why blue ray for h264 hd films??? [Archive] - Page 3

giandrea

18th December 2006, 15:37

from a 'small' user point of view the new formats are especially interesting for data backups imho (especially if you deal with your own production video) - as soon as the price drops..., uhmm, hopefully meantime we can expect a drop price for dual DVDs? :)

Yes, I hope so... :)
Anyway the problem of the time it takes to encode a 1080p movie with those settings is a problem for now, but a non-problem for the future.
First of all we are talking about backups of HD DVD or BD, so we would need to crack the encoding scheme of these formats, and it will take time (DVD John already reserver www.DeAACS.com ;) ).
Second of all, the formats are not widespread, and it will take time for them to be in the average user house (if ever...).
After all this time, I hope that CPUs will be powerfull enough (multiple cores at higher frequencies combined with more optimizations, parallelization, vectorization, etc...) to encode at those settings in realtime or close.

Morte66

19th December 2006, 17:24

If you need a "film master" for testing different codecs, you can get SVT test sequences (thank you Swedes!) from:
ftp://vqeg.its.bldrdoc.gov/HDTV/SVT_MultiFormat/

Here we go...
http://rapidshare.com/files/8149678/SVT.zip.html (50.7MB)

It's 2160p50 scans from 65mm film, with Lanczos resize to 1080p50 by SVT, which I converted to yuv 4:2:0 using sgi2yuv (28.9GB -> 7.24GB), then brought into AviSynth VY12 using the RawSource() filter and encoded with x264. This is 50fps so you might have to play it slow to to avoid stuttering.

It's the same bitrate (~7300kbps) and encoder settings I used for the digital camera footage from Taurus Media back on page 3, but this time with the joys of film grain. x264 reports a final ratefactor of 30.1, compared to 23.6 on the digital video.

Last time there was little visible difference between source and encode, this time the encode looks obviously denoised and the genuine detail (rather than false impression of detail created by noise) may also be a little softer. I included frame grabs from the avs feed and the final encode for comparison. I prefer the encode to the original -- I don't like grain -- but this is obviously a very personal thing. I would probably like it better if it were degrained before encoding and sharpened on playback.

Getting back to the original question, i.e. would good h264 encodes on DVD9 suffice or do we really need bigger discs... I'd be happy to buy this encode, but people who have to have film grain probably wouldn't. Fake grain might close the gap...

hvatum

13th January 2007, 02:47

Here we go...
http://rapidshare.com/files/8149678/SVT.zip.html (50.7MB)

It's 2160p50 scans from 65mm film, with Lanczos resize to 1080p50 by SVT, which I converted to yuv 4:2:0 using sgi2yuv (28.9GB -> 7.24GB), then brought into AviSynth VY12 using the RawSource() filter and encoded with x264. This is 50fps so you might have to play it slow to to avoid stuttering.

It's the same bitrate (~7300kbps) and encoder settings I used for the digital camera footage from Taurus Media back on page 3, but this time with the joys of film grain. x264 reports a final ratefactor of 30.1, compared to 23.6 on the digital video.

Last time there was little visible difference between source and encode, this time the encode looks obviously denoised and the genuine detail (rather than false impression of detail created by noise) may also be a little softer. I included frame grabs from the avs feed and the final encode for comparison. I prefer the encode to the original -- I don't like grain -- but this is obviously a very personal thing. I would probably like it better if it were degrained before encoding and sharpened on playback.

Getting back to the original question, i.e. would good h264 encodes on DVD9 suffice or do we really need bigger discs... I'd be happy to buy this encode, but people who have to have film grain probably wouldn't. Fake grain might close the gap...

Yes, but nothing will close the gap between the ability of Blu-Ray to carry all possible language tracks, special features altrenate endings, extended edition, entire seasons of TV shows. Someone here did post that such things should always go on a seperate disc, but that just seems crazy to me. I can't think of a single advantage to dividing things up into multiple discs - outside of perhaps giving you the feeling of getting "more for your money." But if that's what you're going for, why not just get movies encoded into ten video CDs with a really high MPEG-2 bitrate?

No matter how you slice it, Blu-Ray has more capacity. And for anyone who has money, this is a good thing. If you're really poor, I can see the DVD-9 argument, but I'd rather spend some extra money and have the convienence of having everything possible on one disc. Anyway, I already have a PS3.

DarkZell666

13th January 2007, 08:37

Yes, but nothing will close the gap between the ability of Blu-Ray to carry all possible language tracks, special features altrenate endings, extended edition, entire seasons of TV shows. Someone here did post that such things should always go on a seperate disc, but that just seems crazy to me. I can't think of a single advantage to dividing things up into multiple discs - outside of perhaps giving you the feeling of getting "more for your money." But if that's what you're going for, why not just get movies encoded into ten video CDs with a really high MPEG-2 bitrate?

No matter how you slice it, Blu-Ray has more capacity. And for anyone who has money, this is a good thing. If you're really poor, I can see the DVD-9 argument, but I'd rather spend some extra money and have the convienence of having everything possible on one disc. Anyway, I already have a PS3.

