MeGUI x264 presets.

[Sharktooth]

defence? no one "attacked" you ... infact you didnt say anything wrong.

[Atak_Snajpera]

false. you have to use them to be sure all BD players can play your encodings (and not only PS3s) and all authoring softwares accept your encoded streams... PS3 is NOT a blu-ray player. it's a console that can play blu-rays... and does not strictly follows/enforces the bd specs.
false. I had user who tested custom made blu-rays with default keyint values in store. Only one "ancient" blu-ray player didn't play at all (old Sony:). I doubt it was caused by keyint value. I suppose it didn't like movies recorded on DVD-R.

[Sharktooth]

if players do not enforce the specs it doesnt mean megui have to produce non compliant streams. also softwares check for that settings and with higher keyints they will reject the streams. so, im sorry, but i wont change the presets to produce uncompliant streams regardless of what players play them or not.
btw, what i said is not false.

[nurbs]

defence? no one "attacked" you ... infact you didnt say anything wrong.

I know. I meant figuratively. English is a foreign language to me and the only place I actively use it is this forum so sometimes things come out wrong.

[djesteban]

Guys, should I use the bitrate calculator with these preset... I noticed it changes the default bitrate in the presets when I use the bitrate calculator. Just want to make sure if I only have to use the preset alone or combined with the bitrate calculator
:)

[Sharc]

Is there a BD (player) compliant 1-pass crf profile? Or is there a basic problem or risk with bitrate/buffer control (VBV buffer size, VBV Max Bitrate)? I am using
--crf 18 --keyint 24 --min-keyint 2 --ref 3 --bframes 3 --direct auto --filter -2:-1 --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --ipratio 1.2 --pbratio 1.1 --threads auto --progress --sar 16:11 --no-psnr --no-ssim

[florinandrei]

if players do not enforce the specs it doesnt mean megui have to produce non compliant streams. also softwares check for that settings and with higher keyints they will reject the streams. so, im sorry, but i wont change the presets to produce uncompliant streams regardless of what players play them or not.

Excellent! We need at least one "reference" encoder to uphold the standards. Keep up the good work, Sharktooth. :thanks:
Of course, if anyone wants to make their own fancy combination of settings, they should be allowed to do so. Looks like MeGUI does that too, so no worries.

Two questions:

1. When encoding with the standalone AVCHD or Blu-Ray profiles, are the resulting videos DXVA-compliant? In other words, are the AVCHD and Blu-Ray profiles subsets of DXVA?

2. To remain 100% standards-compliant, if I burn the movie to DVD-9, I must encode using the AVCHD profile, is that right? (Blu-Ray is supposed to be written on BD media, not DVD)

[Sharktooth]

Is there a BD (player) compliant 1-pass crf profile? Or is there a basic problem or risk with bitrate/buffer control (VBV buffer size, VBV Max Bitrate)? I am using
--crf 18 --keyint 24 --min-keyint 2 --ref 3 --bframes 3 --direct auto --filter -2:-1 --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --ipratio 1.2 --pbratio 1.1 --threads auto --progress --sar 16:11 --no-psnr --no-ssim
1 pass (both ABR and CRF) VBV is not guaranteed to work as expected. keep 2 passes for VBV restricted encodes.

@florinandrei: 1 - blu-rays can be played back on DXVA hardware, so DXVA can be considered a sort of superset of BD specs.
2 - yes.

[djesteban]

guys... aynone know if I should use the bitrate calculator in conjunction with these presets. I notice that if I don't use the bitrate calc, and leave the bitrate to the default 1000 (for HD anime toon), x264.exe crashes at one point.
Thanks in advance

[Octo-puss]

You don't need to I'd say, but not setting any manually is not a good thing either...

[Sharktooth]

what x264 revision are you using? if it crashes it's not coz youd didnt set a different bitrate from the default...

[djesteban]

Sharktooth... i'm using rev. 956. If I let the preset to 1000, then it crashes, if I use the bitrate calculator or set a higher bitrate manually, then the job finishes alright.
My source is a h264 file ripped from one of my anime Blu Ray (using anyDVD and it plays fine, it is not a ripping problem). Do you personally keep the default bitrate or do you adjust the bitrate with the calculator... or even, just manually?
I'm running Vista64 also... dunno if that could be a problem

[Sharktooth]

what version of megui are you using since from some versions the bitrate calculator doesnt automatically set the bitrate.
i usually use the autoencode feature...

