HD 25P for projecting.

[anton_foy]

Hello!

Im making a film in HDV (camera: Sony HDR HC1E) and upconverted to 1920 x 1080 25p with Avisynth and different filters. Very satisfied with the quality of the footage though after adding filmgrain it may be hard to get an acceptable quality after compression? After the upconversion I output to Avid's DNxHD (1080 25p 10-bit) and the grain are intact and holds a very good quality all-over.

But the question is: would H 2.64 be the way to encode the DNxHD to or has anyone got another solution? This will be displayed by a Sony full 1920x1080P projector and I want the film to play smoothly yet have the best quality retained.

Thank you in advance :)

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well, if you want 1080p to play smoothly, make sure you have a strong CPU decoding :) H.264 should look very nice at high data rates. I would shoot for 8-12MBps, using very high quality settings - ie low deblocker, high detail matrix, lots of RDO, trellis, ME, etc...

If you're really worried about preserving max quality and don't care about space, then MPEG-2 at ~30-40MBps will preserve every little detail.

A happy medium would be MPEG-4 ASP at high bitrates - like over 10-12 Mbps. ASP tends to keep grainy stuff intact more than AVC. x264 can smear grain if not pre-filtered or tweaked correctly.

Sounds like a nice project - be proud :) Shooting a whole film in HD is a pretty serious undertaking!

~MiSfit

[anton_foy]

@Blue_MiSfit

Thank you for your reply and very kind words, really appreciated! :)

Hmm Mpeg-2 you say? Would that be a better alternative to H.264 AVC or ASP? And would it need more CPU power with Mpeg-2?

[scharfis_brain]

MPEG2 1080p25 is mostly playable with machines starting at 1.4 GHz. MPEG4 needs far more CPU power!

My five years old Athlon XP 1600+ with DDR memory allows me to play back 1080i60 MPEG2 at full field rate without any stutters. But with MPEG4 stuff I am in big trouble.

[Turtleggjp]

My five years old Athlon XP 1600+ with DDR memory allows me to play back 1080i60 MPEG2 at full field rate without any stutters. But with MPEG4 stuff I am in big trouble.

What player and video card are you using? I would think that wouldn't be possible without acceleration from a video card (cards that can do that are quite common though). If I use PowerDVD 6 without acceleration, my Athlon64 3500+ would choke on 1080i de-interlaced to full field rate. Even without de-interlacing it was still challenging for it. I've seen cards as low as a Radeon 9250 able to accelerate 1080i content though. Still waiting for a similar solution for H.264 content (as are a lot of people I bet).

Matt

[scharfis_brain]

My Hardware:
CPU: Athlon XP 1600+ (266 FSB)
Board: ASUS A7N8X-XE (it replaced the former slow A7V 266E)
RAM: 1.5 GB (DDR400 CL3 running at 266 CL2)
GPU: Geforce 2 GTS/PRO 64 MB

My playback software:
Media Player classic
Dscaler5 MPEG2 Decoder (set to automatic weave/bob)
AC3Filter

so you can see its is PURELY a software based decoding chain without any hardware MPEG2 decoding support.

this configuration plays back MPEG2 1080i60 streams without jerkyness.
(Ensure to set your monitors refresh rate to a multiple of the field rate!)

[Pookie]

There aren't many free Mpeg2 encoders which can do 1920x1080 resolution. The only one I can think of is ffmpeg. Tmpgenc might be able to. HC will be able to eventually, but not yet.

[scharfis_brain]

procoder 2 isn't free. But it can encode 1920x1080 MPEG2 with very good quality.

[anton_foy]

Thanks for all the answers everyone!

But if I get this right, the Mpeg-2 will take more space but gain better quality than the h2.64?
I have already deinterlaced all footage so no extra filters during playback are required.

Edit: looks as if procoder 2 will only encode to 1080i HDV?

[scharfis_brain]

it encodes all standards.
24p, 25p, 30p, 50i, 60i, 50p, and 60p

[Turtleggjp]

There aren't many free Mpeg2 encoders which can do 1920x1080 resolution.

I have an old free version of TMPEGEnc (prior to it turning commercial) that can at least do 1920x1080i. I once stacked enough of my video camera footage together to make 1080i, and TMPEGEnc was able to encode it. This older version has lots of high end encoder options, including High Profile, and can even do 4:2:2, though I've never been able to test these files since I don't know of anything that can play them!

[anton_foy]

Cool! Procoder 2.0 seems to be the solution. It can handle all Quicktime codecs (in my case DNxHD) and hopefully convert it into Mpeg-2. But one more question remains. The film will be in parts since I cannot render all in one file so is it possible to join all the DNxHD clips into one whole Mpeg-2 stream? And even add the sound seperately?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Why can't you render all in one file? Are you planning on encoding pieces of the movie so that you have many smaller MPEG-2 clips, and then merging them together, and finally muxing the audio? It SHOULD work, but you SHOULD be able to do it all at once too :)

Also, how did you deinterlace the video? It might be a better idea to leave it interlaced, and bob on playback with the monitor set to 60hz or an even multiple thereof. Or maybe deinterlace beforehand with the lovely MVBob / MCBob.

~MiSfit

[anton_foy]

Well I have already rendered parts of the film in the DNxHD-format and will not be able to render all in one file. Yes some parts are deinterlaced with Tdeint+eedi2(mostly) and some with MVbob and MCbob. Since there are so many filters in my script I cannot use MVbob or MCbob as much as I want to (gets a tad sloooooow).;) And I cannot keep it interlaced because I have made so many adjustments to the image that the lines would be all screwed up. Thought it was better to eliminate so many things as possible to prevent a choppy playback.

[binba]

Umm you said it was 25p, so why interlacing?

[remainz]

Anton Please keep us posted as to what you do!!!!!!
What codec you eventually chose and how it looks/ plays etc.

I am in exatly the same postion with a 1920 1080 25p projection at the London IMAX in march.

I am thinking H246.
But need to have 5.1 sound included. So am still not sure of angle.

Can someone tell me if 1080p is square pixel?

remainz

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yes remainz, it is square pixel. H.264 with dolby digital is a great combination. If you have tons of space and want to maximize quality, you could use MPEG-2 at like 40Mbps, and uncompressed 5.1 PCM :)

~MiSfit

[remainz]

thanks Blue
I can see problems of not being able to export from After Effects or premiere in the larger MPEG2 format. Also there is no option to export H264 + ac3(DD).

I would have to make an uncompressed version to then export from another encoder. That would mean 100GB+ files. Not something I'm comfortable with but possible.

Does anyone know if there is an H264+ac3/HD size -MPEG2 encoder will plug into AE or Premiere?

thanks again
Remainz

[binba]

Frameserve.

E.g. the free DebugMode FrameServer (http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/) lets you "link" most NLEs (including PPro) to any program that can open AVI files. I'm using it to export an HDV feature film from PPro2 to TMPGEnc, and if there's a weak link in this chain, it's Premiere.

Not sure about H.264 encoders, though.

[remainz]

thats very interesting thanks binda

[anton_foy]

@Binba

The raw footage is in HDV 1080i and then deinterlaced to 25P.

[Blue_MiSfit]

I've never been able to get debugmode working correctly with premiere. YMMV...

I think a good solution would be to export in huffyuv from After Effects / Premiere, and then avisynth's avisource command to feed x264.exe