Except that you seem to have missed the point that:
h.264 rocks MPEG2's ass, and not many people are as rich as you seem to be :) There's nothing psychological about it, but it seems not everyone has the same logic :rolleyes:

Sharktooth

13th January 2007, 16:31

hvatum

13th January 2007, 20:31

Except that you seem to have missed the point that:
h.264 rocks MPEG2's ass, and not many people are as rich as you seem to be :) There's nothing psychological about it, but it seems not everyone has the same logic :rolleyes:

Except that you seem to have missed the point that:
h.264 rocks MPEG2's ass

Well, no one is stopping you from encoding your movies onto DVD-9. I don't see what you're complaining about, where's the problem? To make discs that support H.264 and players which support them the movie industry would need to make a new standard anyway. So either way you're buying a new DVD Player.

Secondly, why the hell is MPEG2 and H264 even being compared, you do realize that Blu-Ray su0pports H264, don't you? Using H264 on a Blu-Ray disc you can fit entire seasons of TV shows, and completely get rid of extra discs. You simply can not do that with your Amish DVD9 plan, there's just no way. Perhaps you can fit a two hour movie with comperable quality, but that's about all you can do with DVD9. No one is forcing you to you upgrade to Blu-Ray, by all means wait until you can get a Blu-Ray drive for $30, but don't complain because other people have more money then you and actually like vastly improved technology and like taking advatage of it's better capabilities.

hvatum

13th January 2007, 20:42

Ah yeah, why dont we kill flies shooting them with cannons?
Blu-Ray capacity is only usefull for data. With modern codecs even DVD-5s are enough for hi-def video...
I cant see the reason to use Blu-Ray for video when there's the HD-DVD format that's cheaper, safer and already affirmed (due to the fact it's the natural DVD evolution). Blu-Ray has more capacity but the production costs of both discs and drives is very very much higher, the price increase ratio is higher than the extra space you will get (comparing BD with HD-DVD).
My POV is Blu-Ray is an "overshoot"...

I hate to burst your bubble, but Blu-Ray does not have "vastly" greater costs for the manufacturing of either the disc or player. That's just FUD. And if it does, then it does not bare out in price. The cheapest stand alone next generation player is currently the PS3 20GB (No, an add on HD-DVD drive for the X-Box 360 is not a player, it is an add on drive...). And on e-product wars Blu-Ray discs are all priced within 10% of their HD-DVD breathern, in some cases cheaper. Hardly "vastly" or "very very" much higher - you really need to keep up to date, because your POV seems to be from about summer 2006.

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/index.cfm

My POV is HD-DVD is an "undershoot," why pay almost the same amount of money for an inferior technology?

PS. I'm short on freetime, so I don't plan to check this forum again. If you still disagree then I guess we can agree to disagree, because after two posts the HD-DVD vrs. Blu-Ray argument just turns into a back and forth - nothing new. Even if you can get 6 hours of HD on a DVD-9, that still means you could get 6x that amount on a 50GB Blu-Ray disc, since they both support H264, no encoding standard is going to erase that difference.

Morte66

13th January 2007, 21:54

Even if you can get 6 hours of HD on a DVD-9, that still means you could get 6x that amount on a 50GB Blu-Ray disc, since they both support H264, no encoding standard is going to erase that difference.

This is pretty much true. But if I encoded a movie to h264 high profile unrestricted on DVD9, then:

a) It would look great. I would be satisfied.
b) I wouldn't have to spend 500 pounds on a Blu-Ray drive to play it.

Sharktooth

14th January 2007, 03:53

@hvatum: the prices you linked are about movie titles on BD-ROM and HD-DVD-ROM.
The price is very different for (re)writeable supports and costs of the Blu-Ray discs is much higher due to materials (expecially zirconium) and required technology (much lower components tolerance on the players/recorders, etc).
However, you can use any PC to read contents on HD-DVDs (including movies) thanks to the xbox360 addon drive and they're very cheap while you cant do the same with Blu-Ray.
That said my POV is still very valid.

Taxidermista

14th January 2007, 06:21

Actualy HDDVD use Dolby Digital Plus at 640 Kbps for multiple audio stream 7.1 48 Khz ...

8500 MB HDDVD structure on DVD9 for 120 min movie

8130 MB

Jay Bee

14th January 2007, 09:49

8130 MB

based on 8 547 993 600 bytes:

8.548 GB
7.961 GiB
8548 MB
8152 MiB

Silly, people confusing, misnamed, binary prefix. :)

iwod

14th January 2007, 18:38

I hate to burst your bubble, but Blu-Ray does not have "vastly" greater costs for the manufacturing of either the disc or player. That's just FUD. And if it does, then it does not bare out in price. The cheapest stand alone next generation player is currently the PS3 20GB (No, an add on HD-DVD drive for the X-Box 360 is not a player, it is an add on drive...). And on e-product wars Blu-Ray discs are all priced within 10% of their HD-DVD breathern, in some cases cheaper. Hardly "vastly" or "very very" much higher - you really need to keep up to date, because your POV seems to be from about summer 2006.

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/index.cfm

My POV is HD-DVD is an "undershoot," why pay almost the same amount of money for an inferior technology?

