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Old 10th August 2009, 20:15   #1  |  Link
Lyris
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Has anyone used X264 to produce a replicated BD title?

First of all: I apologize if this question has already been asked. However, I don't think there has ever been a central thread asking this question.

Have any Blu-ray Disc authors out there produced titles encoded using X264 (perhaps one of the various patched versions), and had its output verified and passed by a replication facility? The reason I ask is because in the coming months, I will be working on a retail BD title and if it's possible to use X264, I would absolutely love to do it due to the quality of its output.

My other option is the upcoming Netblender DoStudio Workflow Edition, comes with an integrated AVC encoder. Even although at BD bitrates, the differences can be less obvious, I still want to use the absolute best quality option within the allocated budget. The big draw of this is that its output is guaranteed to be compatible.

Lastly, to the developers of x264: thank you for this wonderful encoder and everything that you do for free. I realise that as a highly scalable system, BD compliance is not at the top of you priorities in producing an h.264 encoder. But if anyone can pitch in, I'd be very grateful!
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Old 10th August 2009, 20:27   #2  |  Link
LoRd_MuldeR
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x264 can't produce streams that are 100% conform to the BD specs, because as far as we know the BD specs say that at least 4 slices are required. But x264 doesn't use slices currently.
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Old 10th August 2009, 20:29   #3  |  Link
Dark Shikari
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR View Post
x264 can't produce streams that are 100% conform to the BD specs, because as far as we know the BD specs say that at least 4 slices are required. But x264 doesn't use slices currently.
There's a patch that adds slicing support, though the author still hasn't sent to me the version he promised...
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Old 10th August 2009, 20:53   #4  |  Link
Lyris
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Could it be the versions found here? I've used it to produce streams that certainly play on the players I have here, but not with consistent success...

http://skystrife.com/x264/?C=M;O=A
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Old 10th August 2009, 21:14   #5  |  Link
LoRd_MuldeR
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyris View Post
Could it be the versions found here? I've used it to produce streams that certainly play on the players I have here, but not with consistent success...

http://skystrife.com/x264/?C=M;O=A
I don't think so. I guess the patch mention by Dark Shikari was never released to the public -or- the (early) version released was not working properly yet.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chengbin
Are you telling me that I can't encode a video with x264 in the BD's allowed maximum H.264 settings and it won't play on a Blu-ray drive?
The drive shouldn't be the problem

However a H.264 decoder that is strictly limited to the BD specs may fail to decode streams produced by current x264.

Consequently a BD authoring software, which checks the H.264 streams against the BD specs (and not against "real" implementations), would have to reject x264's streams.

Anyway, as far as I know most (all?) the BD players that exist in reality would handle those streams just fine. It only can't be guaranteed...
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Last edited by LoRd_MuldeR; 10th August 2009 at 21:36.
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Old 10th August 2009, 21:53   #6  |  Link
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You could always use level 4.0. I've been told that doesn't require slices to be BD compliant.

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Old 10th August 2009, 22:12   #7  |  Link
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The patch for 1195 can be found on the mailing list here, but since D_S says "...though the author still hasn't sent to me the version he promised..." I'd think it'd be ok for you to be somewhat wary of it albeit he says he has been using it for a while...

Anyways, nice to hear that people are interested in using x264 with blu-ray manufacturing.
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Old 10th August 2009, 22:21   #8  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nixo View Post
You could always use level 4.0. I've been told that doesn't require slices to be BD compliant.
Correct. From the spec:

Quote:
9.5.1.3.1 Parameter limits

[...]
If level_idc in SPS indicates level 4.1, each picture shall be encoded as multi-slice picture with 4 or
more slices per picture. The number of macroblocks in any slice shall not exceed 1/2 of the total
number of macroblocks. The number of macroblock rows in every slice in the picture should be as
equal as possible for the current picture height and interlace coding mode.

* In case of 1920x1080 video format with frame_mbs_only_flag=1, it is recommended that
each slice has 17 macroblock rows (17/17/17/17 configuration).

* In case of 1920x1080 video format with frame_mbs_only_flag=0 and
mb_adaptive_frame_field_flag=0, it is recommended that in each field, odd numbered slices
have 8 macroblock rows each and even numbered slices have 9 macroblock rows each
(8/9/8/9 configuration) or some similar configuration.

* In case of 1920x1080 video format with frame_mbs_only_flag=0 and
mb_adaptive_frame_field_flag=1, it is recommended that odd numbered slices have 16
macroblock rows each and even numbered slices have 18 macroblock rows each
(16/18/16/18 configuration) or some similar configuration.

* In case of 1280x720 video format, it is recommended that four slices have 11/11/11/12 or
some similar configuration.
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Old 11th August 2009, 22:26   #9  |  Link
shon3i
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@neuron2, where you find that blu-ray specs?
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Old 10th August 2009, 21:12   #10  |  Link
Chengbin
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Are you telling me that I can't encode a video with x264 in the BD's allowed maximum H.264 settings and it won't play on a Blu-ray player?

Lyris, THANK YOU for choosing x264 to encode your next blu-ray title. After you're done with it, could you tell us the title of the movie you produced? I might buy that Blu-ray just to see what "real" 1080p looks like without low passing.

Last edited by Chengbin; 10th August 2009 at 22:36.
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Old 10th August 2009, 22:17   #11  |  Link
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Chengbin: I'll gladly share details and the production process once it's out there, yes. However, there are thankfully a lot of unfiltered AVC titles out there - all of the Disney titles I've seen seem to have got through unmolested. Low-passed BD titles are thankfully the exception rather than the norm.

