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Old 27th January 2003, 20:39   #1  |  Link
iwod
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Suggestions and Improvement for Real.

After asking many people. I decided to test RV9 for myself. And it came out that it is the best for Anime at a quality/CPU usage ratio.

However like all things, there are improvement to be made. Whether it is the Codec itself, the filter, the software etc. So i am openning this thread and Hope you can all contribute you valuable suggestions towards either the current 9.x series or may be the future 10 series.


I hope moderator could pin this topic as well.
And i hope Karl would like it.

Last edited by iwod; 27th January 2003 at 20:41.
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Old 1st February 2003, 15:39   #2  |  Link
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There should be enough feedback already over at the RV9 sticky. But since you opened this thread up, I'll just take the liberty and fire the first round. I know this has been raised for the umpteenth time, and I think Karl would be sick of reading these feedbacks by now .

1. The possibility to mux RV9 with AC3 5.1 audio. I have a 5.1 setup so I see little point in utilizing Helix' audio encoding options which at best can only provide Surround.

2. Handy (read: free) editing tools in the nature of Nandub, AviMux, etc.

3. And of course the ever (un)popular blurring/softness, whether a consequence of pre-processing or post, it may give 'cleaner' overall results, but a lot of people still want sharper output and to my opinion Xvid is still on top in this department. I can live with the occasional ringing, since I don't hesitate feeding more bits to the codec to get the best possible quality.

Just my 2 cents
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Old 1st February 2003, 17:06   #3  |  Link
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There is another player that can render RV9. It has no post-processing unlike RealOne.

h**p://www.lalternative.org/download/mpc6402rv9.exe
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Old 1st February 2003, 17:16   #4  |  Link
karl_lillevold
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I am afraid I have to tell you there is no more post-processing in RealOne than in MPC playing back RealVideo 9. MPC uses the exact same DLLs as RealOne, and the same decoding process takes place.

That said, we are looking into improvements in this area, and how to make it adjustable. The post processing in RV9 does not work like the post processing in ffdshow, and can not be separated from the decoding, or adjusted by itself without potentially affecting the video quality negatively. It can still be made adjustable, but it would be adjusted on the encoder side, with the setting transmitted in the bitstream.

With regards to 5.1 audio. It should be safe to say this is also being worked on, but I can not say whether or not an AC3 pass-through mode / or muxing with AC3 will be possible.
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Old 1st February 2003, 22:12   #5  |  Link
RadicalEd
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well it would be nice if mux/demux tools were available for RealAudio and RealVideo. Also its a shame the directshow wrapper for ra/rv hasnt yet seen the light of day, personally I was really looking forward to using Real's codecs interoperatively with other codecs/containers :\
Also its kind of sad rv can't perform stanalone without the built in decoder post processing. Makes technical comparison with other codecs harder. However, comparison IMO is more useful using a real life scenario, so Real can still hold its own in comparisons (and often come out on top in my tests) against say xvid with ffdshow at automatic postprocessing.
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Old 8th February 2003, 16:08   #6  |  Link
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Currently Real is more of a Streaming format rather then a Backup format. May be something call RV9 Pro will come up that allows mutilple subtitle and mutiple voice tracks.
I am thinking it will be nice if the subtitle is not actually "burn to the video" but rather just loading it from another source within the same contaniner.
I know it is already possible with AutoRV9 with smil but can't there be a better way of doing this??
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Old 9th February 2003, 10:09   #7  |  Link
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Quote:
originally posted by iwod
Currently Real is more of a Streaming format rather then a Backup format.
I agree, that's why I only use it for those really impossibly hard to compress movies. RV9 is more comfortable at low bitrates, but it'd be interesting to see RV9 scale the high bitrate range at my desired quality that is comparable to Xvid, since I observed that RV9 retains more details than DivX, especially on foreground objects. Its just that bluriness is its achilles' heel. But like you said, it is aimed at the streaming end of video encoding. Going head to head against the MPEG4 mainstays in the backing-up arena wasnt its raison d'etre. But still, its a pretty damn good contender. Makes you wonder what its capable of if allowed to mutate into a bad-a** codec. And seeing how Karl is enthusiastic and supportive of it, I have to acknowledge the guy's dedication and helpfulness to everybody concerned here. It gives something for the enthusiasts to look forward to.
Cheers to Karl and his gang. (Now...about that 6-channel audio...)
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Old 9th February 2003, 14:33   #8  |  Link
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@Karl

