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Old 16th October 2005, 12:33   #41  |  Link
max-holz
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Is it possible to update the guide with some explanation about the use of adaptive quantization?
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Old 18th October 2005, 12:06   #42  |  Link
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What surprised me a bit is that the adaptive quantisation seems to work by "upping" the quality on bright areas (as compared to lower the quality in dark areas like i thought XviD did it).
I suspected this after doing a CQ (21) test with and without AQ. And while the one withou came out at 800 kbit/s the AQ one was 1400kbit/s (!). So i played the file and set ffdshow to show quantizers - and no longer surprisingly - a P frame supposed to be Q21 has the highest quantizer at 21 and the lowest one 12. A I frame (supposedly 18) even had blocks with quant 10 (that is the lowest allowed by the set Q range!).

[edit]
Encoding with CQ 26 and AQ gave me a file with almost the same bitrate as Q21 and no AQ (800.52 vs 800.75 kbit/s). Interestingly the one with out AQ has a mean PNSR almost 1dB higher and global PSNR ~1.2dB higher than the one with AQ.

Also AQ seems to considerably raise the number of direct B macroblocks (2%->14%) and lower the number of skip B macroblocks (72%->42%). This is comparing the encodes with the same CQ (the one with adapted CQ 26 has 12% direct and 62% skip).
[/edit]
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Last edited by unmei; 18th October 2005 at 12:41.
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Old 18th October 2005, 14:19   #43  |  Link
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one word: multipass.

Last edited by Sharktooth; 18th October 2005 at 14:39.
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Old 18th October 2005, 18:03   #44  |  Link
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i know that word

But would you elaborate a bit more.. will AQ only work correctly in a multipass scenario? Because this seems not to be the case..
Of course in CQ with AQ the file size becomes kind of even less predictable, but from what i saw so far, CQ with AQ also seems to be an option when i raise the "constant" quant to compensate for the lower quants in some macroblocks.
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Old 19th October 2005, 07:41   #45  |  Link
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AQ should be used only when you have noticeable blocks in flat backgrounds. It will allocate lower qp to such areas. Adding some more bitrate won't hurt as well, so the rest of the frame doesnt lose too much quality.
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Old 19th October 2005, 08:56   #46  |  Link
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AQ seems to work fine for strong compression. I tested with various constant-quantizer encodings of the same clip and found that encoding at quantizer=27 without AQ yielded a filesize just above that produced by quant=29 + AQ. The encode at quant=27 without AQ exhibited extensive blocking (deblock=-1) while the one with AQ didn't and thus looked very acceptable, I daresay 'good'.

This should mean AQ makes the higher quantizers in x264 really worthwhile for the first time - because with AQ it's not necessary anymore to use strong deblocking that turns the whole picture into jelly.

Well done, Haali!
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Old 21st October 2005, 22:02   #47  |  Link
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--chroma-qp-offset <integer> QP difference between chroma and luma.
I couldn't fine any information about it.
When it's usefull to use this feature? At low bitrates? What are admissible integers numbers of interval --chroma-qp-offset [x,y]?
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Old 22nd October 2005, 00:14   #48  |  Link
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I have no idea when it might be usefull. I just implemented it because it's one of those obscure headers that someone might want to play with.
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Old 22nd October 2005, 11:41   #49  |  Link
unmei
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Maybe this is totally obvious to anyone but me, but since it was not for me i thought i would mention it: Adaptive Quantisation will not only produce quantisers in the set QP range (QPmin, QPmax).

Probably i just had the wrong concept of these and they do not represent the actual quantizer limits but the limits of average quantizer in P frames (or something along that line).

I'm currently playing with the AQ and CQ vs CRF settings and let the QP range at default [10,51]. What i found so far are Q8 blocks in all frame types (I,P,B) ..and they are not rare at all, they might make up like a third of the frame.


Note that this is not a complaint, just a statement


So far i really like the one movie i did completely with AQ and CQ 26 and as long as the result looks good i am not "against" low quantised blocks. Tho i might turn down the AQ strength a bit for the next movie (0.3 maybe), that is i do these tests right now to get a feeling of the AQ parameters.
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Old 29th October 2005, 21:58   #50  |  Link
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And here goes the first complaining about x264... When i pressed x264 uninstall it started deleting all my system32 dll files and the windows recovery thing showed up, next thing i restart windows is not working or shit. Fix this issue, i don't intend to reinstall windows for this.
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Old 7th November 2005, 23:35   #51  |  Link
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Anyone got a short hint for improving scene fades?
i get some big blocks on fades not over the whole image but on certain almost uni-colored faces. i'd say it's something about b-frames but i'm not totally sure ^_^
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Old 8th November 2005, 01:57   #52  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by akupenguin
range: [-12,12]
I have no idea when it might be usefull. I just implemented it because it's one of those obscure headers that someone might want to play with.

But it seems to only work with "I Frames".

Is that correct?
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Old 8th November 2005, 02:27   #53  |  Link
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chroma-qp-offset applies equally to all frames.
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Old 8th November 2005, 02:35   #54  |  Link
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Well it's just that when encoding I always get psnr return figures of say,

Y=45 U=48 V=50.

