What bitrate do you prefer for H.264 encodes

[IgorC]

It will be interestiong to know what bitrates people prefer for H.264 encodes.
Some members of the forum said that H.264 isn't yet enough efficient on high bitrate comparing with Xvid. But mayor part of us use H.264/x.264 for low and medium bitrates.

[Sirber]

Anime content :)

[dbzgundam]

The only problem with AVC (or maybe just x264) for me is the damn blocking it exhibits on low contrast gradients, even with bitrates exceeding 2000kbps.

[Chainmax]

I asked a similar question once but no one answered me, so I'll ask it again here:

What bitrate would you use for encoding TV captures of low motion live action footage (sitcoms or series) resized to 512x384? Would 350kbps be ok or would that be more suitable for animated content?

[Sirber]

inloop do a lot of good on anime. It could be uglyer on live content. GIve it a try though :)

[leowai]

For me, I tried 2hr movie (~700kbps, 720x480 anomorphic) encoded from DVD using x264 with no noticable lost in video quality.
Vote for second, 1 CD 1 movie backup.

[dvd_maniac]

I do most movies at 350-400 depending on the type of movie and how much I like it. But for Sci-Fi, Epics and GOOD action movies that I want to watch on my 57" HDTV then I have to go to 650. I couldn't tell the difference on my 36" SDTV between a 350kbps and the original DVD, but could definitely tell the difference on larger TV. So I would assume it would depend on people's setup and taste.

[stephanV]

The only problem with AVC (or maybe just x264) for me is the damn blocking it exhibits on low contrast gradients, even with bitrates exceeding 2000kbps.

Yup, and unfortunately that makes it unusable to me for anything other than testing purposes. :(

[Czarek Kwasny]

I'm one of the folks playing with hdtv, and indeed the problem remains even at 6mbps:
http://gfx.artivo.pl/temp/low-contrast-gradient-compa.png (500kb)
The lossless mode allows to get rid of the problem. But this makes files go around 20-30mbps.

[puffpio]

I do most movies at 350-400 depending on the type of movie and how much I like it. But for Sci-Fi, Epics and GOOD action movies that I want to watch on my 57" HDTV then I have to go to 650. I couldn't tell the difference on my 36" SDTV between a 350kbps and the original DVD, but could definitely tell the difference on larger TV. So I would assume it would depend on people's setup and taste.
at what resolution?

[Chainmax]

inloop do a lot of good on anime. It could be uglyer on live content. GIve it a try though :)

I was planning on using 3 bframes (adaptive, pyramid, weighted); all macroblock options; RDO; uneven multi hexagon; Deblocking 0,0; chroma ME, CABAC and 5 reference frames.

[dvd_maniac]

@puffpio
at what resolution?

I use Standard AVC profile and the only default setting I change is Max reference frames from 1 to 2. The resolution is set to automatic. Usually ends up around 512x368 for 400kbps

[Sirber]

@Chainmax

stop planning and try :devil:

[guada2]

For the friends: 500/700 kbps (H264 Nero digital Standard AVC Real time + HeAAC)
For my part: 5000 kbps (x264 + AAC PS)

[Revgen]

I typically use anywhere from 1500kbps (about 6hrs of content on a DVD-R) to about 2360kbps (4 hrs of content on a DVD-R) depending upon the complexity of the movie.

[Revgen]

For the friends: 500/700 kbps (H264 Nero digital Standard AVC Real time + HeAAC)...

You're so good to your friends. ;)

[DryFire]

I"ve been playing around with some 400kbps anime encodes from tv rips (640x480) and minus a little bit of rare blurring (deblocking's at 0,0) it's turning out a lot nicer then i expected at full screen (dell 2005fpw).

I've yet to encode anyting at greater then 700 kbps using x264 but I'm almost exclusively encoding TV rips of anime. I don't really have any dvds I feel like ripping again.

[guada2]

No, it is not acceptable.... :(
And still, I find that I am generous. :D

Imagine, I have make recently an encoding of report (Exactly 12 vobs). All this for film 2H15 with nero 7 in Standard Realtime AVC on 1 CD. The quality of picture surprised me .
I did not use any filter, only the file demuxed and the ac3 (mpeg2*ac3): Dgindex and Tmpeg multiplexing.

