boxy picture

[jerets]

For some reason im getting excessive boxes on even low motion frames even at higher bitrates (like 1150). Any suggestions or things to try?

Here are some of my settings, if this helps:
Ultra High percision
H.263
Max I-frame int 300
Min I-Frame int 5
Min I-Frame 2
Max I-Frame 6
Min P-Frame 2
Max P-Frme 16

Thanks so much,
Jerets

[Tuning]

Sorry, What do you mean by boxes ?. And what deocder are you using ?
Tried FFDshow ?

[jerets]

excessive small boxes throughout the entire picture:
http://xvidpic.freewebspace.com/images/xvid.jpg

I've noticed that most peoples don't have that many obvious boxes esp. in low motion frames.
Thanks so much,
Jerets

note: be sure to view screenshot at max size

[Gknot4ever]

Tuning, Jeret means hes getting the "block" effect in his videos when encoding. This happens when there is a lot of high motion and the picture breaks up into distorted blocks. Smaller birate mpeg movies do this too.

Jeret, i recommend going back to the older "stable" version of Koepi's XviD codec, as the new one still has a bit of work to be done before its stable.

I too have also had the results that you are getting with the block effect. I recently went back to his older stable version.


Oh got a question for ya Jeret. Did your encoding take insane amount of time? im on a 2.8ghz, and when i use DivX encoding usually takes just under 3 hours. But with XviD 1.0 Beta2 it took like 4-5 hours with even the basic settings, no extra options. did you have this problem also?

[Tuning]

Originally posted by jerets
excessive small boxes throughout the entire picture:
I've noticed that most peoples don't have that many obvious boxes esp. in low motion frames.

Jerets, are you encoding in small frame size (i.e vcd resolution ?).
Then use anyother resize filter like bicubic or biliniear. And if bitrate is too low increase a little.
I think sometimes the source has this problem inherent to it. If you open this movie in Vdub and seek frame-by-frame can you see similar boxes?

[Hylas]

jerets, are you using 1-pass CBR? Maybe the bit-reservoir is drained from high motion scenes before.

What is your source, what is the resolution?

[jerets]

Thanks for the responces guys.

Tuning/Hylas: my source was 704x480 from an s-video source digital satellite. So no reason for anything to be wrong there. i was resizing to 512x384 and using 2-pass vbr 1150 which i thought was very liberal for any encode.

Gknot4ever: i think i will be trying the older version. not sure what i was using but i do think it might have been a newer one. not sure. vdub says its: 9:17:45, Jun 11 2003 (Unknown build). Core version 2.1 <- is that the version your talking about being unstable? Also, the samples i've been working with do take a little while to encode... although i think it saves time if i open my final avs file in vdub(i like mod version) and directstreamcopy->save avi and then encode the saved avi.

Thanks guys,
Jerets

[Tommy Carrot]

The martial arts are very difficult to compress. They contains a lot of fast motion and quick camera panning. Imo 1150 kbps is too low for that resolution.

If you don't have the stats, you can check the quality with ffdshow. Enable the OSD and the 'frame mean quantizer' option. If it's higher than 5-6 then you will have to lower the resolution or set higher bitrate.

You should try the latest xvid build. Its interface is confusing at first, but if you learn to use it properly, it will give better results than the older versions.

[Manao]

Originally posted by jerets
I was resizing to 512x384 and using 2-pass vbr 1150 which i thought was very liberal for any encode.The needed bitrate is strongly dependant of the thing you encode. If a bitrate of 1150 may be enough in a lot of case, here it simply seems not enough, so increase it.

Plus, it seems you're using an old version of XviD. Please update to the latest binaries provided by Koepi, it will increase the quality. Do not come back to a stable or unstable build of Koepi, you'll find quality is even worse.

Gknot4ever : First, why do you compare encoding time in XviD and DivX, without precising the settings used, nor the resolution / prefiltering / length of the video you were encoding. How could we know if there is something wrong ???

Second, I guess from your name that you're a GKnot fan, but GKnot don't work with Dev-Api-4. May your ( quality ) problems be related to the use of Gknot ?

Thirdly, you've got a problem with the latest beta of XviD. Then report the problem instead of advising others not to use it.

