RM 1st Pass on VBR by Quality

[LiFe]

Out of interest, what information does RP glean from the first pass when encoding by Quality? WM9 doesn't allow dual pass on quality, and it makes sense, because if a frame is to be encoded at a specific quality regardless of bandwidth, there is not much info you need from the first pass which couldn't be calculated on the fly anyway.

Interestingly, file comparisons between clips encoded with 1 pass and 2 pass vbrQ come up with differences.

R.
LiFe.

[karl_lillevold]

In general, 2-pass for vbrQ is not very useful, but it does take maxBitrate into account, which affects streamability. If maxBitrate is set low enough this can introduce differences.

[LiFe]

Eh?

Max bitrate was set at the maximum 999999... and resulted in differences (not that there's probably any viewable differences).

Has anyone put together a 'quality equivalent' list yet??

R.
LiFe.

[karl_lillevold]

Perhaps you meant to type more 9's, but maxBitrate = 999999 (bps) is not very high, and will clearly affect the result. In any case, just do not use 2-pass for fixed quality encodes, and do increase maxBitrate, perhaps to 99999999 :)

[LiFe]

Hmm the ... was supposted to indicate maximum 9's : )

LiFe.

[bleo]

The number of B-frames used is different when using 1- or 2-pass vbrQuality. Dunno about visual differences though... Just use 1-pass :)

Don't set maxBitrate too high though coz I think it makes RealOne Player take longer to buffer when starting and seeking. I use 10000000.

btw, I have seen that producer drops frames when hitting maxBitrate in 1 AND 2 pass vbrQuality modes... But I don't think maxBitrate is enforced until maxStartupLatency runs out... (?)

[LiFe]

Yes I've noticed the RP buffer problem.

It doesn't happen in that open source origional windows media player, so I'm hoping that Real fix it in the next release along with the 5.1ch output support.

I've already complained about the Player buffer issued in the helix community forums but they were apparently unable to re-create the problem (which I find impossible to beleive because the issues happens on any PC I try to play these files on).

Perhaps Karl will have better luck ; )

R.
LiFe.

[karl_lillevold]

this player buffer problem is very strange. It sounds exactly like a problem we had when VBR was first introduced years ago, and the old RealPlayer 8 would buffer forever, assuming streaming conditions for local file playback. It was fixed long ago, and I have not seen it in any newer generation players. maxBitrate or maxStartupLatency should not matter at all for local playback. It's almost as if your RealOne installation is using DLLs from the old RealPlayer 8
:confused:

[LiFe]

*My* RP .dlls? It's not just My. It's every installation of RP One that I've seen (all of which have been updated using the auto update feature).

Encode a 3 hour movie, at DVD style frame sizes, using VBR-Q with the maximum maximum bitrate, maximum startup latency and 2-pass.

Open Task Manager, Open the file in Real One and hit play. You can watch it suck up 30 - 60MB of RAM as it spends 30 seconds caching the file. And this happens on all WinXP machines that I've tried it on.

It does the same caching at every seek (making them annoyingly slow).

I've tried it on different PCs including:
PII366 w/ ATI Rage
Athlon ~1GHz with some reasonable nVidia card.
My Athlon XP 1.5GHz with ATI Radeon AIW
P4 2.8GHz with built in Intel gfx.

There's nothing wrong with the file because that Origional Windows Media Player proggie, when set to DirectShow, has no problem decoding the files (except it doesn't seem to buffer enough to keep up with very high motion scenes).

R
LiFe.

[LiFe]

Come to think of it, the last couple of encodes I've used the default max startup latency thinking it might fix the issue. Else I usualy use those settings.

R.
LiFe.

[karl_lillevold]

all of which have been updated using the auto update feature
Hmm, maybe it's a bug with the auto-update feature, and some old DLLs are left behind. I always un-install, and install clean. Even my old PIII 500, running WinXP Pro, with an old ATI Rage card has no problems like this.

in C:\Program Files\Real\RealOne Player\Setup there should be a .r1pclean.exe that can be used to clean up your system. Then you can download an installer from the link in this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48179), for a fresh install. That's all I can suggest for now.

[LiFe]

I installed the player less than 6 months ago when I built this PC, so I'm not gonna install it again because you said it was a bug squashed back with RP8.

R.
LiFe.