in five years' time...

[*.mp4 guy]

Originally Posted by Blue_MiSfit

What about a hybrid mode? Wavelets for large-scale detail, and blocks for low-scale detail?

Or have I had too much damned kool-aid?

~Misfit

That would unavoidably end up being an overcomplete representation (you have redundancy). You would also get all of the problems stacked together, wavelet ringing, dct ringing, blocking. Imo you would be better off with a hybrid wavelet, that used all of the dct basis functions as subbands (dct's can be described as wavelets), but then extend them to lower frequency ranges instead of ending abruptly. This would probably be very slow.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Ah, but of course slow is a relative term.

Computer power always increases

~MiSfit

[zeeman_88]

On my spare time, I will run some test to compare them both, and I let you guys know my findings …

I think h264 Intra is faster and easier to implement, but wavelet methods like J2K has couple more advantage besides the one you mentioned (automatic downscaling which is why
J2K uses 4:4:4 mostly which lead to a better color quality at all rates).

Some of these advantages like, produce more acceptable artifacts (blurry versus blocky), Scalable streams, and may be I can add rate control is really easy.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by *.mp4 guy

That would unavoidably end up being an overcomplete representation (you have redundancy). You would also get all of the problems stacked together, wavelet ringing, dct ringing, blocking. Imo you would be better off with a hybrid wavelet, that used all of the dct basis functions as subbands (dct's can be described as wavelets), but then extend them to lower frequency ranges instead of ending abruptly. This would probably be very slow.

Or you can just use a hierarchical lapped DCT, which allows you to in a sense get the best of both worlds.

[akupenguin]

Originally Posted by zeeman_88

automatic downscaling which is why J2K uses 4:4:4 mostly which lead to a better color quality at all rates

What does chroma subsampling have to do with bitstream peeling? If 4:2:0 is good for 720p, and 4:2:0 is good for 360p, then 4:2:0 is good for 720p with the HF subband removed. Alternately, you could peel luma and leave all the chroma, giving 360p 4:4:4. Or you could take a 4:4:4 input and peel it to 4:2:0. They're completely orthogonal choices.

[Shinigami-Sama]

and to continue the tradition
5 years from now we'll still be using 32bit and wondering why
we'll still be using mechanical harddrives and wondering why
x264 will become self aware and take over the world after dark tries to make some sort of predictive adaptive ME
HDTV will account for about 25% of basic TV packages
game consoles will still cost half a month's pay
the music industry wil finally start to realize they can't win after getting sodomized in court with a meathook
hollywood will still be wondering why no-one wants to buy a remake of a remake of a remake for the 3rd time this year...
the abortive x264vfw will still be around
dark will still be addicted to touhou
ATI will still have horrible drivers and support
another DNS hole will be exposed
wavelts will still just be toys to play with
youtube videos will still look like crap
we'll have GPGPU down to something somewhat useable
there will be 1tb laptop drives for under 150$
4gb ram will be standard
people will still complain x264 is to slow at 100fps on 1080p samples using sharktooth's insane profiles on a laptop...
I will still have this avatar
nettops(EEEPCs - similar) will have replaced PCs in coffee shops because they cost less than 100$/each and no-one cares if they loose it

[Quark.Fusion]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

JPEG2000 uses Wavelet compression. There are video formats that use Wavelets, such as Dirac and Snow, but they did not prove to be superior to H.264 yet. Maybe they never will...


Also you must ask: Do we really need more efficient video compression than what we've got today?

Discs are becoming bigger and bigger, bandwidth is becoming cheaper and cheaper. Also I'm not sure if we will ever need much higher resolutions than "Full HD", simply because you can't integrate even bigger screens into your living room. Not everybody can have a separate room for TV and Beamer. Also look what happens to audio compression: Now that the HDD's and Flash's in mobile audio players become bigger and bigger, people go away from MP3&Co and go back to uncompresses Wave or FLAC...

I'm still waiting for high DPI displays and maybe movies will be at 4k resolutions.

[Sagekilla]

I want 300 DPI displays personally Our current ones have maybe... 72 DPI at best?

[nm]

Originally Posted by Sagekilla

I want 300 DPI displays personally Our current ones have maybe... 72 DPI at best?

Many current PC displays have 100 pixels per inch or more. Some laptops have 150 PPI displays, and with money to spend, you could have bought a 200 PPI LCD panel over five years ago.

[vmrsss]

this is not directly relevant to x264, hope I can be forgiven for an incidental remark: i'm not quite sure why people as at the beginning of this thread insist that disc space is so cheap to kill dvds and other removable support. At the moment, I can buy a terabyte of reasonably reliable dvds for less that $30. I need twenty times as much for a terabyte of hard disc. Also, I can always buy another dvd and extend the space available to me, while there is a limit to how many discs a desktop will support. Finally, if a dvd breaks, you've lost 4GB, if your hard disc goes, then you've lost it all, which implies you really can't get away without systematic backups.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by vmrsss

this is not directly relevant to x264, hope I can be forgiven for an incidental remark: i'm not quite sure why people as at the beginning of this thread insist that disc space is so cheap to kill dvds and other removable support. At the moment, I can buy a terabyte of reasonably reliable dvds for less that $30.

13 cents per DVD-RW? Can you link me to where those are being sold, so I can buy a few thousand and resell them for four times the price?

