Elephants Dream SD (360p) challenge

[smok3]

i did a quick encode with crf 21, settings and stuff here;
http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php?moviename=movies/ED_huff-x640y352.mp4
(this was cropped to mod16 resolution, the average bitrate comes out as 922 kbps, should be also qt compatible)

if we are not counting the audio part, then this would qualify as 1mbit encode i guess :)

[Inventive Software]

The stereo audio track can be encoded at 64 Kbps with HE-AAC, so it's a viable distribution for 1 Mbit. However, CRF's a bit of a lottery with bitrates. :)

[smok3]

ok, so do we count audio or not? (working on the low bitrate vp6 encode ~ 480 kbps - since i just happen to have a one-click preset for that bitrate), honestly to get anything that is possible to watch at this resolution one would need around 700-800 kbps (without audio) - no i couldn't dl the shakiris x264 encode.

edit: vp6 is giving me 1.5 fps on 2nd pass, so maybe tomorrow..., no it speeded up;
----------------
480
vp6 http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php?moviename=movies/ED_huff-x640y352.flv
x264 http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php?moviename=movies/ED_huff-480kbps-x640y352.mp4 (very sane settings, fast encoding)

500
vp6 http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php?moviename=movies/ED_huff-500kbps-x640y352.flv
x264 http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php?moviename=movies/ED_huff-500kbps-x640y352.mp4 (very sane settings, fast encoding)

edit: premiere cs3 crashed twice (on two different machines) when trying to do 2pass VBR h264 encode, so for me useless..., edit: same happens when trying to get to the h.264 encoder via afterFX, any clues? they don't like huff avi as source for some reason? (what i have is cs3 video bundle, any other, better access to the mc in cs3?)

[benwaggoner]

Speaking of Elephant's Dream, I was going to take a whack at it with Expression Encoder 2, but it looks like no one is seeding the .torrent anymore for the 1080p.

http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-1080-png.torrent

If anyone's got the files and the torrent local, I'd appreciate it if you could start seeding it again for a bit.

[Sagittaire]

http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-1080-png/

[Tagert]

Could also download the 1080p version from the creators' homepage :)
http://orange.blender.org/download

Very fast servers :)

[smok3]

benwaggoner; how about a 360 version first? (you will have plenty less to download as well.)

[benwaggoner]

benwaggoner; how about a 360 version first? (you will have plenty less to download as well.)
I'll do that as well, although there don't appear to be any seeders for that either at the moment.

[smok3]

this
http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-360-png.tar
or
http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-360-png/
also
5 channels of uncompressed audio could be found here (although i have used 2ch version in my tests);
http://media.xiph.org/ED/

[benwaggoner]

this
http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-360-png.tar
or
http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-360-png/
also
5 channels of uncompressed audio could be found here (although i have used 2ch version in my tests);
http://media.xiph.org/ED/
Okay, here's a question that will reveal that I'm a video guy and a former Mac guy.

How the heck do I programatically download a folder of files from a http:// url? On Mac, I would have used curl from the terminal. Filezilla can only use the ftp URL.

[Dark Shikari]

Okay, here's a question that will reveal that I'm a video guy and a former Mac guy.

How the heck do I programatically download a folder of files from a http:// url? On Mac, I would have used curl from the terminal. Filezilla can only use the ftp URL.DownThemAll

[smok3]

wget -r -l 1 -A png http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-360-png/

[benwaggoner]

wget -r -l 1 -A png http://media.xiph.org/ED/ED-360-png/

C:\Users\Ben Waggoner>wget
'wget' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

[smok3]

one place where wget for windows can be found is wackget package, google for wackget.

[Dark Shikari]

C:\Users\Ben Waggoner>wget
'wget' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.That's what you get for not using a modern operating system ;) Even OS X comes with wget these days, I think...

[benwaggoner]

DownThemAll
Ah, perfect! Working like a champ, thanks.

[benwaggoner]

So, remind me where we are after the last year:

Do we have a definitive .avs we're all going to use for this?

Also, for 500 Kbps VBR, is that just video, or video + audio?

Anyone done any CBR tests yet?

