x264 Revision 1000 Party!

[Dark Shikari]

I told you there would be cake (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=41). Here is its story.

A few weeks ago, we realized that revision 1000 of x264 was coming up, and it was going to be big. I mean, 1000 revisions of x264? That's about 5 years of development from the thin shell that was the original x264 in 2003. I had already prepared many commits for the actual thousandth revision (in the end, a total of seventeen were simultaneously committed, the list can be found here (http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=summary)). But such a milestone was certainly worthy of more than just a flood of commits--it needed a party. And there's one thing you pretty much have to have for a party. So, we got a cake:

http://i36.tinypic.com/5zjgnb.jpg

But where would we have the party? And how would we get many people to come? I mean, x264 users are spread far and wide, and I don't even live anywhere near Akupenguin, the other primary x264 developer. So we considered various locations. And we decided that... what better place to have the party than...

... DivX headquarters?

http://i34.tinypic.com/wranw9.jpg

I mean, considering Project Remoulade (DivX's beta H.264 decoder and encoder), DivX's buyout of Mainconcept, and their recently announced plans to enter the H.264 market with their "DivX 7", what a perfect place to have a party!

We first entered with the cake not hinting at who we were; the opening of the cake with the x264 logo was covered with some papers and a CD-ROM. But our identity was soon revealed (to the utter shock of the DivX folks out front), so we took some quick group pictures (me and some of the DivX guys) before the cake was devoured by ravenous DivX employees. I'm on the right of the image, in my Avail Media T-shirt.

http://i38.tinypic.com/23jh91z.jpg

Now, interestingly enough, today was also DivX's Halloween party.

http://i38.tinypic.com/xkq1rb.jpg

And the creative geeky costumes were out in force.

http://i38.tinypic.com/e7l6s4.jpg

As were the pumpkins.

http://i38.tinypic.com/2ihp0t5.jpg

We were introduced to the party right in the middle; certainly, nobody had expected us. Upon the mention of x264, the room broke out in cheering, and I introduced myself and the cake.

While its hard to see, the cake originally read "Congratulations on Project Remoulade", with the x264 logo in the middle. It was devoured rather quickly by the DivX staff (after being cut up into macroblocks, of course) and the various others who had showed up for the Halloween party.

http://i37.tinypic.com/1z589aw.jpg

After some fun partying and discussion with various people at DivX, we were led on a short tour of some of the facilities. I also presented the cards, including one from Guillaume Poirier, who, being an x264 developer in France, was not able to attend the party.

http://i35.tinypic.com/m8icua.jpg

I also got to discuss the upcoming DivX 7 profiles and their various restrictions--while they're still not official or released yet, hopefully this will lead to more communication in the future! Though I only had about two or three hours there total, it was an incredibly fun and surprisingly productive experience (and, quite tasty, one might say).

Thanks to the guys at DivX for a great party and good discussion on various video topics--along with the showing of their hilariously creative costumes (including John McCain, a Rick Astley imitation, the above Tetris group, and many others). Despite the surprise of an x264 developer turning up on their doorstep on Halloween (and without a costume, too!), they were extremely receptive. And the cake was delicious!

(Oh, and you ask who was the "we"? A certain will-not-be-named former DivX employee was kind enough to drive me down from Los Angeles to DivX's headquarters in San Diego, but requested he not be named in this post for certain reasons. ;) Thanks also to him for paying for the cake and various other logistical aspects of this. )

[microchip8]

Seems like you had a lot of fun there, Darky :p

Damn, why do I have to live in crappy Europe lol

[St Devious]

Wow, never knew this could go like this !

I always thought Divx was your competitor and never thought they would receive you like this ! Awesome !

[Dark Shikari]

Wow, never knew this could go like this !

I always thought Divx was your competitor and never thought they would receive you like this ! Awesome !Friendly competition is good competition ;)

[Blue_MiSfit]

:D So the cake wasn't a lie after all??

Huge success.

