x264: Slow playback and a few issues

[Spekter]

Hi,

There are a few issues I'm going to cover in this post, I'll try to make it organised.

My goal: encode my DVD collection in a futureproof way. With absolutely no compromise on quality (versus time). So that in the future I don't feel like I need to reencode my movies. And later on with bigger media I can put 25 of these movies on disc.

The best codec seems to be x264. I want something very close to the original quality but good in size ( best size/quality ratio ). 1- 1.2 gig per movie is fine. I have a PC that is idle most of the day so I don't mind if it's very slow to encode.

What I Tried: I tried D-Vision 3 on Mac and GKnot on PC. D-Vision took forever, but quality, audio, and audio sync was flawless on the first try. And There wasn't much configuration, Just picked, Best/Slowest mode and 1000bit/s. My Mac is an old laptop, but my PC is new so I decided to try Gknot, but I had all kinds of problems.

1. Video: Playback. I tried to playback on VLC. The first encoding i did on Dvision plays flawlessly. But what i did on Gnot seems to be too heavy or something. I tried 1000 bit/s, 750 bit/s, audio in ac3, in mp3 196, mp3 128. I changed bitrate variability back to 60% ( i put it at 100% when I read it was best for quality )

What is it that can cause this kind of problem? I read also about some containers issues, .mp4, versus .avi.

Can it be the decoding of the codec?

2. Audio: Out of sync. Tried to encode Transporter two. I tried to do just the first VOB. Sound in sync. I merge the VOBs and do the whole movie: sounds is slightly out of sync.

Is it frequent that this is out of sync, and the gap is variable? I mean how much time do you spend fixing these usually?

3. Audio: Vorbis. Tried it, as it says it supports surround and all those things. Everything goes well, but I don't hear any sound when I playback. I followed the Guide, and snooped around about vorbis.

Do you use the "Encode Audio Only" on the Audio tab separatly, or just do the Encode everything like it says in the Guide?Y



Conclusion: Basically I'm looking for a fast way to get these things done with high quality. I'm not looking at tweaking to fit it perfectly on a CD with still-great quality.

And finally, I searched the forums and the internet and been playing with this for about a month encoding 2-3 movies countless times. My low number of posts here means i'm new, and NOT that I'm a freeloader or lazy ;).


Thanks

Spectre

PS: Don't forget to treat your mums tomorrow ;)

[markrb]

I am fairly new to x264 myself and have been playing with it for a little over 2 months.
I encode almost every day now on up to 3 pc's at a time to convert the 100 plus dvd's I want.
I am playing them back on a HTPC so standalone compatability is not an issue for me.
I will share my steps and maybe this might help you.

1. Rip DVD or ISO into file mode ripping just the wanted PGC with DVDdecrypter making sure that stream info and ogg chapter files are created.

2. Using Megui with a slightly modified slower profile, basically just added No Fast Pskip.

3. I keep the orginal audio in AC3 format untouched.

4. I create files around 2000Kbit. Normal movie size around 2gb's.

5. I only use the mkv format container.


Works beatiful for me. I can even stream these over my wireless network with no issues. Mounted DVDs sometimes would stutter, but these do not.

You will need to get the MKV media splitter. You can find tons of info on the way I do it in the Megui guide and the contianer forum.
You will also need to install ffdshow to play back.

I have yet to have sync issues with any x264 encode I have done.

Mark

[foxyshadis]

Check bond's decoder comparison (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99402) to see what options make the most difference in decoding speed (VLC uses libavcodec). Something made on a mac may default to "quicktime-compatible", because quicktime can't play most of the advanced and heavy features of AVC. There's also CoreAVC, which is a payware decoder that's 2-3 times as fast as lavc.

Additionally, GK is a pretty painful and outdated system, using virtualdub and old codec versions to encode; you'd probably have an easier time of it if you use MeGUI or staxrip. (Which are .net 2 however.) You can encode to mkv or mp4 natively that way, which keep sync much better if it does run into decoding issues. If you do try one, you can try the quicktime or baseline profile to enable only the easy options, or main for mid-strength options. High-res, high-bitrate, high profile video can require a pretty strong CPU to play, or CoreAVC.

If you want to keep the AC3 audio, you shouldn't need to reencode, as any other format will only require more cpu to playback. And for surround, AAC is a much better option than vorbis, unless you can spare twice the bitrate, because vorbis doesn't couple channels for surround.

[bkman]

What I would do in your situation is use a constant CRF value with x264 for all of your DVD's using the original resolution without resizing when possible (with anamorphic signalling), and keep the original AC3 tracks too.

Since MP4 doesn't allow for AC3 tracks, your choices for a container are either AVI or MKV. Perhaps MKV is better as it doesn't rely on hacks (which might not be supported in the future) to store the streams, and would thereby be more future-proof.

I don't think you should worry about decoding speed with AVC, as decoders like CoreAVC are already quite fast, and will only get faster in the future along with CPU's. This is only an issue for the now, and not for the future.

[xyloy]

High-res, high-bitrate, high profile video can require a pretty strong CPU to play, or CoreAVC.
on that topic, it might be useful to know that on a 640*480 70 FPS video with a 1,66 GHz AMD CPU and no H.264 hardware acceleration:

-Nero's v3.2 decoder was slow(100% CPU usage) and had color bugs

-CoreAVC played fine with 20% of CPU usage

-VLC media Player 0.8.4 hit 100% CPU usage(slow playback, but no color problems)

-VLC Media player 0.8.5 played fine with 44-51% CPU usage(strange thought that there is no report of H.264/AVC internal decoder bugfixes in the changelog.. !?)

;)

[FirstBorg]

Hi!

I have some trouble playing x264 files, so I searched and this seems to be a right thread.
I use the newest version of media player classis and the newest release of ffdshow.
When I play x264 or h264 encoded files(in 1080 resolution), the decoding is very slow... below 20 fps... then it somethings just hangs a bit, and continues... of couse the audio gets out sync because the video is too slow.
My system contains an athlon 3000+ 64 Bit, 1 GB Ram and an ATI X800 Video Card.
any advice?

[pyrates]

Hi!

I have some trouble playing x264 files, so I searched and this seems to be a right thread.
I use the newest version of media player classis and the newest release of ffdshow.
When I play x264 or h264 encoded files(in 1080 resolution), the decoding is very slow... below 20 fps... then it somethings just hangs a bit, and continues... of couse the audio gets out sync because the video is too slow.
My system contains an athlon 3000+ 64 Bit, 1 GB Ram and an ATI X800 Video Card.
any advice?

Well first off, ur system can only decode 720p h.264 content, not 1080p. For 1080p you need a dual core cpu like the x2 from amd. But the 3000+ is I think a socket 754 amd cpu, so there's no upgrade path for u to a x2 since that is socked 939. But even those are being faded out. Plus u need the core avc professional codec to be able to decode 1080p content because it's the only one out there that is all software but is smp aware.

[Manao]

With a 3000+, as soon as the bitrate gets high ( ~15mbits, i'd say, perhaps even 10 ), he won't be able to play the video, whatever the resolution ( but of course, high bitrate mostly happen with high resolution... )
Plus u need the core avc professional codec to be able to decode 1080p content because it's the only one out there that is all software but is smp aware.No. Nero is smp aware too, but is slower.