PS. I'm short on freetime, so I don't plan to check this forum again. If you still disagree then I guess we can agree to disagree, because after two posts the HD-DVD vrs. Blu-Ray argument just turns into a back and forth - nothing new. Even if you can get 6 hours of HD on a DVD-9, that still means you could get 6x that amount on a 50GB Blu-Ray disc, since they both support H264, no encoding standard is going to erase that difference.

True. In terms o of tech. BD is better. In terms of Cost it aint so much of a difference. They are both expensive but if you can afford one then you will be able afford the other anyway.

So what is the problem with BD? Simple enough.... it is Sony. Only if Sony didn't make so much bad press and BD should have won by now.

Back to topic. Is BD is really too much for Hi-Def. Why not just put more in like 60 / 50 Frames per sec and 10bit per Channel ( High 10 Profile ) ? Or would that be overkill?

chilledoutuk

15th January 2007, 01:06

reepa

15th January 2007, 04:49

Here we go...
http://rapidshare.com/files/8149678/SVT.zip.html (50.7MB)

Thanks a bunch for that encode! If you'd like to, could you also do an AVC encode at 40Mbps CBR (Blu-ray video maximum) and another at 28Mbps CBR (HD-DVD video maximum) to put the bitrate difference discussion to rest? There'd then be good hard evidence to point to when arguing whether the extra bitrate of Blu-Ray is of any benefit with modern codecs.

Just selecteven() and assumefps(24), and please also include the CrowdRun sequence for some high motion (OldTownCross was twice in your encode, but no CrowdRun). The reason for CBR: the bitrate values are maximum values, so the VBR-encoded movies on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will always have less bitrate anyway.

Morte66

15th January 2007, 13:15

Thanks a bunch for that encode! If you'd like to, could you also do an AVC encode at 40Mbps CBR (Blu-ray video maximum) and another at 28Mbps CBR (HD-DVD video maximum) to put the bitrate difference discussion to rest?

I'll have a go in a day or two. I've got a humungous spatial-temporal deblocking thing running (or crawling) at the moment.

Sagittaire

15th January 2007, 14:00

The reason for CBR: the bitrate values are maximum values, so the VBR-encoded movies on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will always have less bitrate anyway.

No ... it's false. Rate Control for HDDVD and BD doesn't work like that.

For HDDVD you can use 29.4 Mbps with 30 Mbits for buffer. RC can use higher local bitrate than max Bitrate for difficult part. IMO 20 Mbps VBR encoding with good RC strategy will done really more constant quality than 30 Mbps CBR encoding for HDDVD. Make CBR encoding at the max bitrate limit is not a good RC strategy. It's strange but in practice it's always like that.

Manao

15th January 2007, 14:17

IMO 20 Mbps VBR encoding with good RC strategy will done really more constant quality than 30 Mbps CBR encoding for HDDVDThe quality will be more constant, but it will be lower than the 30 mbps CBR. By that, I mean that at any point in the video, the quality will be as most equal, but most probably less than the CBR video.

So if you have bitrate to spend, 30 mbps CBR is worth it.

Morte66

15th January 2007, 15:39

In fact a poorly encoded video with bad rate control and post processing will in my opinion have a much larger effect to the end user.

I agree. Like I said earlier, skill and care in the transfer/encode count for more than a pretty susbstantial bitrate difference. The important question for HD is "who made this encode", not "what size did they encode to".

Morte66

19th January 2007, 15:12

If you'd like to, could you also do an AVC encode at 40Mbps CBR (Blu-ray video maximum) and another at 28Mbps CBR (HD-DVD video maximum) to put the bitrate difference discussion to rest? There'd then be good hard evidence to point to when arguing whether the extra bitrate of Blu-Ray is of any benefit with modern codecs.

Just selecteven() and assumefps(24), and please also include the CrowdRun sequence for some high motion [...]

OK, back to the coalface. Per Reepa's requests, I encoded a couple of segments from the SVT samples using x264 at 28mbps and 40mbps (max rates for HD DVD and Blu-Ray). I just used the "Crowd Run" and "Old Town Cross" sections to keep the file sizes slightly sane.

I used Saggittaire's HD DVD compliant settings and tweaked the bitrate stuff. x264 doesn't really do CBR but I sort of faked it with qcomp 0; it should be near enough for the purposes of this comparison. Sample settings... --pass 2 --stats ".stats" --bitrate 28000 --vbv-maxrate 28000 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --qcomp 0 --threads auto --thread-input --keyint 15 --min-keyint 1 --mvrange 512 --level 4.1 --bframe 2 --b-rdo --bime --weightb --ref 3 --mixed-refs --deblock -1:-1 --ipratio 1.10 --pbratio 1.30 --partitions "all" --8x8dct --me "hex" --subme 6 --no-fast-pskip --no-dct-decimate --trellis 1 --progress -o CrowdCross.28000.mp4 CrowdCross.avs