Quote:
Are you telling me that I can't encode a video with x264 in the BD's allowed maximum H.264 settings and it won't play on a Blu-ray drive?
Professional authoring software scrutinizes every part of the input file. By default, the output of X264 is rejected. Lord_Mulder has explained the whole situation.

When you're stamping out thousands of discs for a title that is probably going to get some attention, it "maybe" working fine on "most" BD players isn't enough for me to sleep easy!

Nixo: is 4.0 allowed on BD? What are the limitations of it when compared to 4.1?
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Old 10th August 2009, 22:31   #12  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyris View Post
Nixo: is 4.0 allowed on BD? What are the limitations of it when compared to 4.1?
As far as I know the limitations are really just a bit lower max bitrate (--vbv-maxrate 25000).

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Old 10th August 2009, 22:35   #13  |  Link
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Very interesting - but according to x264, Level 4.0 has an upper bitrate limit of 25mbps, which I'd like to avoid.

Edit: you got there before me - 4.1 is something I'd really like to use, but your suggestion is one possibility.
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Old 12th August 2009, 04:26   #14  |  Link
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Originally Posted by Lyris View Post
Very interesting - but according to x264, Level 4.0 has an upper bitrate limit of 25mbps, which I'd like to avoid.
25 Mbps is really a very high bitrate for 1080p24 H.264! using single-slice x264 with good settings. I'd expect Level 4.0 x264 with 25 Mbps peaks to be transparent for almost all real-world film content. 1080i30 without MBAFF, could be an issue, but 24p should be just fine. HD DVD titles looked great with older encoders, shorter GOPs, and similar or even lower peaks (one highly rated title was VC-1 with 13 Mbps ABR and 19 Mbps PBR).

Remember Blu-ray's peak bitrate was defined for MPEG-2 applications. It's rather overkill for modern codecs.
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Old 12th August 2009, 06:05   #15  |  Link
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner View Post
Remember Blu-ray's peak bitrate was defined for MPEG-2 applications. It's rather overkill for modern codecs.
My thinking exactly. I'm just a noob in encoding myself but seeing as SD content has 720x576=414 720 pixels to be delivered by MPEG-2 on standard DVD at peak video bitrates ~9 Mbps I would assume that HD material consisting of 1920x1080=2 073 600 pixels cannot require more than 5 times higher bitrate ~45 Mbps with same encoder used.
Now take into account we may use H.264 instead of older MPEG-2 and necessary video bitrate can be halved for the same visual quality I suppose.
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Old 12th August 2009, 13:16   #16  |  Link
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner View Post
25 Mbps is really a very high bitrate for 1080p24 H.264! using single-slice x264 with good settings. I'd expect Level 4.0 x264 with 25 Mbps peaks to be transparent for almost all real-world film content. 1080i30 without MBAFF, could be an issue, but 24p should be just fine. HD DVD titles looked great with older encoders, shorter GOPs, and similar or even lower peaks (one highly rated title was VC-1 with 13 Mbps ABR and 19 Mbps PBR).

Remember Blu-ray's peak bitrate was defined for MPEG-2 applications. It's rather overkill for modern codecs.
I thought many Blu-ray's even at mid to high 20mbps look "not that good", as in lack of fine detail

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Old 12th August 2009, 13:23   #17  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chengbin View Post
I thought many Blu-ray's even at mid to high 20mbps look "not that good", as in lack of fine detail
That's probably not the result of the bitrate, but a result of bad encoders and/or bad authoring
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Old 12th August 2009, 14:34   #18  |  Link
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Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR View Post
That's probably not the result of the bitrate, but a result of bad encoders and/or bad authoring
Therefore because of these bad encoders, you're lacking bitrate even though you have 25-30mbps. Therefore you're not getting "transparency"

Didn't Dark Shikari say even with x264, you need a lot more than 25mbps to reach transparency on 1080p videos (from a master)?

Last edited by Chengbin; 12th August 2009 at 14:40.
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Old 13th August 2009, 10:31   #19  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by benwaggoner View Post
25 Mbps is really a very high bitrate for 1080p24 H.264! using single-slice x264 with good settings. I'd expect Level 4.0 x264 with 25 Mbps peaks to be transparent for almost all real-world film content. 1080i30 without MBAFF, could be an issue, but 24p should be just fine. HD DVD titles looked great with older encoders, shorter GOPs, and similar or even lower peaks (one highly rated title was VC-1 with 13 Mbps ABR and 19 Mbps PBR).

Remember Blu-ray's peak bitrate was defined for MPEG-2 applications. It's rather overkill for modern codecs.
Ben, have you seen this (check mouseover):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1169645


It's quite ineteresting how VC-1 puts relatively more bits into B frames than AVC encode (even if AVC encode has much highier average bitrate many B frames form VC-1 are bigger).


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Old 13th August 2009, 14:45   #20  |  Link
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Originally Posted by kolak View Post
Ben, have you seen this (check mouseover):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1169645


It's quite ineteresting how VC-1 puts relatively more bits into B frames than AVC encode (even if AVC encode has much highier average bitrate many B frames form VC-1 are bigger).
The default behavior from EEv3 and other tools is to have B-frames use a QP 0-2 higher than its reference frames, based on the amount of motion in the video. But CineVision PSE allows this to be overridden per-segment.
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Last edited by benwaggoner; 14th August 2009 at 07:32. Reason: Belated quote fix
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