Now, how about making a 1.0 release? ;)

~MiSfit

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Congratulations and good luck for the next 1000 revisions :)

BTW: Nice group photo :D

[DigitAl56K]

x264 team is welcome any time! Just let us know when you're coming.. hehe ;)

Group photo left to right: Gej (the Gej), Patrice (SVP, Product), myself, SeaBass (Consumer Marketing), and of course Dark Shikari himself. We were also lucky enough to find seats alongside Markus (our CTO from MainConcept) and Kevin (CEO) during our party, so everything turned out great! Unfortunately Sparky was out sick today and our codec lead just flew out of the country, but maybe next time ;) Thanks to our unnamed friend for driving DS and hanging around for a while - was good to see you!

Congrats to the x264 team for r1000, and thanks for the cake & cards!

DS: do you mind if I repost the picture on DivX Labs? BTW you can find a nicer pic of the Tetris team (who are actually the people behind DivX Labs and areas of DivX.com!) over at the DivX Labs homepage (http://labs.divx.com/).

[Dark Shikari]

x264 team is welcome any time! Just let us know when you're coming.. hehe ;)

Group photo left to right: Gej (the Gej), Patrice (SVP, Product), myself, SeaBass (Consumer Marketing), and of course Dark Shikari himself. We were also lucky enough to find seats alongside Markus (our CTO from MainConcept) and Kevin (CEO) during our party, so everything turned out great! Unfortunately Sparky was out sick today and our codec lead just flew out of the country, but maybe next time ;) Thanks to our unnamed friend for driving DS and hanging around for a while - was good to see you!

Congrats to the x264 team for r1000, and thanks for the cake & cards!Welcome! Indeed, it was great fun.
DS: do you mind if I repost the picture on DivX Labs?Of course not, and if you want, I have all the other pictures I can upload too (and in higher res).

[cogman]

Lol, thats just awesome. Who would have guessed that the x264 team would crash a DivX Halloween party. :). Its good to see competition being as friendly as it is.

[kosmonaut]

It was great to meet you Dark Shikari! I wasn't able to stick around and talk as much as I would have liked, but you are welcome any time. But I swear, we don't dress up like that everyday. ;)

[Snowknight26]

A pedobear pumpkin? How awesome!

But yes, congratulations to all contributors that helped x264 reach its r1000 milestone!

[Sagekilla]

Congrats to all x264 developers on hitting 1000 changes: Each one on it's own helps a bit, but the sum of the pieces make for one damn amazing encoder :)

Thanks for the last thousand I look forward (and maybe even get to help eventually) to the next thousand revisions.

[Sharktooth]

holy 5#!7 !!!
congrats to both divx and x264 devs!
however i see no chickz there... that's bad... definatly bad... ;)

[Adub]

We are one of two minds there, Sharktooth.

[zeeman_88]

congratulation!!! keep up the good works guys...

[crypto]

Congrats to both teams, this is awesome!!!

@Snowknight26
I also LOLed

[techouse]

Congratulations to the x264 team for r1000 and to the DivX team for throwing such a nice party. :)

P.S.: Pedobear pumpkin FTW! :D :D :D :D

[AntiJw]

Congrats to both teams!
A not-so-scary, but very funny Pedobear-pumpkin :D

EDIT: And thanks so much for x264!

[Tagert]

Congratulations and it was nice seeing the friendly reception by the divx guys :D

[Inventive Software]

You weren't kidding about the cake after all! :p

Congratulations on r1000 (+16). :)

I LOL'd at the paedobear pumpkin. Does that make me a bad person? :D

[ankurs]

u deserve it for the wonderful and WITHOUT doubt most VERSITILE and COMPLETE codec out there ! cheers !

and yeah thank you for all your hard work :)

[ash925]

Congratulations to all the devs of x264 and thanks for an excellent software.

[vmrsss]

congrats and 1000 thanks from me too!

[buzzqw]

a big :thanks: to All Developers and supporter!

BHH

[RadicalEd]

(in the end, a total of seventeen were simultaneously committed, the list can be found here (http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=summary)).
And here I thought my RSS reader had gone out of whack. Congratulations, guys! Look forward to a sweet new Mac GUI soon.

[Comatose]

That's awesome! I had a smile on my face reading this XD Congrats!

and lol Inventive Software, the pedobear pumpkin also got me :p

[laserfan]

...I'm on the right of the image, in my Avail Media T-shirt.

http://i38.tinypic.com/23jh91z.jpg

Group photo left to right: Gej (the Gej), Patrice (SVP, Product), myself, SeaBass (Consumer Marketing), and of course Dark Shikari himself.