[jerets]

lol you guys got me all confused now.

Tommy Carrot:
i've seen many other ufc samples with a bitrate even slightly lower then mine that don't seem to have that many boxes.

I do have ffdshow but wasn't able to follow ya on what i should do to check it? Open ffdshow configuration? I didn't see those options in there. Also, are you suggesting a new version of xvid then, "9:17:45, Jun 11 2003 (Unknown build). Core version 2.1". What version are you using?

Manao: For some reason I thought 1150 was a high bitrate for anything. What would you recommend (for high motion sources like this)? 1250-1500 for high motion sources like this (before reducing the resize to 448x336)? What bitrate range would you then recommend for 448x336? 900-1150?

Thanks so much,
jerets

[Tommy Carrot]

Jerets, you can find everything about the latest build in the looong thread titled 'Ciao! (XviD-1.0-Beta2-05122003)'.

[Manao]

For the FFDshow thing : well, download a newer version of FFDShow here (http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20031128.exe)

For the bitrate : Do you know chat a compression test is ? If yes, then do that in order to have an idea of the bitrate to use.

If not, let me explain what it is : after your first pass, the codec has output a fake avi, and a filestat. Open the filestat with Koepi's Statreader, it'll give you some informations. The one which interest you is the size. That's the maximal size you can get without changing the settings of XviD. So if you give XviD a bitrate that is superior to this bitrate, XviD won't achieve to stick to that bitrate, because it can't give a higher quality ( without changing the settings )

Usually, when making an encode, ppl here use a bitrate that is between 50% and 80 % that maximal bitrate. Of course, it depends of the settings, but the range I give here is pretty safe. So, calculate the maximum bitrate, it should ( at least I hope so ) be higher than 2500 kbps, and deduce the bitrate you should use from that bitrate.

[Gknot4ever]

Originally posted by Manao
The needed bitrate is strongly dependant of the thing you encode. If a bitrate of 1150 may be enough in a lot of case, here it simply seems not enough, so increase it.

Plus, it seems you're using an old version of XviD. Please update to the latest binaries provided by Koepi, it will increase the quality. Do not come back to a stable or unstable build of Koepi, you'll find quality is even worse.

Gknot4ever : First, why do you compare encoding time in XviD and DivX, without precising the settings used, nor the resolution / prefiltering / length of the video you were encoding. How could we know if there is something wrong ???

Second, I guess from your name that you're a GKnot fan, but GKnot don't work with Dev-Api-4. May your ( quality ) problems be related to the use of Gknot ?

Thirdly, you've got a problem with the latest beta of XviD. Then report the problem instead of advising others not to use it.

First of all Manao, i never told him to stop using the new XviD codec, i simply suggested he try using an older one, i never said "stop". <-key word there "never".

Second, i tried XviD 1.0 beta2 in both Gknot and DVX (supports new XviD)
and got same results. yes, this could be something im doing wrong.

Third, when in my post did i advise others not to use it?

Your quick to throw accusations.

[LeonMcNichol]

One more thing, you said satellite digital cable. I found out, even the source isn't clean and will lead to blocking even more from there when I do my xplay episodes. I would also recommend either highering your bitrate and/or use a lower resolution. As well as use b-frames, if you aren't already. Also, you might want to use bilinearresize. Sure, you will lose a touch of quality, but it will help in the compression.

I'm going to wait until XviD1.0 stabilizes a bit more, before trying it out. Sure, I want to try it out (oh boy do I ever), but I don't think it's stable enough to archive to it yet and I don't really have the time to install it and play with it. So I'm sticking with the previous release of xvid.

[jerets]

Wow you guys have been very helpful. Thanks so much. Just a couple more things.

Manao: Where can i find Koepi's Statreader? I looked all over koepi's site and searched the forums here as well as google. Can't find it at all?
I am now using this version of xvid "8:01:32, Oct 4 2003 Core Ver 2.1" <- is this the latest (best) stable version?

I figured out how to use the FFDShow to check the quality. Works very well. =)

Thanks again,
Jerets

[Manao]

Stats reader is bundled with the codec when you download it from Koepi's site.

