RealVideo 9 Information Thread Discussion

[atracus]

@karl,

my 2 cents for thanking you for your tenacity and for the politness of your above-enclosed remark in this forum.

My personal standpoint is that RV9 is by far the best format for movies' backup presently available on the net, both in terms of envisable lifespan for the future and of perceivable video'n'sound quality.

I'm glad to keep on reading you here, please take into account that your effort is precious and valuable for some of us - for me, at least

sincerely,

[atx]

[midiguy]

from my experience, RV9 does too much pre-processing and can often remove many details in your movie. This may be ideal for lower bitrate encodes but for stuff with higher bitrates it may not be the best. but I guess if you are encoding something like, say, A Simpsons episode, yes, RV9 probably would be very good for something like that. Unless there is a way to disable its pre-processing?

[karl_lillevold]

atracus, thanks for your feedback!

midiguy:

Originally posted by midiguy
from my experience, RV9 does too much pre-processing and can often remove many details in your movie. This may be ideal for lower bitrate encodes but for stuff with higher bitrates it may not be the best. but I guess if you are encoding something like, say, A Simpsons episode, yes, RV9 probably would be very good for something like that. Unless there is a way to disable its pre-processing?

Alas, like I posted in another thread, there is no pre-processing in RV9 unless you choose the Low or High noise filters. As opposed to MPEG-4 based methods, RV9 has no ringing and mosquito noise - that's sometimes perceived as lack of detail. Still, I am very interested in the settings you used when you observed this, source material, encoder version, and how you play back the resulting file (OS, player, video card), LCD, TV out?. Maybe there's a problem with one or more of these that we need to fix. Certain older video cards (Matrox G200 in particular) does not know how to interpolate with high quality.

In fact, let me ask everybody for feedback on how to reproduce RV9 lack of detail and perceived softness for higher bitrates.

It's just not something I see myself and I have plenty of high bitrate demos that look awesome with every single detail visible. I usually play back on a computer CRT at 1400x1050 with an ATI or nVidia card, or a 15" Eizo LCD, no sharpening, or color adjustments in RealOne.

For encoding, I rarely use any pre-filters, unless the source is grainy, and I use VBR 2-pass with a max bitrate set at about 2.1 times the average bitrate, and a 25 second buffer. This prevents too many bits from being spent in the very high action scenes, where you can't see all the details anyway, and lets you spend more bits in slow scenes, where you need them more.

So please provide details, so I can investigate. Then again, I have a preference for no ringing around edges, so that may be part of it, but based on some reports, I think there must be more to it.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>from my experience, RV9 does too much pre-processing and can often remove many details in your movie.


i too disagree there:rv9 has the best overall quality on
lower bitrate ( i used rv9 on cca 450kbit and get some awesome
results ! )

as i'm a guy that like my videos sharp i can tell ya that rv9 at
such bitrates is THE BEST i've seen so far!
even subtitles and station logo's look mighty sharp
rumours that xvid will give sharper image are false if you ask me!
also xvid (same as divx) don't have ANY place in such lo-bitrate
environment!

it's PLAIN FUNNY(!) when i read marcfd's "xvid
is the best codec from 250kbit upwards....."
xvid(same as divx) looks like SH*T on that bitrate and rm9 is much better there.....
he obviously didn't tried rm9

BUT,enough of praise of rv9,i have playback
problemn monitor everything is OK,but on tv-out
i get framedrops (jerky playback)
(cel600+tnt2card&bt869 tv-out chip)

so i was wondering,karl,if this issue can be adressed?

even on lores it's poor performance on tv-out...
( i'm using tv-tool as a tv-out software, and all other .avi stuff
works nice..even much higher res' )

cheers

Ivo

[polle]

strange those playback problems with RV9, I work also with Tv-tool and nvidia tnt2 32mb (on XP with athlon 600Mhz and 512 Mb of RAM).
Also movies with higher bitrate in RV9 play well.

[atracus]

RV9 makes good movies, too, not just anime.

I encoded LotR1 on 3 CD's, audio was atrac@176K Surround, video bitrate was .... just use your math to get the number, let's say in the range of 1500-1600 Kbps, what I call "high bitrate".

Well, quality was awesome (no jerky noise / ringing / shadow effects on pans, and all the nicies we've got used to see with MPEG4 derivatives, including XviD, Qt/Sorenson3Pro, DivX, WMV9), and audio was absolutely flawless as well.