...however i see no chickz there...
Which is surprising cuz it appears you geeks are a helluva lot better-looking than I imagined. Maybe TOO good-looking? ;) :p :eek:

Congratulations to all on an amazing encoder.

[unskinnyboy]

Congrats on the 1000th revision and glad to see that party crashers get treated well at the DivX HQ. :)

[bob0r]

Nice post, unexpected indeed :D
May the awesome become even more awesomer! :cool:

[Avenger007]

07-07-07: 664: Loren "pengvado" Merritt fixed his hair
They've come a long way. Quite impressive considering it's free and open source. :)
Looking forward to the new x264 website and a new fully comprehensive encoder comparison. :cool:
:thanks:

[Lantis]

I'm truly impressed by the incursion into DivX headquarters. Someone should have taken photos of the shocked people in the front too.

[falcon2000eg]

Congratulations to the x264 team for r1000 and to the DivX team for their good spirit.it was a a very nice idea .:thanks:

[Doom9]

Looks like a fun party :)
Congratulations from me, too and thanks for choosing this place to be the home forum for x264 - we're happy to have you.

[bond]

1000 is just the beginning! ;)

congrats and :thanks:

[JEEB]

Congrats from here as well.

Friendly competition is really nicer to see than the usual stuff to be seen on the software field :) . I hope the development of x264 shall flow on for at least another thousand or so revisions. You've changed my thoughts on limits of encoding completely and I thank everyone connected with its development.

Also, I think my mental image of D_S has been somewhat broken, but not in a bad way. I think I'll get some beer and make another encode with the newer revision.

[AVmaniac]

Congrats from Germany for your 1k revision!

I really love the results of your work.

x264 devs are the BEST !!!!

Keep up the fantastic work !!!
:thanks:

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Also, I think my mental image of D_S has been somewhat broken, but not in a bad way.

Can't compete against Sharktooth though :D

http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/temp/P07-23-05_20.15.jpg

[burfadel]

Just something else to celebrate (kind of??):

Full sub8x8 RD mode decision
Small speed penalty with p4x4 enabled, but significant quality gain at subme >= 6

Its unfortunate that the majority of people have disabled the p4x4 partitions, since they thought they weren't beneficial quality wise. I'm guessing this means it should be recommended now to leave all the partitions enabled?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

It also says:

As before, gain is proportional to the amount of p4x4 actually useful in a given input at the given bitrate.

So if it wasn't useful for a certain bitrate/source before, it won't be now. Right?

[Dark Shikari]

It also says:

...

So if it wasn't useful for a certain bitrate/source before, it won't be now. Right?Yes. Its not going to magically make it useful when it wasn't--it just makes it more useful when it is.

Can't compete against Sharktooth though :D

http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/temp/P07-23-05_20.15.jpgThat's some seriously awesome hair.

[LordRPI]

Look forward to a sweet new Mac GUI soon.

Yeah, me too :devil:

[gav1577]

Congrats to the x264 team your work is much appreciated :D

[JEEB]

Can't compete against Sharktooth though :D

http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/temp/P07-23-05_20.15.jpg
That's some seriously awesome hair.
Agreed on both instances. That is awesome. But they are in a different league though :) .

[K0zi]

Congratulations and thanks for the hard work!!
:thanks:

[Avenger007]

21000+ views and this thread isn't even a day old! :eek:
Mods, be prepared for spammers. :scared:

[burfadel]

Oops! forgot in my last post to congratulate about 1000 builds! Keep up the great work, its much appreciated by a lot (understatement of the year) of people!

[Dark Shikari]

21000+ views and this thread isn't even a day old! :eek:
Mods, be prepared for spammers. :scared:Its linked on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7an0o/x264_developers_deliver_cake_to_divx_headquarters/) ;)

[Avenger007]

I knew it was externally linked on several sites, but I didn't know which was the main one. :p

[dukey]

thanks for a great encoder :)
Now all we need is an awesome open source decoder :D

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

Congrats on r1000 and many thanks for every revision that was commited :D!

[chainring]

Wow! Congrats on the 1000th revision of x264. It has come such a long way, and following the progress has been truly exciting to see the improvements made. DS, you're a huge credit to the team and huge props to all other contributors. Of course, huge props to, what I consider to be, the father of x264.

