding. VC-1 encoding from cinevision can be scanning by Elecard Buffer Analyzer.

Clown shoes

27th March 2007, 12:17

Of course, that makes sense. I find it a great shame that the only guarenteed effective workflow for me right now is mpeg2!

Is Elecards buffer analyzer available for purchase on it's own? Or do I need to purchase some of thier encoding software to receive it?

Sagittaire

27th March 2007, 13:01

Is Elecards buffer analyzer available for purchase on it's own? Or do I need to purchase some of thier encoding software to receive it?

Well another simple solution is to open CineVision Status.log file and read the Rate Control report at the end:

*****************************************
Number of overflows: 0
Number of underflows: 0
Number of HRD errors: 1
Bitrate: 24000 kbps
HRD buffer size: 14811 kbits
CBR: false
Minimum buffer fullness: 577760
Maximum buffer fullness: 11691232
*****************************************

Toti

27th March 2007, 15:24

CineVision 1.2
Standard Content 4.12
Advanced Content 4.11

I installed CineVision, import the file and the only thing I touch is the average bitrate and max bitrate. The rest stays as is. Everything works great for me. Like I said before I think that in Scenarist Standard Content 4.12 there is a bug muxing anything that has a pulldown on:
VC1/1280X1080/w pulldown
VC1/1440X1080/w pulldown
VC1/1280X720/w pulldown
AVC/1280X720/w pulldown
AVC/1440X1080/w pulldown
AVC/1920X1080/w pulldown
Those same videos with no-pulldown work great.
VC1/1920X1080/w pulldown WORKS

Because the same videos on Scenarist Advanced Content 4.11 work great. I never had an issue with total bit rate is too high. Only at the beginning when I was encoding with MainConcept 2.0.15 but got solved on the other thread by changing VBV. I need to update the other thread because I think Mainconcept was encoding ok but I haven't encoded anything with that program again. I think Scenarist will solve that muxing problem on the next release but I am happy with Advanced Content.

Sagittaire

27th March 2007, 16:05

I installed CineVision, import the file and the only thing I touch is the average bitrate and max bitrate. The rest stays as is. Everything works great for me. Like I said before I think that in Scenarist Standard Content 4.12 there is a bug muxing anything that has a pulldown on:

What is your problem with Scenarist SCA?
You use Software player (PowerDVD) or Hardware player for your test?

oberon

27th March 2007, 21:06

It looks like avc will give a funny runtime unless its at 59.94 but then your limited to 1280x720p. But for some reason when I get vc-1 to work in cinevision the video looks a little jerky. When played back on software and hardware players.

Toti

28th March 2007, 16:01

What is your problem with Scenarist SCA?
You use Software player (PowerDVD) or Hardware player for your test?

I have played on both software (PowerDVD 6.5) & Toshiba HD-DVD player. By the way, when I play back any of my HD-DVDs on the combo player from LG. It automatically creates a warning saying "this disc might not be suitable for children". Its like the FBI warning, you can't forward or skip it.

Golgot13

13th April 2007, 01:31

I have played on both software (PowerDVD 6.5) & Toshiba HD-DVD player. By the way, when I play back any of my HD-DVDs on the combo player from LG. It automatically creates a warning saying "this disc might not be suitable for children". Its like the FBI warning, you can't forward or skip it.

It is simple do a HD DVD Standard Content, you will not have any "Warning" on cpmbo player of LG.

LG player can play fine HD DVD but only in "Standard Content" (before MS "impose" Advanced Content on HD DVD standard
to support it....).
Some HD player manufactory have lot of difficulty to make HD DVD player without support of MS
(MS "impose" Windows CE kernel and BroadCom chipset to help manufacturies....).

All new HD DVD player (from other company than Toshiba) will be with MS OS code inside (no Linux like HDXA1 or HDA1 :( )

dvdboy

13th April 2007, 17:52

Just as an aside, I notice Sonic will be demoing Cinevision 2 at NAB. I wonder if the VC-1 engine has improved or whether they'll keep it inferior to PEP to generate more sales...