See you soon my ""F R I E N D"" Revgen (not for the encoding) ;)

[Chainmax]

@Chainmax

stop planning and try :devil:

You're mean :(.It's going to be a while before I can start capturing the series and I wanted people more experienced than me to give me a good starting point for experimentation.

[ndkamal]

I use 2000 kps for my backups with Nero Recode and Standard AVC, like that I can put two movies on one DVD-5, with a very good quality, near DVD quality.

[Sharktooth]

Using high bitrates with AVC is like using 320kbps+ with MP3 audio... AVC was made for better compression at lower bitrate. If you wanna use high bitrates (with SD) continue using xvid or mpeg2...

[IgorC]

Last beta 2 Ateme H.264 High Profile is excelent for high bitrates.
Also H.264 was made for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray 10-20 mbps.
It will be usefull to compare Xvid 1.1 and Ateme H.264 when final versiones will be released.

[guada2]

Some questions for Sharktooth,

Which is most judicious of the 2 systems:

-a maximum of quality with low bitrate or an excellent quality with high bitrate.
-If you have a advice to give somebody for an encoding 1080p. Which codec would you choose and which bitrate would you use?
-And why?

Thank you

[Sharktooth]

Some questions for Sharktooth,

Which is most judicious of the 2 systems:

-a maximum of quality with low bitrate or an excellent quality with high bitrate.
-If you have a advice to give somebody for an encoding 1080p. Which codec would you choose and which bitrate would you use?
-And why?

Thank you
1) depends on your needs, btw i would choose the max quality with low bitrate coz i dont want to waste money or diskspace. I would choose excellent quality with high bitrate only on stuff that deserves it.
2) 1080p AVC stream is almost impossible to decode with common hardware. I would choose xvid or vp6 unless i have a bleeding edge hardware.
3) i already answered.

[[DSL]Sensenman]

I encode my movies with x264 HP at ~1200kbps. In my opinion they look better than my XviD encodes at the same bitrate and don't take up too much space while being still watcheable on my 27" LCD.
So for my needs this bitrate is sufficient:)

[Inventive Software]

If I have the patience, I'll usually encode to 1 CD. More often than not, I'll use DivX or XviD, or (waiting for the backlash) MS MPEG-4 V2, purely because they're faster!

[Amdh]

Well ...
I Encode Documentaries At 1850 Kbps ! X264 Gives Super Quality At 384*320
However For My Low Motion Records I Use 945 Kbps It Gives Me A Good Not To Say Very Good Quality !

[hitbit]

I'm encoding movies with x264 HP, CQ=25, full DVD resolution, with cropping and anamorphing when the case, and faac stereo at quality=100. This for standard length movies (under 2 hours) usually fits in 1 CD - often well under 1 CD. The only thing that bothers me in this setting is the usual "color gradients" issue, and I'm waiting to try adaptive quantization when mencoder will implement it.

For TV cartoons episodes (Simpsons, Futurama etc) I use PAL LowRes (384x288), HP, CQ 27 or 28 (sometimes two-passes) with AAC-PS (Winamp) at 32 kbps. This for a 22 minutes episode gives me around 40 MB.

(Oh, and since I like to encode movies straight from DVD and it seems there's no available tool that allows this, I've made a little GUI to easen my encoding process.)

[fight2win]

i go for 1 gb rips so i can put around 4 movies on a single dvd-5

[guada2]

Hello Sharktooth,

Thank you for your point of view. :)

It is possible to today have a computer platform which answers this need.

I am explained if I have a multiprocessor server converts equipped graphics boards with very great qualities overclocked, holographic memories and a system of treatment radical of heat.
Do you think that I have a luch to read part of a film HDTV 1080P AVC?

[wdmalik]

I encode my dvds upto 700Kbps ...
well I have encoded just 2 of them usind x264 .. :) and i really liked the results

[Sharktooth]

Hello Sharktooth,

Thank you for your point of view. :)

It is possible to today have a computer platform which answers this need.

