HD-Source Encoding

[Bassphine]

Wow I'm not sure if I want to butt in here or not but I was reading about the need for a HD source for test comparisons in several threads so I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in for what it's worth it may help some of you.

By HD I believe you all are talking about 1020 or better, well the Terminator T2 Extreme Edition box set has a HD-WMV full length movie that is 1920x816 in resolution. The movie is 152 minutes long, totals 6.5 gigs and has a CBR of 6.8 MB/s. The sound is 5.1 channel WM9 surround sound, not sure if there is a program to downmix or re-encode into different format for WM sound though.

As is this movie is only watchable on the computer, but the quality....is magnificent, it blew me away the first time I watched it. If you can find the DVD in your area pick it up it's well worth it if your computer can handle it.

This is what the Microsoft site says you need in order to play it.

The following system is recommended in order for the High-Definition content on this DVD to play properly:

* Windows XP Professional.
* Windows Media Player 9 Series (included on Disc 2).
* Microsoft DirectX 9.0.
* InterActual Player software (included on both discs).
* Internet Connection to retrieve High-Definition content license files.

Note: Other operating systems such as Windows XP Home, 2000, Millennium and 98SE may work as well; however, only Windows XP supports multi-channel surround-sound under Windows Media 9.

Other System Recommendations

* 3.0 GHz processor.
* 512 MB RAM.
* 128MB/3D video card w/updated video card drivers.
* 24-bit 96KHz multi-channel sound card w/updated drivers. For information on what cards support 5.1 channel audio for Windows Media 9, please click here.
* 1600x1200, 1920x1080 or higher display setting.
* Mouse and speakers/headphones.

Note: The processor recommendation is for minimum optimal playback of this feature. The recommended resolutions above are for optimal playback of the feature. However, other display settings may work, resulting in less than optimal playback of the feature.

The only drawback is that in order to play with the video you must first break the WM9 DRM. There are currently 2 sets of tools available that I am aware of that are able to defeat the DRM, both requiring you to already posses the keys to open the file.
I liking this to being the same as DeCSS when it first came out, as the owner of said property I feel I have the right to modify, break, or even copy my property as I see fit.

I'm not sure what the policy here is about DRM hacking, circumvention etc. is so I'll leave it up to you people to find them yourselves. On the other hand there is one 'legal' way I can think of and that is to use a screen capture program to capture the video natively using maybe huffyyuv or something similar. Though what screen capture program can capture that in realtime I don't know, never tried, but who knows.

There are also some HD-WMV clips available on the microsoft site to promote the use of HD-WMV, not sure if those are DRM'ed or not though. Although I'm sure if you poke around google enough you can find some source material that is available for downloading that meets the requirements you need to test and compare these different codecs with HD material.

Hope this helps with the question, "Where is there HD material to use for testing and comparisons.".

BTW has anyone heard of the UHDV standerd being developed in Japan?

Link for info (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Video)

* Resolution: 7,680 × 4,320 pixels.
* Frame rate: 60 frame/s.
* 22.2-channel audio
o 9 - above ear level
o 10 - ear level
o 3 - below ear level
o 2 - low frequency effects

"18 minutes of UHDV consumes 3.5 terabytes of data." Imagine trying to compress that! LOL

Thanks for listening
Bassphine

[guada 2]

Hello Bassphine, :)

Article UHDV is of September 2003.
UHDV is a Prototype and will remain a Prototype of the Future.

[Bassphine]

I figured that much...lol ;-) Would be nice though. In any case has anyone tried working with the HD-WMV to see how the mpeg4 codecs stack up?
Just thought of something it is possible to encode flash media into mpeg4 right? Then why doesnt someone create a flash vector file with still,low,mid,high, and randomly mixed the content, then size it up to the max HDTV resolution of 1920x1080 pass it to uncompressed avi @ 24 bits per pixel. However if my calculations are right that would be roughly 8.739 gigs per minute or 2.913 gigs per minute @ 8 bits per pixel, remeber to use a large HD :-)
Anyone game for trying this one?

Bassphine

[Christiaan]

T2 only has a resolution of 1440x816 but it's still impressive quality.