Clown shoes

18th April 2007, 12:34

It appears PEP and Cinevision 2 are now one and the same :)

dvdboy

18th April 2007, 14:39

It appears PEP and Cinevision 2 are now one and the same :)

That's great if true, but as I read it there are now two products in the Cinevision Line:

Cinevision 2
Cinevision PSE (AKA PEP)

Would love to be wrong!

Clown shoes

18th April 2007, 15:10

No you are quite right it appears

Cinevision PSE

http://www.sonic.com/about/press/news/2007/04/microsoft.aspx

Cinevision 2

http://www.sonic.com/about/press/news/2007/04/cinevision.aspx

Hopefully the only difference is that the VC1 only PSE enables distributed encoding and the overhaul of the VC1 encoding engine is realised in Cinevision 2 as well.

dvdboy

18th April 2007, 15:37

I think Cinevision 2 will use an updated MainConcept VC-1 (& H264) engine, but it will still be miles behind PSE.

It will be interesting to see what Sonic have done with PEP, as I get the feeling it will be almost exactly the same as Microsoft's release, perhaps with a new icon! Hopefully they've added some kind of front end to the pep.exe file itself - I think any semi-competent developer could develop a GUI for a command line tool...

Clown shoes

18th April 2007, 15:56

Was it you who said you had beta tested PEP? I was speaking to Dan Gehred on the Microsoft PEP team about 6 weeks ago about PEP but he seems to have disapeared off the face of the Earth :) What are your impressions of it DVDBoy?

dvdboy

19th April 2007, 01:00

I only managed to have a limited play with it, but even so, it is obviously an incredibly hardcore encoder with a very steep learning curve. Hopefully I'm not breaking any 'rules' talking about this...

- The version I used only accepted raw YUV files, which you could create either from commandline or via a graph edit plugin. Hopefully one of the improvements with Sonic's PSE will be easier file integration.

- The next stage involved setting all of your encoding preferences for 1st / 2nd pass encoding. Thankfully, Microsoft's default settings are designed to be 'on the money', because there must be 40+ options, spread over several tabbed panes. And we're not talking just Min / Av / Max bitrates - at least when I look through Mainconcept's encoding options (Under their own MPEG-2 & H264 encoders) they all make obvious sense. QP Values, Filters, Dquant, Dead Zones - I felt like a complete n00b trying to make sense of it all.

- The encoder itself was run from command prompt, where you pointed it at the configuration file, set a few switches and let the puppy go. We never got around to trying any distributed encoding, although as I understand it you have to fix the seams between segments manually afterwards.

- You can then review the encode, log segments for re-encoding, tweak the hell out of the settings (more options), set up multiple runs at the same segment so you can see what works and what doesn't. You can even effect just part of the frame!

- Once you're happy you 'publish' your file much like Cinevision.

As I said it's such an amazingly powerful tool, unmatched on the market as far as I can tell. But it requires real effort and dedication to fully use. If you just want to do an encode, you can set it up relatively quickly, using the default settings and just let it run like you would most encoder apps, and you'll get very good footage out of it. But if you need to, the tools are there for you to squeeze something really special out of it. A colleague of mine said to me that it's easy to make your file larger and look worse, or smaller and look better, and it's really mad that you can do that - one of the encoding options has values of 1 - 5 which don't equate to any real quality / peformance scale, it's basically the boffins at Microsoft have come up with 5 different ways of improving your encode, they might as well have called them "Plan's A - E"!!

I don't really want to go into the exact details of the encoder as I think that would be 'crossing a line', plus I didn't understand half of what it does!! Suffice to say, if Sonic can improved more than they break, Cinevision PSE / PEP will continue being the best software encoder out there for HD DVD / Blu-ray work.

zambelli

20th April 2007, 03:34

Let me try to shed some more light on the Microsoft + Sonic deal without breaking any non-disclosure agreements. Microsoft is basically licensing PEP to Sonic for distribution. Microsoft will continue developing the codec, of course, but Sonic will be the one selling the application suite, supporting customers, handling distribution, etc. Keep in mind that PEP is more than just the VC-1 codec - there's also source preprocessing, parallel encoding control, 3rd pass tweaking, segment re-encoding, VC-1 analysis/viewing, etc. So there's a lot to do there in terms of development - a lot of polishing of fine details that our team never perhaps had the time to do. Think of it as a Sonic product powered by Microsoft technology.

