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Old 9th November 2005, 18:49   #61  |  Link
stephanV
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uhm... what if someone decides to install it in systems32? it is normal behaviour for an uninstaller to not remove the installation dir, if any other files are present that are not from installing the software. I'd say this IS your problem.
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Old 9th November 2005, 18:52   #62  |  Link
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uhm... maybe you're right...
i'll update the installer script for the next build.
however if you install it in system32 you're an idiot
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Old 9th November 2005, 18:57   #63  |  Link
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Maybe not an idiot, just unexperienced.
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Old 9th November 2005, 18:58   #64  |  Link
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Originally Posted by Sharktooth
however if you install it in system32 you're an idiot
LOL!
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Old 24th December 2005, 02:10   #65  |  Link
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possible to update the topic with the new version ?
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Old 24th December 2005, 05:37   #66  |  Link
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A new version was planned, but this very early guide was written primarily for the vfw x264 of yesteryear, and recent settings packs for the newer, more updated CLI-frontend MeGui are generally considered the encoding norms of today (look for Sharktooth's "MeGUI Custom Video Profiles" included in Sharktooth's x264 Full Installation builds).

If people want it though, I suppose I could revamp it after New Years
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Old 24th December 2005, 06:45   #67  |  Link
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I want it
So I have a better idea of how to improve sharktooth's profiles for my own uses.
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Old 24th December 2005, 14:32   #68  |  Link
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ok, i just did my first x264 encodes and started to fiddle around with the options, but i'm still wondering if i'm expecting too much.

the results x264 produces are very smooth, i'm used to do high bitrate xvid encodes with qpel enabled and usually watch them without postprocessing, so i prefer a sharp picture with high details with some grain over the clinically smoothed version.

what settings are mainly responsible for this in x264 and how can i tweak them to get x264 to produce more detailed and less smoothed pictures? or is x264 and the postprocessing that coupled that i will have to say goodbye to the grain and start to get used to smoothed pictures?
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Old 24th December 2005, 15:22   #69  |  Link
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The inloop filter setings. If you want sharper pictures, use negative values. Disable it is not recomended.
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Old 24th December 2005, 17:50   #70  |  Link
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Yeah, check out the Deblocking section of the guide! Maybe it'll help

@all: OK, I'll revamp it right after New Years! (Or maybe as a Christmas present??)

Cheers! And happy holidays for those of us who have 'em comin' up!
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Old 24th December 2005, 18:14   #71  |  Link
Arcon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DeathTheSheep
Yeah, check out the Deblocking section of the guide! Maybe it'll help
but is x264 generally able to produce a picture similar to xvid+qpel or is the concept with the inloop deblocking that hardwired and part of the codec that the picture will always be smoother (or blockier if you set the inloop to negative values) than those asp-encoders create?

currently i wonder if i'm just using it the wrong way or if h.264 might only be superior to asp-encoders in situations where postprocessing is used to conceal low bitrate blocks.
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Old 24th December 2005, 18:23   #72  |  Link
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It definately produces a picture that is somewhat...different than XviD.
AVC and ASP are indeed 2 very different formats despite their conformance to one or another part of "MPEG-4."

Quote:
is x264 generally able to produce a picture similar to xvid+qpel
Since the objective of a codec is to reproduce the source as accurately as possible, both will look pretty similar (like the source) if given high enough bitrate. The deblocking options control how much x264's resulting image is smoothed. The default deblocking tends to produce fewer visible blocking and ringing artifacts than ASP even while maintaining the same PSNR.

XviD's artifacts in high-detail scenes are often mistaken for detail. The Human Visual System tends to see XviD's artifacting in spatially complex scenes as the scene's actual detail. Indeed, the HVS often confuses artifacting for detail, and because x264 removes this artifacting by default, the HVS percieves this to be a "loss of detail" even though technically x264's detail is just as accurate.
However, reducing the deblocking in accordance to the guide is the best way to go about sharpening the image (reducing the soft smearing of deblocking). You might as well give it a try on a small clip: do a 30-second clip with XviD and x264 with -1 or -2 deblocking and then evaluate.