[~bT~]

^ does the latest version set the bitrate?

[Sharktooth]

it asks you if you want to do it.

[djesteban]

I'm using meGUI v0.3.0.2005... latest version at the moment of this post. So does that mean using the bitrate calculator is useless? That it won't influence my encode? It is weird though that the software will crash on encode if I don't change the bitrate to >1000.
Sharktooth, also I noticed that if I change the bitrate to 18125 in the config option using 2pass anime_toons I get a file of 4,232,978 KB in size... if I double this bitrate (to 36250), then I get a file of 4,239,162 KB in size. Is it normal that the difference in size is so small if I double the bitrate!?!?! Or is there something I'm doing wrong?
Also, in the bitrate calculator it gives me the option to choose a specific size (like DVD9 for example) and it will supposedly adjust the bitrate so it fits this particular size. Well, if I choose DVD9 as a size, I'm still getting a final output of about 4GB.
Personally, I would want a file that's between 7 to 10 GB in size and obviously have the extra quality that would go with the increased file size. Now, the 4GB files that I was talking about above are of surprisingly good quality for a 1080p resolution. I've only noticed two place where it's dark that it is not as good as in the original. I am guessing that pumping the quality a little bit would fix (or almost) those areas.

Any help on how to set my MeGUI would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[Avenger007]

:logfile:

[Sharktooth]

i mean, megui will ask you if you want to copy the calculated bitrate in the profile settings. if you answer Yes, it will do it, but it's not automatic...
also... without giving other informations i cant tell you anything.
however i cant see how x264 crashes if bitrate is 1000... i also tried it and works here. so there should be definatly some problems with your system.

[Frank_UK]

I have just had to reinstall megui because of a problem with the new version.
There is no longer the x264 CE high profile
I always used this profile, is it possible to download this profile from somewhere?

[Sharktooth]

it doesnt exists anymore. presets were updated and improved. read the first post.

[Frank_UK]

Thanks for the reply.
I tried using x264 unrestricted 2 pass HQ as a replacement.
The encoding took more than twice as long as CE high profile, and I think the output video is worse quality.
I was really pleased with the quality of the x264 CE high profile.
What profile should I use as a direct replacement to the x264 CE high profile?

[Sharktooth]

Use the balanced preset. HQ is slow coz it's HQ... and no... it cant be worse than CE-Highprofile...
as a rule of thumb (it depends on the settings though...), the more it takes to encode the better will be the result... so if Unrestricted 2 pass HQ took much more time it will be better or at very least equal...

[Sharktooth]

Presets updated: V68.

[Rumbah]

I think the PSP profile got messed up in the latest release (V68).
CABAC is disabled as are B-frames although the PSP is capable of CABAC and even 3 B-frames.

[Sharktooth]

ooops...
Presets updated: V69.

[Sharktooth]

Presets updated: V70

[qt4eva]

Skarktooth, quick question.
Well I don't know what profile to choose for my encoding so I chose DXVA-SD-Insane since am encoding an SD source. My question,1) if I burn this out to a dvd-5, will it play on a blu-ray player? 2)if this does not play on blu-ray player, can I reencode or do something to it to make it play on blu-ray without loosing anymore quality?
Thanks
Note: If you plan to ask me what blu-ray player I have, my answer is I do not have one yet and planning to buy the Sony S350 real soon.

[Sharktooth]

no. to play it on a blu-ray player you have to create blu-ray compatible structures. in your case is like burning a divx on a CD and pretending your DVD player (not divx) will play it.
as i said, you have to create blu-ray compatible structures, :search:.

[Kurtnoise]

Heya,

what's the current status for VBV size with DXVA presets ? Doesn't seem to be too high ?

see this (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2092927&group_id=156112&atid=798476).

[Sharktooth]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Levels
there it says 17500. i can change it to 14000 though... i doubt anyone will use such an high bitrate for SD...

[Kurtnoise]

ok...no problem for me.

[Sharktooth]

uhm. i fixed the avclevels.cs in megui using the info found on wikipedia and the JVT-G050r1.
i couldnt find the correct buffer sizes for high profile though.
im also asking in #x264dev for an explanation of the warning.
17500 seems to be the correct value for high profile. i think x264 is enforcing baseline max bitrates even if --8x8dct is specified in the commandline (which means the encode will be high profile).