I played it all for just 2 times, once on my monitor and the second time on TV-out; no pb at all on my "old" ATI-AIW Radeon (800x600 TV-out). For those interested, CPU is Amd 1GHz on VIA Chipset - I should get it changed soon (3GHz's call for action!).

If you are still doubtful / skeptical, just do your personal tests and compare; there's always something yet to be discovered, and I'm pretty sure there are hidden pro's and con's still to be explored and pointed out.


have fun

[atx]

[Ramirez]

Originally posted by ^^-+I4004+-^^
>

BUT,enough of praise of rv9,i have playback
problemn monitor everything is OK,but on tv-out
i get framedrops (jerky playback)
(cel600+tnt2card&bt869 tv-out chip)

so i was wondering,karl,if this issue can be adressed?

Its sounds like you need ReClock

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by ^^-+I4004+-^^
as i'm a guy that like my videos sharp i can tell ya that rv9 at
such bitrates is THE BEST i've seen so far!

problemn monitor everything is OK,but on tv-out
i get framedrops (jerky playback)
(cel600+tnt2card&bt869 tv-out chip)
so i was wondering,karl,if this issue can be adressed?

Thanks for your RV9 feedback! I am sorry, but I don't know what this TV out problem could be. It sounds like the video card goes out of overlay mode for TV out. Then you would experience the problem you mention. I am sure you have the latest nVidia drivers installed. I will ask our renderer guy, but can not promise an answer.

[midiguy]

One time, I encoded the first episode of cowboy bebop. One of the scenes, when a character uses the eye drops, the screen turns red, and there is a noise effect (there is suppose to be this noise effect, it is a special effect). But qwhen I play back that scene, the noise looks really smooth and blurry and soft and overall pretty ugly. now, if you say there is no pre-processing with RV9, then it must be realone player's post-processing detecting this special effect as video noise and blurring it to hell. I can't show a sample of what I Am talking aboutr though (no longer have the source or the copy). but is there a way to disable real player's post-processing? or atleast control its post-processing level? (much like you can with mpeg-4 directshow decodecs such as ffdshow or DivX). That would be a really good feature, and that may be responsible for the perceived softness and lack of detail that people are getting.

sorry about my spelling/grammar, I'm tired


*edit* forgot to mention, Cowboy Bebop is an anime that uses a lot of CG

*edit* one more question. what is the best tool right now to use to encode Realmedia 9 content? AutoRV9? Helix Producer Pro?

[Dark-Cracker]

objectively, autorv9

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

@Ramirez

"ReClock is a DirectShow filter that will help to get rid of most causes of jerky DIVX/MPEG playback"


_where did i said that i have avi/mpeg plb problems?


@karl

i have dual-boot win98/2k so i'll check if win98 will play it
better ( it's different tv-out program there.ie. not tvtool )
i think you might be right that overlay doesn't kick in for some
reason....
[ if i see improvement then i'll report here...if not,then i'm not saying anythng.that way you'll know problem still exists...i'll test it by tomorrow..i'll also check ROne settings concerning playback.. ]

cheers_

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

Originally posted by Dark-Cracker
objectively, autorv9

DC,you didn't paid any attention to the people that deal with
.avi files.....why is this so?

[although i won't complain: avs,helix basic & xml notepad get me where
i wan't.......]

[31 Flavas]

Originally posted by midiguy
I can't show a sample of what I Am talking aboutr though (no longer have the source or the copy). but is there a way to disable real player's post-processing? or atleast control its post-processing level?

Hm... I own the cb bebop dvds. I'll encoded this episode and see what I get.

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by midiguy
One time, I encoded the first episode of cowboy bebop. One of the scenes, when a character uses the eye drops, the screen turns red, and there is a noise effect (there is suppose to be this noise effect, it is a special effect). But qwhen I play back that scene, the noise looks really smooth and blurry and soft and overall pretty ugly. now, if you say there is no pre-processing with RV9, then it must be realone player's post-processing detecting this special effect as video noise and blurring it to hell.

Noise is almost impossible to compress, so I think what happened was that the bitrate spiked so much during this scene, that it blew the bit reservoir, causing the encoder to increase quantization so much it blurred the video too much. For typical bitrates, when I use VBR with max bitrate a little over 2X average bitrate, and 25 second buffer, I have not really seen this happen, but can't remember any scenes like this either. There is no adjustable post-processing in RV9, so I think the problem occured on the encoder side.
With regards to encoding tools, AutoRV9 uses Helix Producer as its back-end, but it is a great help in automating the process.