I played Lord of the Ring on both MPC and RealOne. Backgrounds in RealOne are more soft than in MPC. Maybe PostProcessing isn't the right term but the idea is there. In MPC it's a damn good rip
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Old 9th February 2003, 20:31   #9  |  Link
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As Karl said it shouldn't look different ... unless you use the custom renderer which always converts to rgb before displaying and not using overlay at all. On some cards there can be a noticable difference between these to modes, however in my experience it is the overlay surface which might look better.
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Old 9th February 2003, 23:39   #10  |  Link
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Like gabest says, the type of renderer makes a very visible difference on certain video cards. For instance, if you open both RealOne and MPC on the same RV9 clip, only one of them will get an overlay surface to render video in. The other player will have to use non-optimized rendering. This changes both the color conversion and resizing, which oftentimes leads to visible differences. Also, the player without overlay could easily suffer from jitter and tearing problems.
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Old 9th February 2003, 23:59   #11  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally posted by nFury8
[...]I observed that RV9 retains more details than DivX, especially on foreground objects. Its just that bluriness is its achilles' heel.
[...]Cheers to Karl and his gang. (Now...about that 6-channel audio...)
Looking into improvements, I am curious how RV9 both retains more detail, and has blurriness problems at the same time? As you know, when filtering is reduced (in any codec), blocking, edges and ringing start to appear. Close up on a high res computer screen one can see this. However, from a little distance, or on lower resolution devices, like TVs, this gives the appearance of increased sharpness. Still, it is clear that even the most advanced filtering does affect certain minute details, so it's a tough balance. It therefore seems clear that since preferences differ, adjustable filtering is preferable. In that respect, RV9 suffers from the same problem as H.264; filtering levels have to be adjusted in the encoder. Neither codec will let you adjust filtering in the player.

Ahh, 6-channel audio, that's very interesing
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Old 10th February 2003, 03:12   #12  |  Link
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That's wierd... but why, looking a movie in realone, then on MPC, the stream on MPC is less blury and we can see some sort-of squares in high motion scenes? On RealOne, there is no square and the background is blury. I think RealOne post-process and MPC don't.

Can you explain, Karl, the things I don't get?
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Old 10th February 2003, 03:27   #13  |  Link
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Is the custom renderer for rm option checked in mpc? Is your desktop set to 16 or 32 bpp?
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Old 10th February 2003, 03:34   #14  |  Link
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1024x768x32
I use WMR9 (renderless). Special render isn't checked.

I have Windows 2000 SP3, DirecX 9, GeForce 4 TI4200.
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Old 10th February 2003, 03:43   #15  |  Link
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In that case everything inside the movie frame should be done by the real dlls, I have no further idea on this...
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Old 10th February 2003, 04:02   #16  |  Link
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That's why I think RealOne is doing post-processing. In my eyes bluriness is related to strong post-prosessing and squares are related to no-postprocessing. It's the case on MPEG4...
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Old 10th February 2003, 04:17   #17  |  Link
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Nope, I am sorry, I don't know what the difference could be caused by, other that having overlay or not. In addition to the color and gamma differences of the overlay itself (can be adjusted in the video card settings), not having overlay would even affect the decoding itself, since the decoder has built in CPU scalability, which could kick in for playback without overlay, since you would be running low on CPU resources in that case.

Could you try this test to see if you have overlay:
you can check with Alt-PrtScn with RealOne or MPC in focus to copy the current window to your clipboard, then paste into Accesories->Paint. If the video shows up and not just a black frame, you don't have overlay.

Other than that, if you like the visual quality in MPC better, that's great, and I can just recommend you keep using MPC
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Old 10th February 2003, 04:21   #18  |  Link
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In both player I use overlay. I don't understand... anyway, I'm happy with MPC and Real's codecs.
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Old 11th February 2003, 13:39   #19  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally posted by Karl_Lillevold
Looking into improvements, I am curious how RV9 both retains more detail, and has blurriness problems at the same time?
I just realized something...I keep preaching about Xvid in an RV9 thread, silly me . Seriously though, I didn't mean detail retention and bluriness happening at the same time,of course .The detail retention (RV9 vs DivX) I was referring to was specifically noticeable in close-ups of faces, ie: more wrinkles and lines. It surprised me at first. I remember I used MPC for DivX and RealOne v2 for RV9, I'm not sure if anybody else observed and can confirm this, but it was pretty obvious to my eyes. But don't take my word for it, it's better to do it and see it for yourself, that way, we all share in the pain of many hours (at least for me) of encoding
Quote:
Originally posted by Karl_Lillevold
Ahh, 6-channel audio, that's very interesing
Hrrmm, A disturbance in the Force... I sense. Like, about to happen..something sinister is. Meditate on this..I will.
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Old 13th February 2003, 02:30   #20  |  Link
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I *really* don't understand what you are saying! I've encoded the same Video Clip on RV9, WMP, DivX and XviD at the same final filesize and I just couldn't believe how sharp, how cristal clear RV9 was. This is because comparing to the other formats the difference was huge!

That's all because I can't use overlay on RealOne (I'm not using MPC) due to drivers problems, still the only problem I got is some tearing sometimes. That's all. I don't see one little blurry frame.

Honestly, I really don't where you guys saw these blurry frames on RV9. Couldn't it be you're forcing a too low bitrate?
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