[smackbadger]

Just a couple of quick editing suggestions for the first post:
I think this sentence: "The maxspeed profile uses constant quality and minimum settings." belongs in the paragraph under the Unrestricted profiles, not the DXVA profiles.
You can remove this text ", probably the Xbox presets will be moved under the SA group." from the paragraph under the Device group, since you did move the Xbox presets under the Standalone group.

Also, I'm just curious why the AppleTV is in the Device group, not the Standalone one?

Thanks for the great profiles!

-John

[Sharktooth]

thanks for you suggestions, changes done... except changing the apple tv group. i will do it along with the next presets update ;)

@kurtnoise and all: i've implemented the correct maxbitrate and buffer values in megui (next version). x264 validate_levels hasnt any differentiation between high profile and baseline/main so it will throw warnings if the specified values do not match with the baseline level. luckily they're just warnings... coz high profile has higher values, so specifying the correct values for max bitrate and buffers will still work as expected.

[Sharktooth]

Presets updated: V71

[Kougar]

Hi, thanks for all this profiles ^^

In the bluray standalone, how to remove the buffering ? I've remove the time buffer but i've always it :/

[Sharktooth]

it's not time buffering... the VBV buffer is another thing and if you remove it you cant specify a max bitrate...that will produce a non blu-ray compliant stream.

[Sharktooth]

Presets updated: V72

[JarrettH]

thanks for detailing the changes cause I just update the ones I use and delete the ones I don't

[Kougar]

What i can do for remove the buffering in MPC so please ?

[Sharktooth]

i dont know what you mean with buffering but if you're referring at the initial delay before playback thats not due to buffering and you cant remove it (if it was buffering then it would be 1 second since blu-ray buffer duration is 1 second at max...)
it's just the time needed to create the directshow chain... if it takes too long then your system is screwed (probably by codec packs)...
anyways this has nothing to do with megui presets.

[Kougar]

Exellent, thanks again ^^

[Seraphic-]

Sharktooth, is the Unrestricted 2pass Insane preset maybe too "Insane"? I'm running a Q9450, 4GB DDR2-1066 and at 720x480p have 2.75FPS (don't even ask about 1280x720p :eek:).
I have a higher end system (1.7TB raid0 - Crossfire 3870s) and the insane profile just seems too insane, lol.

Unrestricted 2pass HQ has much less encoding times at the same bit-rate.
Let me ask though, is letting an Unrestricted 2pass Insane encode complete worth the extra time?
How much of a quality gain would I be looking at?

[Sharktooth]

well... not much, but there is indeed a difference. btw, the Insane preset is for the insane ppl... ;)
i will probably add a semi-insane preset... for semi-insane ppl ;)

[Seraphic-]

well... not much, but there is indeed a difference. btw, the Insane preset is for the insane ppl... ;)
i will probably add a semi-insane preset... for semi-insane ppl ;)

Does encoding at non mod16 negate the benefits?

[Sharktooth]

no...

[Seraphic-]

no...

Would like to encode with mod16, but after cropping to visible pixels, it seems all my console videos always end up like 2 to 4 pixels short. :p

[Sharktooth]

i usually crop till i remove the black bars. if the res is mod 16 i proceed encoding, if not, i resize to the nearest mod16 res.

[Seraphic-]

i usually crop till i remove the black bars. if the res is mod 16 i proceed encoding, if not, i resize to the nearest mod16 res.

But doesn't that "damage" the overall pixels? My thought process was to keep the original pixels you are giving during the capture and not to distort them by resizing.

Thought about adding borders to mod16, but seems counter productive when you are cropping them to give visible pixels.

Also, would this be a good semi-insane? (not that I know much about these settings)
program --pass 2 --bitrate 7500 --stats ".stats" --ref 12 --mixed-refs --bframes 12 --b-pyramid --b-rdo
--bime --weightb --direct auto --filter -1,-1 --subme 6 --trellis 2 --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct
--me umh --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input"

[Sharktooth]

2-8 pixels are not a real distortion if you use a good resizer...
however, swap subme 6 with subme 7 and we're almost there...