Here are the 40mbps results:
http://rapidshare.com/files/12401767/CrowdCross.40000.mp4.html

x264 [info]: slice I:34 Avg QP:22.47 size:450058 PSNR Mean Y:40.26 U:40.63 V:41.46 Avg:40.50 Global:40.32
x264 [info]: slice P:234 Avg QP:23.14 size:272390 PSNR Mean Y:38.96 U:39.71 V:40.71 Avg:39.32 Global:39.13
x264 [info]: slice B:232 Avg QP:25.20 size:107483 PSNR Mean Y:37.08 U:38.61 V:39.97 Avg:37.67 Global:37.56
x264 [info]: mb I I16..4: 19.2% 53.0% 27.9%
x264 [info]: mb P I16..4: 9.0% 16.9% 5.2% P16..4: 25.2% 21.7% 15.5% 3.0% 2.5% skip: 1.0%
x264 [info]: mb B I16..4: 4.7% 5.8% 1.1% B16..8: 27.2% 5.2% 13.6% direct:11.8% skip:30.6%
x264 [info]: 8x8 transform intra:53.1% inter:42.6%
x264 [info]: ref P 80.8% 13.3% 6.0%
x264 [info]: ref B 89.0% 7.9% 3.1%
x264 [info]: SSIM Mean Y:0.9430235
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:38.176 U:39.263 V:40.418 Avg:38.636 Global:38.391 kb/s:39927.27

encoded 500 frames, 1.12 fps, 39928.02 kb/s

And the 28mbps results
http://rapidshare.com/files/12396676/CrowdCross.28000.mp4.html

x264 [info]: slice I:34 Avg QP:24.26 size:360524 PSNR Mean Y:38.78 U:39.54 V:40.53 Avg:39.15 Global:38.95
x264 [info]: slice P:234 Avg QP:24.95 size:201108 PSNR Mean Y:37.52 U:38.77 V:39.91 Avg:38.03 Global:37.77
x264 [info]: slice B:232 Avg QP:27.08 size: 61029 PSNR Mean Y:35.74 U:37.97 V:39.37 Avg:36.50 Global:36.36
x264 [info]: mb I I16..4: 18.1% 56.3% 25.5%
x264 [info]: mb P I16..4: 7.6% 16.3% 4.6% P16..4: 28.0% 20.9% 15.4% 2.3% 1.5% skip: 3.4%
x264 [info]: mb B I16..4: 2.7% 2.8% 0.7% B16..8: 30.1% 4.8% 11.3% direct: 6.9% skip:40.6%
x264 [info]: 8x8 transform intra:55.5% inter:43.2%
x264 [info]: ref P 81.1% 13.0% 5.9%
x264 [info]: ref B 85.8% 9.6% 4.6%
x264 [info]: SSIM Mean Y:0.9287368
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:36.780 U:38.448 V:39.699 Avg:37.395 Global:37.119 kb/s:28214.75

encoded 500 frames, 1.27 fps, 28215.50 kb/s

The most obvious difference is that on my PC with ZoomPlayer/CoreAVC the 28mbps version skips 10% of the time and the 40mbps version skips 90% of the time. Too much data...

Apart from that they both look pretty darned good, which is impressive given the murderous nature of the material and the amount of grain. No way could I guess which was the raw/40mbps/28mbps just by looking at them. If I overlay frame grabs and cycle through them, there are differences are in the grain but not the content (I still can't guess which is which).

It would be interesting to see how this comparison turned out with vc1, particularly the grain (which isn't h264's thing).

Seb.26

19th January 2007, 15:28

Here we go...
http://rapidshare.com/files/8149678/SVT.zip.html (50.7MB)

Thanks for that.

... but why source.tga and encode.tga haven't same size ...
( with same pixel size )

Targa file are compressed ?! ( a lossless one ? )

reepa

20th January 2007, 15:13

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/1520/40vs287ko.th.png (http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=40vs287ko.png)

I can't really tell which one's which. I was expecting at least some kind of a quality gap, but there really isn't one. The only difference is between the amount of grain in areas with little detail. Thanks for spending your time Morte66!

edit: the screencaptures are lossless so no jpeg artifacts.

Audionut

20th January 2007, 16:06

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/1520/40vs287ko.th.png (http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=40vs287ko.png)

On the screenshot alone, the top one looks like it has been compressed more with jpeg.

Sharktooth

20th January 2007, 16:45

the differencies are so small you wont notice them during playback.
it is even hard to spot them on still pictures...

Jay Bee

20th January 2007, 17:19

The original topic question was whether bitrates possible on HD-DVD/BR would achieve visibly better image quality than lower bitrates on DVD-9.

Comparing the files
http://rapidshare.com/files/8149678/SVT.zip.html (7300 kbps)
http://rapidshare.com/files/12396676/CrowdCross.28000.mp4.html (28000 kbps)
http://rapidshare.com/files/12401767/CrowdCross.40000.mp4.html (40000 kbps)
I would say the answer is clearly yes. One example: look at the tiles on this roof. I can't tell any difference between the two high bitrate clips but the low bitrate clip clearly blurrs away the detail.
hi (28000 kbps):
http://img6.picsplace.to/img6/25/28000_000.png
low (7300 kbps):
http://img6.picsplace.to/img6/25/7300_000.png

And that scene isn't what I would call fast motion. So basically I think people should keep bashing the DRM but not the increased size of new media.