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by Dark-Cracker
objectively, autorv9

Great tool, but just one feature I'd wish for (actually, four, but three of them can be done if the first feature is added.

• After all options and files saved, create batch file (.bat) that can be edited before starting the process.

With this feature one could do the following by editing the command line parameters in the batch file and possibly AVS scripts.

• Run Besweet with 48kHz output, and possibly skip besweet 2-pass normalization and use producer's audio gain feature instead. This would speed it up the audio conversion process. Producer accepts 48 kHZ input.
• Anamorphic encoding (see separate thread - requires producer pro feature)
• YV12 / AVISynth 2.5. AutoRV9 requires AVISynth 2.0x. but with the feature above, one could use 2.0x for the setup, then switch to 2.5 before running the batch file.

[midiguy]

Originally posted by karl_lillevold
Noise is almost impossible to compress, so I think what happened was that the bitrate spiked so much during this scene, that it blew the bit reservoir, causing the encoder to increase quantization so much it blurred the video too much. For typical bitrates, when I use VBR with max bitrate a little over 2X average bitrate, and 25 second buffer, I have not really seen this happen, but can't remember any scenes like this either. There is no adjustable post-processing in RV9, so I think the problem occured on the encoder side.
With regards to encoding tools, AutoRV9 uses Helix Producer as its back-end, but it is a great help in automating the process.

will do, thanks. I'll have to get a good source to test with.

also, in autoRV9, it has options for "normal video" "smooth video" and "sharpest video".. I always use sharpest, but what exactly does puitting it on normal or smooth do? does it pre-process the source?

[Ramirez]

Originally posted by ^^-+I4004+-^^
@Ramirez
_where did i said that i have avi/mpeg plb problems?

Obviously --<<NOWHERE! >>--
I've simply overlooked that part of you post.
No need to put me in a front of the fireing squad though.

[karl_lillevold]

Originally posted by midiguy
also, in autoRV9, it has options for "normal video" "smooth video" and "sharpest video".. I always use sharpest, but what exactly does puitting it on normal or smooth do? does it pre-process the source?

Glad you asked. That's always been a confusing option, because it affects a few non-documented internal parameters. It was designed mainly for low bitrates, and is the trade-off in the encoder between frame rate and quality/sharpness. So 'sharpest' would be better quality/sharper but skip more frames. There is no pre-filtering. For VBR and higher bitrates, the 'normal' vs 'sharpest' will have very little effect, if any. However, the 'smooth' setting has the following effect: If you choose 'smooth', the encoder will operate in HHR mode (half-horizontal resolution) for video sizes larger than 640x320. HHR means to resample and encode at half the width, and have the player scale back on playback. This looks very smooth, but is a good trade-off for very low bitrates, relative to video size. I rarely use it though. HHR in RealVideo was more common in the past, when 'normal' would use HHR the way 'smooth' does now. We probably should make HHR a separate option.

[midiguy]

hi. I just encoded a quick clip from some footage from a DVD camcorder that I filmed with. Settings were:

Resolution: 320 x 240
framerate: 30 fps
buffer: 25
other thing: 10


resized from 704 x 480 (4:3 aspect) to 320 x 240 using neutral bicubic resize filter.

average bitrate: 400
max bitrate: 800

look at his face in the video, has the nasty blur effect. and look at those bricks!
I also tested it by cutting the framerate in half to 15 fps, and using the same settings for the bitrate and the rest. even though each frame got double the bits (cause of 1/2 frame rate), the blurring was still just as much there. that is why I think it has to be the realone player's postprocessing.. what could be responsible for this?

clip here:

http://home.primus.ca/~shanecaplan/test.rar

download link above.

*edit* the above clip is @ 30 fps, but I did the 15 fps version so I could see if it was a bitrate problem (each frame gets double the bits). the 15 fps is not included in the archivem but I can assure you that it was JUST as blurry.

[karl_lillevold]

nice test clip. and very hard. the detailed noise like texture and camera motion make this clip very hard. Also, since the clip is so short (27 seconds), VBR won't help much, since our rate control will set the quantizer fairly high to achieve 400 kbps average. In fact, the codec uses only 2 seconds of the 25 second buffer. Perhaps you could argue that it should have used more, but the over-riding parameter is the average bitrate. And, since the filtering is tied to the quantizer, there will be blurring. Without filtering there would have been blocking artifacts. It's a trade-off.

I don't have the source, so I can't compare to other codecs, but I would imagine they would have tough time as well -- just make sure they don't overspend bits, and the resulting filesize is equal or close to equal. Anything else would not be fair..