I did a reencode to XviD because my showcenter refused to play the WMV. They already did a good job at cleaning the source so that it will compress nicely. As I recall there wasn't much of a problem encoding it in Xvid with the similair size and quality.

[Bassphine]

Huh puzzling mine was 1920x816 ??. 1920x816 gives it an ASP of 2.35 which is correct whereas 1440x816 is ASP of 1.76 which is incorrect. Here are the details for the movie on IMDB http://imdb.com/title/tt0103064/dvd as you can see 2.35 is the correct aspect ratio of this movie. The movie must have noticably looked odd/weird at that ASP.

As for creating the flash vector movie and outputting I have started the process by creating a flash movie with random shapes and movements of complexity varying them from still to fast movement. I will be outputting this to 24 fps instead of 30 to mimic the number of frames encoded in a usual encode of 23.976. I will be using 24 bit per pixel encoding if i can or 8 bit per pixel if it proves to choke on my computer. This should give a great representation of how the xvid and divx can handle the new HD media that should be coming out.
cheers bbiab to share the results.

Bassphine

BTW if anyone else has done anything even remotely similar could you please share your results here? Anyone have experience with HD encodes of other codecs?

[Christiaan]

Huh puzzling mine was 1920x816 ??. 1920x816 gives it an ASP of 2.35 which is correct whereas 1440x816 is ASP of 1.76 which is incorrect. Here are the details for the movie on IMDB http://imdb.com/title/tt0103064/dvd as you can see 2.35 is the correct aspect ratio of this movie. The movie must have noticably looked odd/weird at that ASP.

The framesize is 1440x816 but it plays back as 1920x816, it's like an anamorphic DVD :)


Anyone have experience with HD encodes of other codecs?
I've only done encodes from TS streams. I encoded in Xvid, X264, Nero AVC and WMV9. Using X264 and Nero AVC is no good for me at HD resolutions since it takes to much power to decode.
Xvid and WMV9 look quite good at 1080p on 1 dual layer DVD as long as the movie isn't to heavy on the action (lot's of lighting changes and sorts) and the movie isn't much longer then 2 hours.

[Bassphine]

The framesize is 1440x816 but it plays back as 1920x816, it's like an anamorphic DVD

Ahh I see, lol I misunderstood you then. I always stretch a movie back to it's original frame AR so that I can get the best possible encodes with the original source AR and frame size. I don't like to downsample resolutions because I may want to convert it back to DVD someday.

For other news here for this threat I finished my excersize on the flash vector -> uncompressed avi -> xvid. The results were well umm.. alright to good, which means that had it been a real movie it would have bombed pretty badly I think. XviD and DivX for that matter could not handle a 24 bit 1920x1080 @24 fps with less then 75 colors.

DivX just died trying to encode this at it's highest bitrate settings.

XviD fared better with it's highest bitrate settings but it produced macrobloacks and streaking across the screen plus the movie studdered at some points, possibly couldn't handle continous top bitrate playback?

I don't think that had anything to with my computer though I have an Intel Pentium D dual core running at 3GHz each core with HT and I have 4Gigs of memory.

For what it's worth I was able to partially load the uncompressed video to memory and play it back remarkably smoothly with consideration to it's size.

My results are that none of the codecs available today are ready for max resolution HDTV with full 24 bit color and 24.976 and 29.97 NTSC framerates. Then again there is also talk of optionally making HD-DVD's that are completely progressive that would mean something like 59.97 or 60 fps rates if I remember right.

Then again I'm not the best encoder in the world which is why I always use high bitrates to begin with. However I could not set the bitrate any higher then 8mbps with XviD so I fail to see where I could have achieved better encoding.

The only solution I see is taking a HD source 1920x1080 (1.78:1) and downsizing to 960x540 (1.78:1) which is close to 852x480 (1.78:1). I have encoded a video with xvid that was 852x480 and I was able to get a very decent movie out of it, it averaged around 5mb thoroughput I do believe.

