720p encodes: how "low" to go to compare differneces between Nero Dig Main and x264hi

[sjchmura]

:sly:

So I was looking at some encodes of 720p HDTV material ("24" actually) with both x264 2 pass HQ (High profile preset) and NeroDigital

The 42 minute episode came out to about 1GB in both of them with AAC 5.1@256

To be honest they BOTH looked amazing. How much "lower" of bitrate should I drop my test encodes to try and "see" a difference between teh current Recode MAIN profile "best" and the HQ 2Pass High Profile preset from the new x264 builds

Anyway I just can't get over how good CoreAVC decoder is - my CPU usage is amazingly low now :)

[bratao]

The nero are slow and produce bigger with low quality..
They using a old version of the atheme codecs
even the brand new Atheme codec(the same used in nero) , loose to x264.
X264 are proved to be faster and better quallity..

My encodes here, show that 40 minutes fit on 60 megas files with good qualiity(AAC 64 k)
1G for this files, are too big(even with the 5.1 audio)

[Daodan]

Maybe it also depends how sensitive someone is to the little differences in the image. In my experience, when using 1 GB for 1 hour with a good DVD source (not great, just good) I can see the quality increase in favor of x264. Anyway, I would say that 1 gb for 45 mins is a bit of a waste when using such efficient codec.

[Manao]

Just for the record : it's Ateme, without an H, an it's faster in two passes mode ( cf doom9's comparison, sagittaire only did the second pass on a short trailer ) Quality wise, x264 is a bit better. Now, concerning Nero, it's old, so I can't think of a reason for using it.

Now, for the bitrate, you should try reducing x264's encode bitrate till you see a difference with nero, then encode with nero at the same bitrate. Then you should hopefully notice a difference.

[sjchmura]

I guess I was thinking 1GB/hr is 6:1 compression with stunning quality. On a large home theater differnece I can notice alot of loss if the AAC sound part is NOT kept high.

I think I will try 700megs for 43 minutes and see how that looks on both codecs.

Has there been a good comparison done (or some good guidlines) on the new HQ (high quality) presets in x264 (there are 4 HQ presets). For example, has anyone done a PSNR on the SLOWEST 3 pass one versus the "fast" HQ????

To be honest, on my 65" HP DLP sitting 7 feet away I am stunned by how good EITHER codec looks at 1GB/hr 720p with a paridigm monitor 5.1 setup, JVC digital amp etc. Everything I see "artifact" I look back at the original MPEG2 stream and there was blocking.

Btw - is everyone using 0.4alpha of the CoreAVC decoder? Works under media center - just SO FREAKIN FAST. My AMD X2 is using about 20% of one core for playback scaled to 1880x1010 (for no overscan) from 720p 24FPS

[lexor]

well dunno about 42 min episode, but I have encoded a 1h40min 720p movie into 1.4gig file (with original 2chanel ac3) the resulting bitrate was about 1580 kbps and it wasn't pretty in the slow pan scenes, foreground with actors looked spot on, but background became a blockfest. So I wouldn't recommend going lower than 1600kbps for your target bitrate.

[sjchmura]

Ok, I will try - yeah, I think 700megs/42 minutes should be (about)2000kbit