I am explained if I have a multiprocessor server converts equipped graphics boards with very great qualities overclocked, holographic memories and a system of treatment radical of heat.
Do you think that I have a luch to read part of a film HDTV 1080P AVC?
Well the newest video cards "should" provide AVC playback acceleration. That should be enaugh for HD playback. But that support is (at the moment) still a promise. A dual core CPU (supposing you use a multithreaded AVC decoder) should have no problems playing back 1080p with all the bells and whistles enabled on the encoder side.

[Sirber]

can ffdshow SMP?

[Sharktooth]

Dunno.

[unmei]

Usually i encode with constant quant (~21..25) adjusting the quant in a way that the bitrate usually is inbetween 500 and 1000 kbit/s (full PAL res anime). If that bitrate is not reachable with a quant in the given range, it depends on how high i value the content whether i will just raise the quant, blur the image or accept a higher bitrate.

[Chainmax]

Could inloop be a good alternative to denoising on TV/VHS captures?

[IgorC]

Che, Urugayo. Inloop and denoising are different things. However feel free to test :)

[eMotionEstimation]

Could inloop be a good alternative to denoising on TV/VHS captures?
No, it isn't. The inloop filter is applied to the frame after it has been encoded/decoded. The codec throws bits at every frame to reconstruct the noise which is then whiped away by the inloop filter afterwards - that doesn't make too much sense and isn't very efficient. You should clean the source before you encode. afaik b-frames behave differently, but I hope you get my point.

chris

[Chainmax]

¿Que hacé, tatarcha? ;) :p

IgorC,eMotionEstimation: I know that inloop and denoising are two different things. Thing is, I might be start capturing a 297-episode long series (Beverly Hills 90210, yeah, you can start laughing now :o) soon and I don't want to spend hundreds of DVD-Rs just for that. After some thinking, I concluded that 6 DL DVDs for the whole series would be ok. Using Ogg aoTuVb4 @ q3.5 would yield an audio bitrate of ~98kbps, leaving ~440kbps for the video. For such a low bitrate, x264 and a resolution of 512x384 seem like the only sensible choices. Since apparently inloop kills too much detail and isn't that suitable for live action footage, I figured it could be a good substitute for the denoising that will be needed anyway on a TV/VHS capture. Denoising + inloop would probably yield a horribly soft picture.

[Tommy Carrot]

Thing is, I might be start capturing a 297-episode long series (Beverly Hills 90210, yeah, you can start laughing now :o)
Hahaha. :D :p :D

Seriously, i have to disappoint you, but in-loop filtering is absolutely necessary at low bitrates, regardless of the denoising. Believe me, blocking can be very ugly in h.264, much worse than in mpeg4 ASP, so deblocking has much larger importance in h.264. As a rule of thumb, i would say that if the average quantizer is more than 22 (and i think it will be more in your case), in-loop filtering is necessary. As a possibility, you can try to decrease the deblocking strength, if you find the result too blurry.

[Chainmax]

You are a mean person :( ;) :).

Like I already said in the first page, using deblock 0,0 already was on my plans since I know that such a low bits/pixel*frame needs it. What I want to know is wether inloop can replace the denoising that's unavoidable on TV/VHS captures, as inloop+denoising will undoubtedly make the picture much too smooth.

[Revgen]

can ffdshow SMP?

The MJPEG codec included with FFDShow has an option for multiple threads.

Unfortunately it's b0rked and doesn't work.

[aeternitas]

I encode based strickly on the media space im going to be backing this stuff up on. Im going to want, a 26 episode series to fit on a single DVD for storage.

Roughly;
4479/([24min * 26]*60) = 0.11963141025641025641025641025641MBps

Or about 7.18MB per min of video includeing Soft subs and original audio (if no more than 256Kbps). Overall I would approx it to 6.66MBpm for pure video :o~

[Inventive Software]

Sorry, 297 episodes?

Roughly how long are these episodes, coming from somebody who has never seen Beverly Hills?

[Chainmax]

44 minutes per episode (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098749/) without commercials. (IMDB says 293 episodes, TVTome says 297, counting TV specials).