BD3D2MK3D v1.17: Convert 3D BDs or MKV to 3D SBS, T&B or Frame-sequential MKV

[r0lZ]

Thanks for the link, |1313|, but I prefer the human readable explanation. (See the links in the edits of my previous post.)

And thanks jdobbs for the confirmation. BTW, can you also confirm that the ReduceBy2 filters are really good to, well... reduce by 2? Or is it better to use the Bicubic filter?

[jdobbs]

Originally Posted by r0lZ

Thanks for the link, |1313|, but I prefer the human readable explanation. (See the links in the edits of my previous post.)

And thanks jdobbs for the confirmation. BTW, can you also confirm that the ReduceBy2 filters are really good to, well... reduce by 2? Or is it better to use the Bicubic filter?

ReduceBy2 uses bilinear resizing. I would suggest it is just as good if not better than bicubic. The improvements introduced in bicubic, lanczos, spline (and others) are there (generally) to improve the introduction of the "imaginary" pixels needed for image upscaling, not downscaling. Of course you're bound to get arguments from people either way -- like anything else.

I personally use bilinear resizing for downsizing and either lanczos or spline for upsizing. That's also what's implemented as defaults in BD Rebuilder.

[r0lZ]

OK, thanks again. Personally, I prefer bicubic for downscaling, but it's only because I prefer the rendering of the first image in the "Minimation" section of this well known visual comparison. I suppose that bilinear might be better or at least as good in the case of real live images. And anyway I'll stick with the ReduceBy2 (bilinear) filters for now, unless someone can prove that it's not the best solution.

[jdobbs]

Originally Posted by r0lZ

OK, thanks again. Personally, I prefer bicubic for downscaling, but it's only because I prefer the rendering of the first image in the "Minimation" section of this well known visual comparison. I suppose that bilinear might be better or at least as good in the case of real live images. And anyway I'll stick with the ReduceBy2 (bilinear) filters for now, unless someone can prove that it's not the best solution.

Yeah, I would agree that in that example bicubic definitely looks better.

[Sharc]

Originally Posted by r0lZ

.....However, you want something different. AFAIK, it's the first time that someone wants to remove the black bars AND resize the picture to occupy the whole 16:9 area, thus distorting voluntarily the image! Sorry again, but I can't accept that! If you want to butcher your movies, do it without my help! ........

Just a footnote: The poster is about to re-invent anamorphic sizing which was quite common for DVDs. Theoretically it is possible, provided that the correct --sar is signalled and provided that the player reads the --sar and displays the picture accordingly. Some SW players do, but I doubt if HW players would do this correctly in general because they usually display the picture either as 4:3 or 16:9, disregarding the --sar. There is one exception for blu-ray though: One can resize the 1920x1080 to 1440x1080 using --sar 4:3 and have the player play it back as 16:9. It is fully blu-ray compliant. I used this anamorph encoding for 2D but never tried for 3D. The result would be worse anyway due to the reduction of the horizontal resolution.

[r0lZ]

Yes. I agree that theoretically, you can resize the video and then restore it to its normal display ratio with the appropriate SAR value. But it's not what youli wants. And anyway, resizing the original video two times to restore the 1:1 pixel AR implies a (small but useless) quality loss. I see no advantage in doing that.

But youli has made a hit with his third suggestion (about the MKV compatibility options). I am currently testing these options, and indeed, with that options, my Samsung TV is much more rapid when it loads the movie for the first time. (It has to seek to 4 points in the video to generate the thumbnails of its pseudo-chapters, and that takes ages.) Therefore, I wonder if I should enable the 3 parameters suggested by youli by default. (It will of course be possible to disable them.)

Anyway, I want to thank youli for having pointed this out. I was not aware of these options, but I have always been frustrated by the time needed by my TV to begin the playback of a 3D MKV. I know now why it's so long. :-)

[Sharc]

Originally Posted by frank

Sharko you mean DLNA? With server app (WMP) on PC and the (restricted) TV player app that decodes the stream?
I want to use a notebook/Android device as wireless HD player. That's what Intel is promoting. So the Blu-ray mafia can forget their stupid players.

I tried streaming from PC or from NAS to TV via WLAN. I tried dlna, Serviio (with modified script to limit the bitrate), PLEX and DSVideo with their respective Apps running on the TV. I found the fluctuating WLAN to be the bottleneck which caused stuttering and frequent buffering. Cabled (CAT5) LAN was ok, but inconvenient from floor to floor. PLC was finally most convenient and stable. For streaming to mobile devices I use the PLC/WiFi extender.
(Maybe I could also have improved the WLAN by optimizing locations, antennae or using repeaters but I went straight for PLC).

[youli]

I compared the two methods of interpolation - bilinear and Lanczos (see the pictures below).

The first frame was resized to 1920x540 by VerticalReduceBy2(Left) - left eye only, and restored to 1920x1080 by built-in DXVA decoder with Daum PotPlayer.

The second frame was resized to 1920x540 by Lanczos4Resize(Left, 1920, 540) - left eye only, and restored to 1920x1080 by built-in DXVA decoder with Daum PotPlayer.

It has a little differences, but I can not choose that is better.
Perhaps for size reduction by 2 in one axis interpolation method does not important, because it has a insignificant differences.

I'll compare again later with brighter, more detailed and grainy video.

bilinear:

Lanczos:

bilinear:

Lanczos:

[r0lZ]

Thanks for your tests.

Take into account that a grainy input video might not be a good test. The gain is (partially) removed when the file is encoded to h264. And trying to keep the grain anyway means only that the encoder will have more work to compress the video stream, and that the resulting video will consume more disc space. You have to compare the final result after compression by x264, and take into account the compression level and the final file size as well as the image quality.