So I tried increasing the Chroma-qp-offset to 12.
From memory it only seemed to greatly affect the I frames.
P,B Frames still had larger psnr values for chroma.

I'm in the middle of a large encode ATM, so it will be 2-3 hours before I can confirm.
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Old 8th November 2005, 02:46   #55  |  Link
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What was the qp? Above qp=28, chroma_qp doesn't increase as fast as luma_qp, and it maxes out at luma_qp=51, chroma_qp=39. chroma_qp_offset is added to the lumna_qp before converting it to the chroma scale, so no amount of chroma_qp_offset will reduce chroma quality beyond 39.
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Old 8th November 2005, 05:58   #56  |  Link
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I just tried another encode, ensuring low quants.
And Chroma-qp-offset made an impact on PSNR.


Pass1.
Code:
C:\Program Files\x264>x264.exe --pass 1 --bitrate 2000 --stats "F:\2pass.log" --bframes 2
--b-pyramid --weightb --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4 --chroma-qp-offset 12 --threads 2 --progress --frames 2000 --output NUL
"F:\test.avs"


avis [info]: 704x288 @ 25.00 fps (7063 frames)
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2
x264 [info]: slice I:47    Avg QP:15.06  size: 23452  PSNR Mean Y:49.06 U:45.86 V:46.75 Avg:47.88 Global:47.48
x264 [info]: slice P:1225  Avg QP:17.51  size: 12292  PSNR Mean Y:46.29 U:44.57 V:45.45 Avg:45.78 Global:45.47
x264 [info]: slice B:728   Avg QP:18.87  size:  5991  PSNR Mean Y:45.13 U:44.46 V:45.02 Avg:44.95 Global:44.54
x264 [info]: mb I  I16..4: 17.3%  0.0% 82.7%
x264 [info]: mb P  I16..4: 11.3%  0.0% 26.5%  P16..4: 24.1% 21.2% 11.2%  0.0%  0.0%    skip: 5.7%
x264 [info]: mb B  I16..4:  2.4%  0.0%  5.3%  B16..8: 50.1%  5.0% 10.9%  direct: 5.9%  skip:20.3%
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:45.930 U:44.562 V:45.326 Avg:45.529 Global:45.139 kb/s: 2052.16

encoded 2000 frames, 18.22 fps, 2053.30 kb/s
Pass2.
Code:
C:\Program Files\x264>x264.exe --pass 2 --bitrate 2000 --stats "F:\2pass.log" --bframes 2
--b-pyramid --weightb --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4 --chroma-qp-offset 12 --threads 2 --progress --frames 2000
--output "f:\test1.mkv" "F:\test.avs"


avis [info]: 704x288 @ 25.00 fps (7063 frames)
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2
x264 [info]: slice I:47    Avg QP:15.66  size: 21978  PSNR Mean Y:48.69 U:45.71 V:46.50 Avg:47.61 Global:47.37
x264 [info]: slice P:1225  Avg QP:17.49  size: 12149  PSNR Mean Y:46.29 U:44.60 V:45.46 Avg:45.80 Global:45.59
x264 [info]: slice B:728   Avg QP:18.97  size:  5666  PSNR Mean Y:45.08 U:44.40 V:44.88 Avg:44.90 Global:44.66
x264 [info]: mb I  I16..4: 18.2%  0.0% 81.8%
x264 [info]: mb P  I16..4: 11.6%  0.0% 25.7%  P16..4: 25.2% 21.2% 10.4%  0.0%  0.0%    skip: 6.1%
x264 [info]: mb B  I16..4:  2.2%  0.0%  5.4%  B16..8: 50.4%  3.8%  8.3%  direct: 6.8%  skip:23.2%
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:45.905 U:44.553 V:45.271 Avg:45.513 Global:45.263 kb/s: 2004.07

encoded 2000 frames, 20.34 fps, 2005.21 kb/s
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Old 8th November 2005, 19:38   #57  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenshin5
When i pressed x264 uninstall it started deleting all my system32 dll files and the windows recovery thing showed up, next thing i restart windows is not working or ****. Fix this issue, i don't intend to reinstall windows for this.
Wow, that's certainly never happened for me... Are you sure your installation file wasn't corrupt? Any bytes missing near the end? Which revision were you using?
I'm terribly sorry for your loss (of Windows, time, and respect for the x264 package).
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Old 9th November 2005, 11:18   #58  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenshin5
And here goes the first complaining about x264... When i pressed x264 uninstall it started deleting all my system32 dll files and the windows recovery thing showed up, next thing i restart windows is not working or shit. Fix this issue, i don't intend to reinstall windows for this.
Where you downloaded x264?
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Old 9th November 2005, 17:08   #59  |  Link
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It was posted by you on the forums, it's an official built.
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Old 9th November 2005, 18:41   #60  |  Link
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Well... something screwed your registry then. The uninstaller only removes the x264 installation dir that's stored in a registry key... if "something" (virus,program,whatever) modified the path in that registry key or if your windows registry is screwed than it's not my fault.
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