Sharktooth

20th January 2007, 17:24

did you use the same settings for the DVD-size encoding?

Jay Bee

20th January 2007, 17:29

No, the clips were all made by Morte66 in this thread. If the settings are different then my above statements could be wrong of course.

Morte66

20th January 2007, 18:01

did you use the same settings for the DVD-size encoding?

No, the lower bitrate film encode was 50fps and it made no attempt at HD DVD compliance (longer GOP, more b-frames etc). I did that one because I was curious about x264 and film grain. It wasn't especially relevant to the thread.

The 28mbps/40mbps encodes were about HD DVD vs Blu-Ray.

I'd have to do 24fps ~7mbps from film to make a DVD9 vs HD DVD comparison, but everything I've seen suggests that x264 isn't quite up to 1080p on DVD9 for people who like to reproduce grain. It's "backup grade" but not "reference grade". If there were some effective external grain retention system (characterise and regenerate), I suspect x264 would be fine.

The very first encode I posted in this thread, from the clean Taurus Media digital samples, was about DVD9 backup. x264 looked very good there, I'd be quite happy to pay HD DVD prices for that.

Sagittaire

20th January 2007, 18:15

x264 [info]: slice I:34 Avg QP:22.47 size:450058 PSNR Mean Y:40.26 U:40.63 V:41.46 Avg:40.50 Global:40.32
x264 [info]: slice P:234 Avg QP:23.14 size:272390 PSNR Mean Y:38.96 U:39.71 V:40.71 Avg:39.32 Global:39.13
x264 [info]: slice B:232 Avg QP:25.20 size:107483 PSNR Mean Y:37.08 U:38.61 V:39.97 Avg:37.67 Global:37.56
x264 [info]: mb I I16..4: 19.2% 53.0% 27.9%
x264 [info]: mb P I16..4: 9.0% 16.9% 5.2% P16..4: 25.2% 21.7% 15.5% 3.0% 2.5% skip: 1.0%
x264 [info]: mb B I16..4: 4.7% 5.8% 1.1% B16..8: 27.2% 5.2% 13.6% direct:11.8% skip:30.6%
x264 [info]: 8x8 transform intra:53.1% inter:42.6%
x264 [info]: ref P 80.8% 13.3% 6.0%
x264 [info]: ref B 89.0% 7.9% 3.1%
x264 [info]: SSIM Mean Y:0.9430235
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:38.176 U:39.263 V:40.418 Avg:38.636 Global:38.391 kb/s:39927.27

encoded 500 frames, 1.12 fps, 39928.02 kb/s

This source is not classical source like movie:
- 40 Mbps
- more than 20 for average quant
- Less than 38.636 dB for OPSNR

It's certainely a very high textured source with high noise level. Movie are never like that. It's simply useless to make comparison with this source ...

Jay Bee

20th January 2007, 18:17

Ah, thx for clearing that up. Sorry for jumping to conclusions.
You say that DVD-9 isn't quite enough for people who like grain. How do you think it would deal with detail like the roof tiles? Maybe we would need a new clip to see that? *hint *hint :)

Morte66

20th January 2007, 18:19

This source is not classical source like movie:
- 40 Mbps
- more than 20 for average quant
- Less than 38.636 dB for OPSNR

It's certainely a very high textured source with high noise level. Movie are never like that. It's simply useless to make comparison with this source ...

I agree as a practical encoding test of typical material, but Reepa was asking about absolute limits of the two HD media (i.e. will BD's extra bitrate ever be useful over HD DVD).

Morte66

20th January 2007, 18:20

*hint *hint :)

*tomorrow *tomorrow :)

It's dark now, and time I was watching video instead of encoding it.

hvatum

20th January 2007, 21:12

People have to understand that while the inherent complexity in blueray disc technology makes it seem superior to the untrained eye, however in reality the technological leap that blueray

Technology is from DVD means that reliably producing these discs in vast quantity's is not cheap and unless subsidised will end in a higher cost to the consumer.

That's a fine opinion, but it's not congruent with reality. Check the actual prices of Blu-ray vrs. HD-DVD in the store, they are not much different. You can argue in theory all you want about the production costs of Blu-Ray vrs HD-DVD, but the proof is in the pudding.

In reality the extra space on a bluray disc is useful but however if you were to compare a badly produced bluray disc to that of a well implemented HD-DVD, HD-DVD would win easily.

And? A well encoded video on a CD (using H264) would beat a badly encoded DVD? So why are we even using DVDs, sounds like a big waste of money. I know this isn't exactly your point, but it's still true.

HD DVD 15Gb is more than enough for 1080 HD content even on long films when using AVC (H.264)

I have encoded a lot of HDTV films and in reality the difference the extra space makes when using a codec such as AVC (H.264) would be negligible.

In fact a poorly encoded video with bad rate control and post processing will in my opinion have a much larger effect to the end user.

I completely agree, don't see why you're even saying this. My only point is that whatever HD-DVD can do, Blu-ray can do better. If HD-DVD can do hold long movie in full quality, then Blu-Ray can hold a longer film. If HD-DVD can store a TV season, then Blu-Ray can store more episodes of a TV season at higher quality. No encoding method is going to erase the fact that Blu-ray can simply store more data.