[youli]

I'm always trying to save grain. I don't like blurriness in picture. I use this x264 options to save a grain:

--psy-rd ZZZ:0.05 --no-deblock --deadzone-inter 5 --deadzone-intra 5 
--aq-strength YYY --ipratio 1.10 --pbratio 1.10 --qcomp 0.80
--vbv-bufsize 78125 --vbv-maxrate 62500

ZZZ = 0.70 - 1.00
YYY = 0,50 - 0.70

also for better dark gradients:

--no-mbtree --aq-mode 3

[r0lZ]

No --tune grain ?

[youli]

Originally Posted by r0lZ

No --tune grain ?

No-no!! It is very harmful option.

In the "grain" preset by default:
--aq-strength 0.5 - for flat animation only - it will make more artefacts on movies.
0,7 or more need for movies,
0.5 - 0.6 for dark movies without grain, just like DOOM.

--psy-rd <unset>:0.25 - gives highly visible contour artefacts, from 0.05 to 0.10 - better for movie

[r0lZ]

OK, thanks!

[frank]

r0lZ:

But youli has made a hit with his third suggestion (about the MKV compatibility options). I am currently testing these options, and indeed, with that options, my Samsung TV is much more rapid when it loads the movie for the first time.

...and now you believe it. Bunkus wrote the comment in February. I use this two params since 2013!

--engage
no_cue_relative_position
--engage
no_cue_duration

Bunkus:

As has been said those elements are additional elements, and they're purely optional; both playback and seeking can work just fine without them.

You should use it, no problems. My LG beamer and my Sony box need it. And they do not demux anything for which the params were intended.
This mkv specs were changed AFTER production of that hardware. And mkv is NOT an industry standard as mpeg, H.264, or Blu-ray. It is an option of the manufacturer.
r0lZ, there are a lot people that can't buy a new device just because the specs have been changed. Hardware means HARD to change. Please don't forget that.
____
frank

[r0lZ]

I have never said that I don't believe something or someone related to that parameters. If I have never implemented them, that was only because I didn't know them. Now I know them and I agree that they can be useful, and therefore I have added the possibility to enable that options (and others) in the forthcoming version. You could have requested that options before, and I would probably have implemented them a long time ago. And I know perfectly that you must live with your hardware (although I don't understand why Samsung (for example) doesn't release a fix of their firmware). There is no need to reproach me for something I was not aware of.

[youli]

I found a little bug. Subtitles lost the original color after conversion. Is possible to fix it?

Converted caption (burn-in hardcode subtitle):


Original caption:


----
P.S.
r0lZ, if you want, then I can help translate your program in Ukrainian, even in Russian.

[r0lZ]

Hum, the problem of the color change is strange. I have never seen that. When the original SUP is converted to VobSub (IDX/SUB), relatively small differences in the colors are normal, because the VobSub format can only use 4 colors within a fixed palette of 16 colors. But when the subtitles are converted to BD SUP or XML/PNG, there should be no color differences. Anyway, BD3D2MK3D doesn't convert the subtitles itself. It uses only BDSup2Sub (and ImageMagick when converting the PNGs to 3D). I'm pretty sure that the problem doesn't come from ImageMagick, so it should be due to a bug in BDSup2Sub or to a problem in your original SUP files.

Another possibility is that it comes from the SupTitle avisynth plugin. It is used to hardcode the 3D SUP stream on the video. You can try to use VSFilter instead (with Settings -> Hardcode Subtitle Method.) The quality will be less good, but if the colors are approximately good with VSFilter, we'll know that SupTitle is the culprit. However, I don't think so. I have hardcoded the yellow forced subtitles of Avatar with SupTitle, and the colour was perfect. Therefore, again, I suspect a problem in your original SUP.

Can you send me the original SUP? I would like to have a look. Thanks in advance. (My email address is in the Contact section near the end of the PgcEdit homepage. See my signature.)

Thanks also for your proposition to translate BD3D2MK3D. I'm not sure I'll accept, because most of the time, a translation is made once, but when an update is released with new strings to translate, it takes ages to have a correct translation. Also, I have not organised my code with multi-language in mind, and it may be difficult to re-organise it. (I know that it's my fault!) The third reason is that I don't think that there are many users who want to use BD3D3MK3D and do not know English sufficiently to understand how to use it. But I may change my mind later. Anyway, thanks again!

[EDIT] I looked closely at your Converted caption image, and I wonder if the subtitles have been hardcoded with SupTitle or with VSFilter. If you have used VSFilter, the problem might be that the light yellow in the original SUP is closer to the light gray than to the light yellow in the IDX/SUB palette. Therefore, BDSup2Sub may have selected that colour. It's not really a bug, due to the fact that the colours are always modified during the conversion to VobSub. Try to use the SupTitle plugin, and everything should be fine.

BTW, SupTitle is not the default plugin because it requires .net v4 or greater to work, and I can't assume that .net is installed. But if you have .net, it is highly recommended to use SupTitle instead of VSFilter. I will try to change the default when BD3D2MK3D detects that .net v4 or greater is available. But that will work only when BD3D2MK3D is used for the first time, so you'll have to change the option manually anyway.

[youli]

I see, thanks for your answer and sent you the SUP-file, also avisynth-script and full frame with both hardsub and PGS.

UPD:
Maybe a message in the spam folder, check it

[r0lZ]

I haven't received your email yet. Something wrong?

[youli]

I sent again now from another mail.
pgcedit@gma... is this right?