The best way to have the version of a codec : open vdub, go to 'Video'->'Compression', select the codec and hit 'About', just on the right of 'Configure'. The latest Koepi's has the version number 1.0.0.-127, and is dated from the 5th of december.

I don't know from where you are reading the numbers you give, but I'd say you're not using the right version.

[jerets]

ah ok. lol
the sample im working with is a 30 second sample and statsreader gave me a max size of 21mb, which comes out to 5761 bitrate. Even at 50% of that, it comes out to being a bitrate of 2881. And 80% comes out to a bitrate of 4609. That doesn't seem right?
Thanks,
Jerets

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by jerets
ah ok. lol
the sample im working with is a 30 second sample and statsreader gave me a max size of 21mb, which comes out to 5761 bitrate. Even at 50% of that, it comes out to being a bitrate of 2881. And 80% comes out to a bitrate of 4609. That doesn't seem right?
Thanks,
Jerets

As i said, martial arts are very difficult material to compress. :p

[LeonMcNichol]

I found out, short clips don't work with equal bitrates of long movies/episodes. I've been encoding Saber Marionette J to xvid and there are music videos that were made. I encoded them to the same bitrate and it ended up looking bad. So I had to use a much higher bitrate. (In GK, out of the yellow. ;) )

[jerets]

hehe. but is there anything i can do to bring this number down (like change something with my avs filters, etc) w/o having to resize? I went ahead and encoded my sample at 2881 and FFDShow gave me 3-4 (mainly 4) for quality. but this is also at approx. 20mb/min. one of these 3hr events would use up like 6 discs. hehe

Manao:
Usually, when making an encode, ppl here use a bitrate that is between 50% and 80 % that maximal bitrate.
I can't see compressing any less then 50% with the results it gave me. Did you mean compress the max. filesize down 50-80%, not use 50-80% of that bitrate?

I assume thats what he ment. I went ahead and did an 80% compression and FFDShow gave me 8 (and its just about as boxy as my original encode).

Thanks so much guys,
Jerets

[Manao]

Jerets : isn't it the same thing ? Filesize = Bitrate * Length. So if I divide Filesize by 2, I also divide Bitrate by 2.

To reduce the needed filesize/bitrate, you'll have to (in avisynth ):
- use strong denoisers in order to soften the picture Convolution3D(preset = "movielq"), for example ( I would also add a TemporalSoften(2,3,3,6,2) )
- Reduce the strength of the resize filter ( knowing that bilinear < bicubic < lanczos, and that max filesize may be bigger by 25 % using lanczos instead of bilinear )
- Reduce the resolution

You can also modify the settings of the codec :
- use b-frames ( 2,1.5,0.75), gmc, adaptive quant, treillis, motion estimation 6, vhq 4, chroma motion.
- if you're using the mpeg matrix, use instead h263, or even the custom matrix hvs_good ( here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=308358#post308358) )

I would modify XviD's settings, use the denoisers and try to keep for the moment your current resolution.

Edit : I read your edit : 80 % of the bitrate means bitrate * 4 / 5, not bitrate * 1 / 5. Perhaps that's making what I said clearer

[jerets]

Awesome sweet. Ya i was using lanczos, i'll have to give bilinear a try.

60% gave me an average 5 in ffdshow. good stuff

Originally posted by Manao
Edit : I read your edit : 80 % of the bitrate means bitrate * 4 / 5, not bitrate * 1 / 5. Perhaps that's making what I said clearer

i may still be misunderstanding you, lol. isn't 'max bitrate * .8' = to 20% compression and 'max bitrate * .2' = to 80% compression?

Thanks again,
I appreciate your patients (hehe)
Jerets

[Manao]

By 80 % of the bitrate, I meant 'you keep 80 % of the bitrate', not 'you throw away 80 % of it'.

[jerets]

ah, ok wow. I went ahead and used bilinear, 448x336, and kept 50%. FFDShow gave me a 4. Now Tommy Carrot said if its between 5-6 use more bitrate. I can't see using any less compression then 50% (50+ %). Is 50% the most use for your encodes?

Thanks a ton! =)
The picture looks off the wall,
Jerets