@ hvatum
I think its very immature to make a post stating your opinion and then say "so I don't plan to check this forum again" because your loosing this argument to people that know more about video technology than you could dream of. Its just a little pathetic and ignorant.

Sorry that you find my lack of freetime offensive, not really much I can do for you :(

PS. I like your elitist attitude, I'm sure it has gotten a lot of people sitting on the fence into your camp (NOT). Secondly, doom9 forums (for me at least) has some major slowness problems, keeps giving me "server is busy, please try again later" message :confused:

hvatum

20th January 2007, 21:35

@hvatum: the prices you linked are about movie titles on BD-ROM and HD-DVD-ROM.

Yeah. It's hard to link to things which don't exist :P

The price is very different for (re)writeable supports and costs of the Blu-Ray discs is much higher due to materials (expecially zirconium) and required technology (much lower components tolerance on the players/recorders, etc).
However, you can use any PC to read contents on HD-DVDs (including movies) thanks to the xbox360 addon drive and they're very cheap while you cant do the same with Blu-Ray.
That said my POV is still very valid.

Are we talking about what's available now, or are we comparing vaporware? If you're going to tout the lower (re)writeable currently non-existant HD-DVD discs and burners then I'll be a chearleader for the possible future X-BOX 360 Blu-ray drive. Microsoft afterall did not discount the possibility of moving to Blu-Ray in the future.

In my opinion it's best to stick to comparing things that actually exist. Things which can actually be purchased at a quoted price in a store. I more readily trust the marketplace as the arbiter of price then a bunch of people on Doom-9 forums deciding what "will" or "should" cost more.

Trahald

20th January 2007, 21:43

That's a fine opinion, but it's not congruent with reality. Check the actual prices of Blu-ray vrs. HD-DVD in the store, they are not much different. You can argue in theory all you want about the production costs of Blu-Ray vrs HD-DVD, but the proof is in the pudding.

the end user cost does not always have anything to do with the actual cost. the price of the disks are based on being competitive with hddvd and being relative to the cost of dvd's. ps3's cost way more than the $700 they sell for (sonys most profitable unit 'was' there gaming division. ) but these things are done because in the long run they are hoping to make the money back. right now both hddvd and bluray camps are giving out there versions of first tastes. selling the disks for what they really costs will hurt the formats during a time where they are trying to build a base of users. im not sure why you are saying bluray costs are more than hddvd is FUD. unless you havent looked and are purely going by the end cost. reputable sources indicate that the newer bluray process is more costly than hddvd (which is just a modified version of the existing dvd process). sony insists that EVENTUALLY things will even out or be better for blu ray as there are some savings inherent in manufactur of bluray disks that will bear fruit once demand goes up.. but that is for the future to tell.

Sharktooth

21st January 2007, 15:28

Exactly. Thanks Trahald.
Another reason is store prices on movies cant be compared since the Content price is higher than the Media price, once re/writeable discs will hit the stores you can compare prices AND only then there will be the real "war"... the price war.

@Morte66: can you provide the same DVD9 size encode at 24fps?

Morte66

21st January 2007, 15:49

@Morte66: can you provide the same DVD9 size encode at 24fps?

Working on it.

As Saggittaire pointed out, the SVT material is not a realistic test of a movie encode -- if a movie contained anything like that, it would be the hardest part. If you encoded an entire movie at DVD9 bitrate (say 7mbps), the SVT-syle data would get more than the average bitrate and the other scenes would get less.

The only way to really test movie encoding is to encode whole movies from raw source. I can't do that because (a) I haven't got a whole movie as raw source and (b) if I had, I couldn't post it because of copyright.

So, here's what I propose to do...

1. Go through my various crf HD movie encodes from relatively good source (h264 TS at 15-20mbps), and pick one that looks about average and came out at average bitrate. Call that "typical movie material".

2. Re-encode the SVT samples spliced onto about 20 minutes from that source, at an overall 7445kbps VBR (the rate I've been using for DVD9).

3. Split the non-copyright SVT stuff off the front of the encode using a muxer, and post it.

I figure that should give a somewhat valid idea of how a very difficult section would come out in a DVD9 HD movie encode.

It's running. ETA about 8 hours...

Trahald

21st January 2007, 17:40

Just going to clarify my last statement (had to run out so i submitted it as-is rather than lose all of that typing). Hddvds are fabricated in a similar process to dvd. so old equipment only needs to be modified to produce hddvds. big up front savings. Bluray creation requires new equipment so there is a large upfront cost . if this cost were put into the price of the discs it would scare people away from bluray so wisely they price competitive to hddvd. since bluray creation process is newer and made with efficiency in mind, the bluray disc association is saying that eventually it will cost less to make a bd disc than a hddvd (or sddvd). that only will come when/if demand goes up. its a gamble since, as we know... better formats have failed before (ex. sony betamax)

reepa

21st January 2007, 20:16

This source is not classical source like movie:
- 40 Mbps
- more than 20 for average quant
- Less than 38.636 dB for OPSNR

It's certainely a very high textured source with high noise level. Movie are never like that. It's simply useless to make comparison with this source ...