Along similar lines, we have also announced at NAB our VC-1 Encoder SDK that we will be selling to ISVs for integration into their encoding, editing and authoring applications. The Encoder SDK is limited mostly to just the codec. It's basically another way for 3rd parties to build products that are sold under their brand name but built on Microsoft's video encoding technology. Unlike PEP/Sonic PSE which is targetted at enterprise level customers (think Warner Bros, not grandma), the VC-1 Encoder SDK is more likely to show up in prosumer products that you can buy at a store.

As for PEP's quality settings... Yes, they can be quite daunting, but many of them are already present even in our Windows encoder DMO that a lot of people here use - so hopefully that can ease the learning curve a bit. If you ever have any questions about specific settings, feel free to ask.

Pitou

7th May 2007, 15:33

I guess thats why when I encoded enter the dragon @ 1280x720 59.96fps It worked.

I am trying a different route. That looked like it worked in a 3 min sample.

Instead of building a a graph, I am rebuilding the evo with just the vc-1 video in evodemux. Then using Haali Media Splitter and latest ffdshow.

Then using DirectShowSource ("C:\Movie\Backup.evo",video=true,audio=false,fps=23.976,framecount=NNNNNN,seek=false,seekzero=false)

This way I can bypass cinemaster 4.2 wich may be causing a framerate issue.

But on a diffent note. When I try using cinevision 1.2 to encode vc-1 using cbr 9000kbps and vbv setting 14811 the encoding will run and when its close to finishing I get vbv buffer too small please reduce bitrate.

Oberon,

I'm getting choppy framerate/video, when reencoding the UNILOGO.evo. Using Cinevision 1.2 and Scnearist ACA 4.11

So, I'm trying the same route as yours, could you point me to ffdshow link you're using?

Thanks.

Pitou!

benwaggoner

10th May 2007, 19:14

Along similar lines, we have also announced at NAB our VC-1 Encoder SDK that we will be selling to ISVs for integration into their encoding, editing and authoring applications. The Encoder SDK is limited mostly to just the codec. It's basically another way for 3rd parties to build products that are sold under their brand name but built on Microsoft's video encoding technology. Unlike PEP/Sonic PSE which is targetted at enterprise level customers (think Warner Bros, not grandma), the VC-1 Encoder SDK is more likely to show up in prosumer products that you can buy at a store.

As for PEP's quality settings... Yes, they can be quite daunting, but many of them are already present even in our Windows encoder DMO that a lot of people here use - so hopefully that can ease the learning curve a bit. If you ever have any questions about specific settings, feel free to ask.
To follow up on Zambelli's comments, you can think of CineVision PSE as the equivalent to something like the high-end CinemaCraft or hardware Toshiba encoders used for making A-list Hollywood titles. The people who use that are people for whom running PSE as an encoder for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs is their full-time job.

We know that's a pretty small audience, although a critical one. Our SDK licensing is how we're going to get consumer and normal professional VC-1 implementations of the codec broadly supported in many different tools. A couple of years from now there will probably be 1000x more copies of SDK-based products than PSE.

The good news is that the really high-end audience for PSE drives a lot of codec development, so we're able to take stuff that was esoteric 3rd pass tweaks and turn them into simpler and even automatic processing modes, so the entire ecosystem of VC-1 gets to take advantage of the work we're doing with PSE.

benwaggoner

10th May 2007, 19:21

With regard to speed, In Cinevision VC1 is faster than AVC encoding but the software still doesn't utilise more than 2 cores as far as I can see. With Mainconcept AVC encoder all 8 of my cores are utillised, meaning I can encode a 1920 x 1080p 2 hour movie with the highest settings in 13 hours. The VC1 in Cinevision takes 24 hours to complete. I just need to find out why Scenarist is having problems muxing with pulldown.

Both the v11 codec and CineVision PSE support 4-way threading per instance of the codec. Can you describe where you're not seeing them all be used (I often see the analysis pass not pegging the processors since it's IO bound while caching content, but you should be at ~100% during the encode pass).