The general consensus as of yet (at least according to the metrics) is that x264 does tend to keep more detail more accurately than XviD at similar bitrates. However, the deblocker's removal of artifacts is occasionally confused by the HVS as a removal of legitamate detail, which the artifacts are occasionally mistaken for. If you find this to be the case, use a post-processing filter (AVISynth, mplayer, ffdshow maybe) to better synthesize noise.
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Last edited by DeathTheSheep; 24th December 2005 at 18:41. Reason: Made it much clearer, folks.
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Old 24th December 2005, 18:45   #73  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcon
but is x264 generally able to produce a picture similar to xvid+qpel or is the concept with the inloop deblocking that hardwired and part of the codec that the picture will always be smoother (or blockier if you set the inloop to negative values) than those asp-encoders create?
If you disable the deblocking completely, x264 will behave similarly to xvid, except that the produced video will be even sharper. I think it's safe to disable deblocking up to quant 22 (bitrate-wise it's somewhere between quant 3-4 in xvid, usually used for 2cd rips), but over that the blocking is starting to become disturbing, a light deblocking is recommended.

Last edited by Tommy Carrot; 24th December 2005 at 19:10.
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Old 24th December 2005, 19:10   #74  |  Link
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TC is right in general, but the resulting video won't have nearly as good of a quality measure as a video attained by using the default (or -1) deblocking settings; if you want noise, you'd almost always get better results with post-processing. I'd certainly never recommend turning off deblocking under any condition (unless the decoder doesn't support it or AVC playback is too complex for your machine).
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Old 24th December 2005, 19:17   #75  |  Link
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Disabled deblocking may have lower results in quality measures, but it can look better, especially in near-transparent encodings, where the artifacts are already unnoticable, and the deblocking would destroy the very fine details.
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Old 24th December 2005, 20:30   #76  |  Link
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but it can look better, especially in near-transparent encodings, where the artifacts are already unnoticable, and the deblocking would destroy the very fine details.
Using the default settings, deblocking is automatically scaled based on the quantizer used. If the quantizer is very high, default deblocking is heigtened accordingly by the encoder, and once the quantizer drops low enough that the encoder deems deblocking to be useless, it is automatically disabled.
Therefore, it is best to leave it as it is: at (0,0) unless you have specific preferences with deviation of no more than +2/-2. The encoder should handle the rest.
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Old 24th December 2005, 21:01   #77  |  Link
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Lol, i know that deblocking strength is adaptive, but the default settings are not always the best. If someone prefer the 'xvid look' over the smoothness of h.264, imo it's better to disable the deblocking at higher bitrates (<q22), where the default setting is washing away too much details unnecessarily, because the artifacts are rarely noticable there anyway. Afaik deblocking is turning off by default at quant 15, which is way too low imo, and this probably answers why many people prefers xvid over x264 at high bitrates.

At lower bitrates though, i agree, in-loop filtering is very useful and beneficial.
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Old 24th December 2005, 21:32   #78  |  Link
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You tried -5,-5? It may be better than disable it completely. H.264 was thought with deblocking in mind. It shoud be more blocky w/o deblocking than Xvid. But I don't know. I haven't tested yet.
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Old 24th December 2005, 21:41   #79  |  Link
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Originally Posted by DeathTheSheep
I'd certainly never recommend turning off deblocking under any condition
i usually filter out noise during the preprocessing and want the codec to keep the picture as close to that input material as possible. removing noise afterwards was something i only liked for low bitrate encodes (i.e. avg quant ~4) where the pp had to filter out the shortcomings introduced by the encoding process, not by the source material.

thats why i was a bit disappointed in the x264 look compared to my beloved xvid.

but thanks for the tips, i'll fiddle around with the settings and try to find something that gets close to my expectations
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Old 25th December 2005, 18:02   #80  |  Link
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*B-frames can be activated in "pyramid" mode, which allows B-frames to serve as references. If you wish to use a lot of references (and thereby increase quality slightly), consider selecting the "Use as references" checkbox.
Am I missing something here? I don't see a checkbox for "Use as references".
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