This is certainly the best real-life test sequence available. It should actually have better fidelity than most movies, since these sequences were filmed on 65mm instead of 35mm. Elephants Dream lacks real film grain, which is present on all but the few films produced with a 100% digital workflow. If I'm wrong, I'd like to see what a "real" digital film master looks like.

Sagittaire

21st January 2007, 20:42

This is certainly the best real-life test sequence available.

No, real movie are never like that. This source is just like dv or hdv source, really uncompressible in most case. It's generaly really difficult to compress amateur dv source on DVD, for same reason it will be generaly really difficult to compress amateur hdv source on HDDVD/BD.

Elephants Dream lacks real film grain

Well ED use more realistic quantizer interval, certainly really near to those which will use the real movie encodings in most case for HDDVD/BD scenario.

chilledoutuk

22nd January 2007, 01:06

Secondly, doom9 forums (for me at least) has some major slowness problems, keeps giving me "server is busy, please try again later"

Perhaps it does not suffer fools gladly!!

That's a fine opinion, but it's not congruent with reality. Check the actual prices of Blu-ray vrs. HD-DVD in the store, they are not much different. You can argue in theory all you want about the production costs of Blu-Ray vrs HD-DVD, but the proof is in the pudding.

Either you are taking the piss or you have been sniffing the toilet duck as the good man Trahald has explained bluray is being subsidised to make it attractive to customers but in the long run i find it hard to believe that will ever get anywhere near as cheap as hd-dvd.

The sad truth is with new technology's like bluray it normally takes a couple of years before the manufactures have made back the investment on new machinery before the cost of the media starts getting useful for consumers as a medium.

Due to the cheapness of the upgrade and more manufacturers taking on the technology, in comparison to bluray the HD-DVD prices should be able to drop to a price level where it could become a mainstream recordable medium much faster than that of bluray.

R3Z

22nd January 2007, 01:32

With the compression power of these avc codecs (yeah vc1 included), there is no reason why online distribution cant be a serious practicality.

Whether thats streaming (likely) or just download to own.

DarkZell666

22nd January 2007, 09:50

online distribution massave streaming HD content over ADSL ? At a reasonable quality ? No way, and FTTH (or FTTB for that matter -Fiber to the Home & Fiber to the building) has started deployment less than a couple of weeks ago (in France that is ;)). And this is only supposing any webhost is able to stream 10mbps continuously to around 2000 visitors (much more actually, it's just an example figure, which gives a continuous 2GBytes/s ...). No one has this ability right now I believe. When downloading files on typical downloading sites (download.com for example), I rarely go over 300 or 400kB/s ... Internet simply isn't ready for massive HD distribution ... (and I'll add a big fat IMHO to make this my personnal opinion ;)).

Morte66

22nd January 2007, 12:13

As Saggittaire pointed out, the SVT material is not a realistic test of a movie encode -- if a movie contained anything like that, it would be the hardest part. If you encoded an entire
movie at DVD9 bitrate (say 7mbps), the SVT-syle data would get more than the average bitrate and the other scenes would get less.

The only way to really test movie encoding is to encode whole movies from raw source. I can't do that because (a) I haven't got a whole movie as raw source and (b) if I had, I couldn't post it because of copyright.

So, here's what I propose to do...

1. Go through my various crf HD movie encodes from relatively good source (h264 TS at 15-20mbps), and pick one that looks about average and came out at average bitrate. Call that "typical movie material".

2. Re-encode the SVT samples spliced onto about 20 minutes from that source, at an overall 7445kbps VBR (the rate I've been using for DVD9).

3. Split the non-copyright SVT stuff off the front of the encode using a muxer, and post it.

I figure that should give a somewhat valid idea of how a very difficult section would come out in a DVD9 HD movie encode.

And here it is... the five SVT samples inserted as a difficult section in a longer 7445kbps HD DVD encode, then cut out:

http://rapidshare.com/files/12824043/CompositeSVT-001.mkv.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/12825245/CompositeSVT-002.mkv.html

Stats for the whole encode:
x264 [info]: final ratefactor: 20.48
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:45.529 U:54.260 V:55.727 Avg:46.991 Global:44.438 kb/s:7445.96

encoded 26251 frames, 2.28 fps, 7446.73 kb/s

Looks pretty good, but somewhat degrained. And this is still a very tough test, not a lot of real movies would be this hard.

--

Since somebody is bound to ask, here is a 7445kbps HD DVD encode of just the SVT stuff (wholly unrealistic example of normal movie encoding):

http://rapidshare.com/files/12856652/SVT.7445.mp4.html

And here's a high profile unrestricted (not HD DVD compliant) version:

http://rapidshare.com/files/12865489/SVT.7445.unrestricted.mp4.html

--

Right, I think that's enough encoding/uploading for me in this thread.

Jay Bee

22nd January 2007, 15:57

Thx. I'll wait for the only SVT clip since I think it's a better comparision to your other clips. And I don't really understand the whole "not typical film" discussion. Hollywood films aren't the only things that are encoded and released on DVD. Any high motion football or racing footage will already be a lot harder to encode than a typical film so I don't think there is anything wrong with using the SVT sources.

