x264 Development Progress Thread

[CruNcher]

IgorC especialy for Low Bitrate scenarios the New AQ is important for mixed type of sources and Mainconcepts Encoder would have problems in many scenes holding the quality constant but that's also the difference between Mainconcept and Ateme and now to a degree X264 they have been designed for Broadcasting.
Mainconcepts own Encoder wasn't designed for that it is the most efficient and fastest HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Encoder, but in Broadcasting it would loose currently versus it's competition and X264 in this regards is with Dark Shikaris AQ very well balanced for both Scenarios , tough Ateme is still some Generations ahead of X264 and Mainconcept/Elecard in R&D especialy everything that has todo with low bitrate psychovisual optimizations (those are esential for Broadcasting).

[CruNcher]

Dark Shikari QNS should make the picture not so blurry anymore right (more like the input)?

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by CruNcher

Dark Shikari QNS should make the picture not so blurry anymore right (more like the input)?

QNS has an... interesting... effect. It should concentrate quantization error in areas that one would least notice it. Its a type of quantization psy optimization, and is especially effective at lower bitrates.

Try it and see, though right now the 4x4 artifacting somewhat obscures its real effect.

If I had to guess what Elecard's three "quant modes" are, I would guess Deadzone, Trellis, and QNS, respectively.

[microchip8]

Will there be different QNS strengths available? Like in ffmpeg/lavc? (eg, qns=1, qns=2 and qns=3)

[akupenguin]

The qns parameter in lavc isn't strength, it's speed.

[IgorC]

Originally Posted by CruNcher

IgorC especialy for Low Bitrate scenarios the New AQ is important for mixed type of sources and Mainconcepts Encoder would have problems in many scenes holding the quality constant but that's also the difference between Mainconcept and Ateme and now to a degree X264 they have been designed for Broadcasting.
Mainconcepts own Encoder wasn't designed for that it is the most efficient and fastest HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Encoder, but in Broadcasting it would loose currently versus it's competition and X264 in this regards is with Dark Shikaris AQ very well balanced for both Scenarios , tough Ateme is still some Generations ahead of X264 and Mainconcept/Elecard in R&D especialy everything that has todo with low bitrate psychovisual optimizations (those are esential for Broadcasting).

I'm totally agree that new VAQ is good and x264 in high quality mode (pretty slow settings) is better than MC.

But in medium or fast modes MC is better for the same speed.
To match the same speed x264 with MC should low subme from 6/7 to 5. And that's where x264 is worse than MC. And AQ won't help. Not everyone want +0.5-1 SSIM at cost of 2-3x (or even more) speed lost.

Try for yourself last MC or Elecard with all fasts enabled and compare it to x264 at the same speed with AQ and other bleeding edge new stuff.

Why don't optimize x264 at fast speed? It has nothing to do with AQ and other last Pengvado's and Dark Shikari's improvements. That's why MC is a good to compare to it.
We are talking about two different directions of development which in conjunction will be very good. Speed and Quality.
Just think: fast encoder and very high quality.

[CruNcher]

Originally Posted by IgorC

I'm totally agree that new VAQ is good and x264 in high quality mode (pretty slow settings) is better than MC.

But in medium or fast modes MC is better for the same speed.
To match the same speed x264 with MC should low subme from 6/7 to 5. And that's where x264 is worse than MC. And AQ won't help. Not everyone want +0.5-1 SSIM at cost of 2-3x (or even more) speed lost.

Try for yourself last MC or Elecard with all fasts enabled and compare it to x264 at the same speed with AQ and other bleeding edge new stuff.

Why don't optimize x264 at fast speed? It has nothing to do with AQ and other last Pengvado's and Dark Shikari's improvements. That's why MC is a good to compare to it.
We are talking about two different directions of development which in conjunction will be very good. Speed and Quality.
Just think: fast encoder and very high quality.

Thats exactly what i did, and the Visual result was clear MC Ref 1.1 lost X264 was more efficient with the new AQ in a CBR Broadcast Sceneraio and it was not that much slower the most speed in Mainconcept Reference comes from the Fast Inter/Intra decission X264 is like 12% (with subme2) slower in the 0.x range compared to Mainconcepts fastest Encoder Setting but the visual result was clear on X264 side for the target bitrate of 3Mbit for 1440x1080. Elecard Converter Studio on the other side has AQ but it took my whole memory (i only have 1gb) and so was ultra slow to encode with it because it swaped virtualy everything to the pagefile.

[IgorC]

Maybe it's valid for 1pass CBR. But I have another results comparing on medium/fast settings for 2 pass mode.
We are still talking about two different things.

[CruNcher]

yes and that's why i say X264 is very good balanced and improves steadily in both directions and doesn't shift only in 1 direction, and you should know that first come the features and stability and then comes the speed optimizations

[Sagittaire]

Originally Posted by CruNcher

Mainconcepts Reference H.264 Encoder has absolutely no AQ @ all or am i missing something ? and Elecards Converter Studio is eating a huge amount of Memory for Encoding (almost unbeliveable it wants the double of X264's memory for the same Avisynth script).

Mainconcept/Elecard core codec have AQ implementation. AQ is simply not actived in Mainconcepts Reference H.264 Encoder Gui. You can set lumi/contrast/complexity AQ with Mainconcept/Elecard encoder (with Sonic Scenarist Gui for example).

[Dark Shikari]

QNS is now working. A bit faster than before, but still drastically slower than it should be. Next steps are to optimize speed and tweak the parameters.

Edit: Diff updated to fix bug with artifacting at high QPs.

[CruNcher]

Originally Posted by Sagittaire

Mainconcept/Elecard core codec have AQ implementation. AQ is simply not actived in Mainconcepts Reference H.264 Encoder Gui. You can set lumi/contrast/complexity AQ with Mainconcept/Elecard encoder (with Sonic Scenarist Gui for example).

Very user friendly indeed you pay 490/1790 € for no AQ option, the cheapest Nero Recode has that and it cost's alot less than that

[Adub]

Small bug:

RCRD is "RDRC" on the table.

I don't know if you saw this Dark Shikari, so I am just posting it again.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by Merlin7777

I don't know if you saw this Dark Shikari, so I am just posting it again.

The two seem to be interchangeable.

RCRD doesn't make sense, RDRC makes more sense, but its called RCRD... I don't really care either way.

[akupenguin]

In english adjectives precede their noun. Otoh, my variable/function naming system is big-endian, which usually means nouns come first. That is all.

[Adub]

Okay, I just wasn't sure if you knew or not.

[professor_desty_nova]

Maybe the table should be change now that VAQ1 is in non-patched builds...

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by professor_desty_nova

Maybe the table should be change now that VAQ1 is in non-patched builds...

I'll update it tomorrow.

[Sagittaire]

Here some Developement if you want that x264 became professional tool for high bitrate encoding like VC1 from CinevisionPSE or H264 from Mainconcept.

- Black level normalisation: use 3D filtering for denoise/degrain in dark area [16-40]. It's a psy filtering pre-process (use with dark AQ is a good psy way)

- Dark area improvement: use AQ with dark masking for improve dark area quantisation (use with dark filtering is a good psy way)

[CruNcher]

Sagittaire under which viewing conditions (calibration) do you rate X264 Visual subjective Quality in Dark areas?