RealVideo 10 "Winter 2004" update

[karl_lillevold]

Download:
Helix Binary Downloads

Readme.txt:

Changelog:
** 2004-12-06: Fix for rcBestPSNRMode introduced 11-24.
Affects all encodes. Please update when you have a chance.

** 2004-11-24: Fix for parameter firstPassComplexity. This
was in most cases ignored, and always set to 50 for the
new R/C and 65 otherwise.

** 2004-11-08: Fix for Medium EHQ complexity, which
almost no one is using. No need to update if you are not.

** 2004-10-28: fix for chromaModeDecision on
single CPU systems (no hyper-threading or multi-proc)
- chromaModeDecision always ON for EHQ 100

** 2004-10-25: added option <chromaModeDecision>
This option takes chrominance (or color) into
account when choosing the best encoding modes.

Fix: encodeAllFrames and rcBestPSNRMode would always
be ON if included in audience, if if set to 'false'

Fix: long standing bug where if Constant Quality less than 20-30
and EHQ greater than 70, bitstream could not be decoded. Thanks
to Satsuki for discovering the problem.

** 2004-10-22: fixed bug related to the new EHQ100


Here is an updated RV10 encoder DLL with some small changes
that have been added since the last release. This is not
all we have been working on, of course, but we figured it
would be useful to have this in the community.

Replace erv4.dll in Producer's codecs directory. Remember
to back up the existing one. This DLL may (as always)
contain new bugs...

1. Improvement to EHQ 85 and higher, additional coding mode

2. minor improvements to EHQ 100

These combined will provide some improvement
in quality, but not anything like EHQ did. There is no need
to perform detailed comparisons.

3. new option <chromaModeDecision>
This option takes chrominance (or color) into
account when choosing the best encoding modes.

3. new option <encodeAllFrames>, which in streaming RC mode
forces encoder to encode all frames. In curve compression RC mode,
this has always been the case, and the option is not needed when
the CC RC mode is used.

4. new option <rcBestPSNRMode>. In curve compression RC mode,
sets parameters in a way that testing has shown provide the
best PSNR, in addition to a small codec change. This may not
always correspond to best visual quality. This option is
mostly applicable to the new RC mode, not the old streaming RC
mode.

The settings rcBestPSNRMode imply are:
patternAdaptivity => 2
rcHighBitrateReduce => 60
rcPFrameRefQuant => 6
rcBFrameRefQuant => 12
+ the internal codec improvement
Experiments show an improvement generally
from 0.25 - 0.5 dB, but of course, your mileage may vary.


New options are used like this:
<codecProperties type="bag">
<chromaModeDecision type="bool">true</chromaModeDecision>
<rcBestPSNRMode type="bool">true</rcBestPSNRMode>
<encodeAllFrames type="bool">true</encodeAllFrames>
</codecProperties>

The same settings are available in the registry, standard location.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\RealNetworks\RV9]
"chromaModeDecision"=dword:00000001
"rcBestPSNRMode"=dword:00000001
"encodeAllFrames"=dword:00000001

Note that even though I listed both rcBestPSNRMode and
encodeAllFramesON, it really does not make sense to use both
at the same time, since encodeAllFrames applies to the old rate control,
and rcBestPSNRMode to the new rate control.

As usual, let us know of any problems.

-- Karl.