Morte66

22nd January 2007, 17:00

Any high motion football or racing footage will already be a lot harder to encode than a typical film so I don't think there is anything wrong with using the SVT sources.

Well, the thread title does say "HD films"... ;)

But yeah, 1080p sports might be hurting on DVD9.

Jay Bee

22nd January 2007, 18:49

Well, the thread title does say "HD films"... ;)

Point taken. :)

A quick comparision of those roof tiles between 28000kbps, 7445kbps "realistic film" and 7445kbps unrestricted:

http://img6.picsplace.to/img6/25/28000_000.png

http://img6.picsplace.to/img6/25/7445_kbps_realistic.png

http://img6.picsplace.to/img6/25/7445_kbps_unrestricted.png

Again the high bitrate encode has clearly the best detail although CompositeSVT-002.mkv is a lot better than the clip from the last comparision.

So I think we can now quit the "HD-DVD/BR is just for DRM" claims. As can be seen here, disk space can be used very effectively. Anyone agree, disagree?

DarkZell666

22nd January 2007, 19:20

In fact, I believe there's a part of misunderstanding (at least I didn't get the point straight away) :

DVD9 (DVD-/+R DL), HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray are 3 (not 2) different things :) So wether HD-DVD is useful over DVD-9 is obvious: of course (at least for 1080p, since 720p could get away with DVD9, imho), but wether Blu-Ray is very useful over HD-DVD isn't that obvious at all.

I do gather something important here: We've been used to viewing SD content for too long, and HD is relatively (read: completely) a different matter. We now say that it's *ok* to have HD-DVD's for HD content, but maybe in a couple of years we'll think "oh my Blu-Ray wasn't such a bad idea after all". Only future will tell ^^ But it's been pointed out earlier : the thing that matters most is the quality of the encoders the studios will be using. The current Blu-Ray releases (apparently) look like complete crap, even at crazy bitrates ... so I bet those "crappy" encoders will be one of the major reasons pretexts for using Blu-Ray over HD-DVD (for movie releases).

I'd be most interested if some of the people here who actually own a Full HD TV (not an HD-ready one), could comment on the quality of the encodes Morte66 has given here (I mean, playing them on their TV of course ;)). Doing comparisons on 1280*1024 computer screens doesn't make much sense IMHO (I know some of you freaks have kick-ass LCD's but I doubt 1% of them have a native 1080p monitor :/).

Morte66

22nd January 2007, 20:01

Point taken. :)

So I think we can now quit the "HD-DVD/BR is just for DRM" claims. As can be seen here, disk space can be used very effectively. Anyone agree, disagree?

Well, my views have not really changed:

- The noise in the film original creates a false impression of detail. The encodes mostly lose noise, not real detail. But they do lose some real detail.

- x264 is not ideal if you want to retain grain. I don't like grain, if I were encoding this stuff for myself I'd denoise and sharpen it. But some people like grain, and x264+DVD9 will not serve them so well.

- It would be interesting to see what VC-1 does with grain on this material. Ditto grain retention tools for h264.

- Absent grain, the DVD9 movie encodes are very good. You have to take still frames and do direct A/B to find fault. They're good enough for the vast majority of the market, but people who own ten thousand dollar projectors with thousand dollar lamps would get some advantage from bigger files.

- I would rather have DVD9 encodes than pay 500 pounds for a Blu-Ray drive. My DVD-RW drive cost less than the average Blu-Ray disc. If the drives come down to fifty pounds, maybe the quality gain is worth the money.

- Sports are different. High motion 720p/60 is a solid justification for big discs. But I don't buy any sports stuff.

In other words... it depends what you're after.

Morte66

22nd January 2007, 20:20

kick-ass LCD's but I doubt 1% of them have a native 1080p monitor :/).

Apart from the 120 black lines, what's the difference between my 1920x1200 LCD (hardware calibrated for photo proofing) and a "native 1080p monitor"? I can't see why you're drawing a distinction.

DarkZell666

22nd January 2007, 20:55

Apart from the 120 black lines, what's the difference between my 1920x1200 LCD (hardware calibrated for photo proofing) and a "native 1080p monitor"? I can't see why you're drawing a distinction.

There isn't in your case, it's just that most people I know of (which aren't computer g33ks :p) don't have much better than a 1280*1024 CRT, which means that anything that can be displayed on a computer screen gets downsized (and looses detail). The 1080p was misleading indeed, but at least on your screen any true HD content isn't resized, which is where the comparison is the most precise. At work I have a 1600x1200 LCD, which means the picture will get downsized to fit in the 1600px width (and that the whole purpose of HD is rendered useless in my case).

And yet again, does your screen have a physical 1920x1200 dot matrix ? Or is it a 1024x640 dot matrix that fakes a 1920x1200px resolution ? That's what I meant by "native 1080p": a screen that has at least 1920x1080 physical dots. The whole point I'm trying to make is rather concerning the physical display, not the virtual resolution the drivers allow you to chose.