Originally Posted by vmrsss

I need twenty times as much for a terabyte of hard disc.

Uh... $600 for a terabyte hard disk?

[Sagekilla]

vmrsss: Where are you buying from that a 1 TB hard drive costs $600? I can buy one online for close to $100.

Downside to DVDs: After a few years (4-5 of use), will those DVDs still work well? Or will you be able to find them all 200+ of them, especially if you have kids? Also, searching from 200+ discs for your movie is a pain IMO. I like being able to pull up an alphabetical list on my computer that shows 200+ all within the screen space.

Each method has it's ups and downs. DVDs are great if you take good care of them but most people don't.

[Blue_MiSfit]

My sentiments exactly. I did lots of DVD-> MKV burned on DVD backups several years ago, and most of those DVD-Rs now have CRC errors, even though they've been sitting in a binder and very rarely used! It's not a big deal since I can just re-rip from my original discs now (with x264 instead of Xvid - w00t), but it's a hassle!

Windows Home Server presents a compelling solution to those of us who have large, ever-growing media libraries and like to keep everything "always available". Specifically, its abstracted storage model, which allows you to add hard drives, and redistribute free space as necessary - and specify levels of redundancy. It's very cool! In fact, a 4tb WHS box is in my immediate future. That way, my big hungry overclocked Q6600 doesn't have to stay on all night so I can watch my stuff on the laptop while in bed

Oh, and as icing on the cake it serves as a Terminal Services gateway (so you can remote desktop into your machines from anywhere on the intarwebs), and provides shadow copy / backup services as well.

~MiSfit

[Sagekilla]

Indeed, if you're looking to keep long lasting backups of your movies, the best way to go is aim for ~4 GB rips (Very easy for me, mine are regularly 3.5 - 4 GB @ crf 18) on a RAID 0'd data server. If you maintain it well (basically make sure it doesn't get dusty inside) then that data will always be there. If a drive dies on you, you pop in a new one. Or, if you have WHS like Blue_MiSfit said, you just pop in drives as you like and it reconfigures on the fly.

For individual hundreds of DVDs, if a disc fails, yes you just lose one disc but you have to re-rip every time that happens. Over time that can really accumulate, and nothing beats having all your media a click away I rip my movies because I don't want to deal with discs.

[vmrsss]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

13 cents per DVD-RW? Can you link me to where those are being sold, so I can buy a few thousand and resell them for four times the price?

Sorry, I meant DVD-R, which I guess we can all buy for about 15 cents?

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Uh... $600 for a terabyte hard disk?

Admittedly I am talking of over one year ago, yet I paid for a lacie firewire 1T disk about £265, which was roughly $530. From what I read from you, probably not the best of choices, or perhaps prices went down quite considerably since...

Certainly if 1TB hard disc can be gotten for about $100, I'll have to reconsider my DVD-R burning strategy... Indeed, as people have suggested, to keep track of hundreds of discs and index their contents in some reasonable and reliable way it is a serious burden a would gladly do without...

About DVDs going wrong after a while, luckily it's never happened to me. It surprises (and worries) me to hear of DVD-R with CRC errors even if never used... In fact, my "hollywood" DVDs are on average older than 6yr, and still going strong. Are they technical different from self-burn discs?

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by vmrsss

Sorry, I meant DVD-R, which I guess we can all buy for about 15 cents?

Newegg says 35 cents, not counting shipping. And don't suggest a local store to avoid shipping: they're twice the price.

Originally Posted by vmrsss

Admittedly I am talking of over one year ago, yet I paid for a lacie firewire 1T disk about £265, which was roughly $530. From what I read from you, probably not the best of choices, or perhaps prices went down quite considerably since...

Mine was $220... over half a year ago. And it was an external.

[Blue_MiSfit]

About DVDs going wrong after a while, luckily it's never happened to me. It surprises (and worries) me to hear of DVD-R with CRC errors even if never used... In fact, my "hollywood" DVDs are on average older than 6yr, and still going strong. Are they technical different from self-burn discs?

Yep Very much so! Pressed discs are hugely more reliable than burned discs, especially cheap burned discs!!

Here's a Samsung F1, 1TB, for $115 with free shipping..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152102

~MiSfit

[Sagekilla]

For $115, you can get:
1) 1 TB drive
2) 1.5 TB on ~328 discs if you're not paying shipping @ 0.35/disc.

Now tell me, what's quicker (assuming all the movies are perfectly 4.5 GB): Copying all your data over to a new drive, or backing up 328 DVDs? We might have fast DVD-burners but 328 discs still takes a loooong time.

[*.mp4 guy]

If you consider dud discs, and disc death whith equivelent usage patterns of discs and HD's, I don't see how the dvd's can come out ahead, even assuming everything else is optimal.

[Sagekilla]

On an interesting note, I happen to have one of the infamous IBM "death star" drives running in my system still (Yup, a Deskstar 75GXP don't ask, I don't even know why I do) and it still hasn't died on me some how. I have quite a few DVDs and even with good care they've died over the years. Of course, my Deskstar that still runs is rather anomalous and I don't think that's normal in the bit for a drive with it's reputation

Still, I'd sooner trust my movies on a single drive rather than DVDs. And if people are really concerned with losing data, that's where RAID comes in.