Bassphine

[tomos]

i've encoded a load of HD source now to xvid and mostly divx while keeping the original res (converting 1080i to 1080p tho) and it looks good/great depending on bitrate/settings (found divx better personally). no probs with playback either.

am messing around with x264 at the mo for the same thing although that takes a lot more power to play the thing back. i have to use the nero showtime program to play back to make use of both cores! (have a 4400+ X2 and 1 core alone isnt enough to decode smoothly)

[Bassphine]

what's the full res you are working with? Could you post some settings you used and what you had to do custom in order to create these good/great encodes you made? What were the file sizes both before and after encoding like? You use 1 pass or 2 pass? Please give details as I would like to reproduce this quality.

[tomos]

working with some downloads. some are 720p others are 1080i (FTA broadcasts etc)

filesizes are variable, usually from 5-15ish Gigs and i usually fit those onto 1 dvdr @ 4485megs with original ac3 audio. how i encode depends on the original size. a 90 min film at 8 gigs can do faster (balanced in divx) encode than a 90min film 15gigs (extreme )

the insanely big files (lord of the rings/ BEBV gladiator release etc) at 30 gigs, i do on a dual layer disk on insane mode. my LOTR copies look great (imo of course)

all of the above with shaping and 2 pass (some like LOTR films i do 3 passes as the bitrate goes down a bit cos of the length of the mov, even on a dual layer)

as far as the avs scripts go, nothing too complex. no more than a few lines. i found them on a hdtv forum and found they worked great for me without having to have a ton of lines in there that went way over my head :)

basically this worked great for the last one i did (sometimes have to tweak a little in vdub to get the avs script ok - depending on film %age etc)

-------------------------------------------------
Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\MPEG2Dec3.dll")
Loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\Decomb521.dll")
MPEG2Source("house.of.flying.daggers.1080i.dd51.renderman.d2v")
Telecide(order= 1)
-------------------------------------------------

i've watched the film and didnt notice any flaws (maybe i'm not picky enough ;)

[Bassphine]

I'm notoriously picky, lol.

You download these 5-30 gig files? You must have a connection that's even sweeter then mine I have 10mb down and 1.5mb up connection and I still won't touch something that big.

These are widescreen 1920x1080 files?

Like I've said before I'm not the best encoder here by far but I must have really fudged a setting somewhere that is easily over looked to have gotton the results I did.
Only thing I can think of is that mpeg4 encoders do not like a lot of solid shaped, solid colored objects that are moving around to compress.

Bassphine

[tomos]

right now i have an 8meg unlimited download (thank god) connection that will hopefully be 24meg soon. and yes they are widescreen 1920x1080 files, although some are (oddly) 1920x1280i

[Bassphine]

24mb down? Who is your internet provider and where are you located with that kind of service?

So they are 1920x1080, guess I did fudge a setting somewhere then.

I'll try finding some of these online and see if I can download and try with one of those sources.

Bassphine

[tomos]

bulldog/UK/adsl :) 30 gigs on an 8meg is done in about 10-12 hrs usually so not too bad speedwise

24meg as adsl2+ hopefully in january sometime tho :D

[Bassphine]

I've heard that you europeans had a better network then us Americans, but then again we created it first so we of course also have the oldest network setup in the world.

You would think with all the money that we spend on military power here in this country they could at least tap some of that to update this countrys core network infrastructure. However I seem to forget that we deregulated that authority to privite companys and investers who promised to keep America up to date, all they have done is squeeze more mony out of users for lines that are outdated.

While I do love my freedom here to do as I please when I please I do sometimes wonder if it would be better if there were some socialistic concepts introduced that could streamline and maintain a constant quality check on this countrys key infrastructures. But this is a whole discussion for another board lol.

30 gigs 10-12 hrs is amazing. Are you using p2p or privite ftp?

Bassphine

[tomos]

newsgroups of course

[Bassphine]

Wow newsgroups have come a long way then I haven't used one in years, maybe I will check it out again. Do you use an open news server? If so can you pm me the address with any other good ones you know of?

Bassphine

[tomos]

nah, i pay for one. never seen a good free NG server

[Leak]

nah, i pay for one. never seen a good free NG server
Oh there's plenty of them.

Especially if there's none of that binary/warez crap on them - much better for discussion than web forums...

[tomos]

dont use newsgroups for chat :)

to me, they are only for binaries