[Inventive Software]

I got rid of my lossless PNG source after converting it to RGB Lagarith, mainly because of speed, but also space. I'll do some 1 Mbit CBR encoding with x264, WMV9 AP, and VP7 this weekend.

[benwaggoner]

I got rid of my lossless PNG source after converting it to RGB Lagarith, mainly because of speed, but also space. I'll do some 1 Mbit CBR encoding with x264, WMV9 AP, and VP7 this weekend.
Do you still have your .avs file? It' be good for us all to be using the exact same source pixels. I saw a couple variants being posted around, so I'd like to see a definitiive one.

That said, shouldn't you be using YV12 Lagarith, to avoid doing a potentially tool-specific color space conversion?

[Dark Shikari]

Do you still have your .avs file? It' be good for us all to be using the exact same source pixels. I saw a couple variants being posted around, so I'd like to see a definitiive one.

That said, shouldn't you be using YV12 Lagarith, to avoid doing a potentially tool-specific color space conversion?The original PNGs were RGB, not YV12, so making YV12 Lagarith would involve a colorspace conversion anyways.

[benwaggoner]

The original PNGs were RGB, not YV12, so making YV12 Lagarith would involve a colorspace conversion anyways.
Right, but if we do it in the standard AVISynth script, we'll all get the same color space conversion and don't have to worry about that as a factor in comparing encodes.

[Dark Shikari]

Right, but if we do it in the standard AVISynth script, we'll all get the same color space conversion and don't have to worry about that as a factor in comparing encodes.That's exactly what I'm saying; when you source the Lagarith source, you do a ConvertToYV12 in the avisynth script.

[benwaggoner]

That's exactly what I'm saying; when you source the Lagarith source, you do a ConvertToYV12 in the avisynth script.
But then we have two AVS scripts - one for .png to RGB, and the other for RGB to YV12. Better to have a single script that goes from .png to YV12 and can be used to build a final colorspace intermediate or be used directly as source.

[Dark Shikari]

But then we have two AVS scripts - one for .png to RGB, and the other for RGB to YV12. Better to have a single script that goes from .png to YV12 and can be used to build a final colorspace intermediate or be used directly as source.But the PNGs are RGB, so there is absolutely no conversion involved; the result will be bit-equivalent.

[benwaggoner]

But the PNGs are RGB, so there is absolutely no conversion involved; the result will be bit-equivalent.
I'm mainly worried about having a consistent RGB to YV12 conversion method, using Rec. 601, for example.

[Inventive Software]

ConvertToYV12() is Rec.601 by default, I think.

[smok3]

i have used this to do my intermediate;
this file was 1st converted to huff, using this avisynth:
a=imageSource("r:\ElephantDreams\media.xiph.org\ED\ED-360-png\%05d.png",1,15691,24)
b=wavsource("r:\ElephantDreams\ED-CM-St-16bit.wav")
audiodub(a,b)
crop (0,4,0,-4) # crop height 352

+ converttoyv12() on the next pass.

[smok3]

I'm mainly worried about having a consistent RGB to YV12 conversion method, using Rec. 601, for example.
and i'am a bit worried that we will really never see the wmv version at 500 kbits as it seems, that can't talk in favour of MS encoding workflow(s). I mean, com on, i don't expect much, it will probably be worse than vp6 as well, but at least we are on the clear (and honestly, i'am not trying to be evil here).
edit2: ok, here i'am evil;
http://somestuff.org/netFrameworkError.png

p.s. i also did CBR sorenson and CBR vp6 @ 500 kbps (for video), but they were both unwatchable - using adobe flash cs3 encoder thingy.

edit: that boat sample is pretty good, is there a working torrent for the raw footage or edit?

[benwaggoner]

i have used this to do my intermediate;

+ converttoyv12() on the next pass.
I understand why 352, but do we want to include that as part of the test? The thread's title includes "360p" - seems like we should leave it at source resolution.

[Inventive Software]

Since I lost most of my data on my laptop, I've recovered some, but the big ones that went were several other videos I had, and the lossless Lagarith Elephants Dream source I had. If anybody could either make a Lagarith encode from the PNG files available and torrent it, or seed the 360 PNG torrent available on both the Elephants Dream site and Xiph site, I'd be very grateful. :)