[jeffy]

Just all the best to all the people involved in this little gem :)

[Lele-brz]

Thank everyone for this great piece of software and the help given in this forum all the time.

[DeathTheSheep]

This is awesome and well-deserved. I wish I could have been at the party though... :(

Congratulations all, and may we all reach even more milestones! :)

[audyovydeo]

Now all we need is an awesome open source decoder :D

Granted, CoreAVC isn't open source, but with sinking value of the U$Dollar, it's de facto freeware ... ;-)


re: x264 :
0.65.1016 ............ 1.0.016 ????

I'm not the only one here apparently who was somehow expecting a more radical version change on this occasion.


cheers
a/v

[Shinigami-Sama]

Can't compete against Sharktooth though :D

http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/temp/P07-23-05_20.15.jpg

no...
thats exactly how I pictured him, only with more stubble

also lol at the insane view count
its always nice to see that :D

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Final some cake for me too. Haha :D

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4016/cakeue6.png

[Gabriel_Bouvigne]

Gej seems to find the x264 cake idea quite funny on the pic.

[CruNcher]

Congratulation for the 1000th release to all the Devs and Users involved over the years on x264 :)

[RaW]

Congratulations and biggest thanks for all what you done!!! Good Luck!!!

[parsifal]

Congrats for 1K revisions, guys! The reception you got by the DivX colleagues was also something quite refreshing to read about! My respects to them, too!

[UsedUser]

Congrats, and thanks for all the hard work, guys. Serious kickassed-ness

Full sub8x8 RD mode decision
Small speed penalty with p4x4 enabled, but significant quality gain at subme >= 6
...
I'm guessing this means it should be recommended now to leave all the partitions enabled?
Not if you want hardware support. I forget if its DXVA, PS3, PSP, or where the requirement originated, but p4x4 is disabled for compatibility.

[Dark Shikari]

Congrats, and thanks for all the hard work, guys. Serious kickassed-ness


Not if you want hardware support. I forget if its DXVA, PS3, PSP, or where the requirement originated, but p4x4 is disabled for compatibility.I have yet to find a single device that has any issues with p4x4.

[Atak_Snajpera]

http://i36.tinypic.com/5zjgnb.jpg

Good to see that somebody used one of my re-made logos :) BTW When we will see new website?

I have yet to find a single device that has any issues with p4x4.
p4x4 can be enabled. I haven't had any problems on PS3 or other blu-ray player. DXVA works as well.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Hope that cake didn't taste like fish, as the logo indicates :D

[Atak_Snajpera]

Hope that cake didn't taste like fish, as the logo indicates
I see no fish :) Maybe after few beers my imagination will improve :)

[Adub]

Maybe this will help.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d125/Merlin7777/5zjgnb.gif

[gizzin]

Dark, that picture of you makes me wanna punch you :). Also you shoulda came in with a divx sucks, x264 rules cake. And threw water ballons at them or pieces of pie at them. Cut it up in front of them, and then start throwing it at them.

[TL0]

Not if you want hardware support. I forget if its DXVA, PS3, PSP, or where the requirement originated, but p4x4 is disabled for compatibility.

Is this topic why p4x4 is disabled by default?

In a previous post in a thread somewhere, it was mentioned by akupenguin that x264 doesn't produce level compliant streams for level >3 if the p4x4 macroblock analysis is set.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125734

[juGGaKNot]

Congratulations on r1000 and GL in the future.

[~bT~]

Congrats guys!

Thanks for the huge improvements and looking forward to more in the near future!

PS. Hope you guys haven't been offered contracts with DivX :p

[Sagekilla]

@TL0: You don't need to even worry since 99% of the time you won't need p4x4. It's disabled in the CLI's partitions by default because the speed vs compression gain is so tiny, since it's rarely used. Even in sequences where I had an absurdly huge number of small scale movements going on, it was rarely used.

[G_M_C]

Full sub8x8 RD mode decision
Small speed penalty with p4x4 enabled, but significant quality gain at subme >= 6

Its unfortunate that the majority of people have disabled the p4x4 partitions, since they thought they weren't beneficial quality wise. I'm guessing this means it should be recommended now to leave all the partitions enabled?


[...]
Not if you want hardware support. I forget if its DXVA, PS3, PSP, or where the requirement originated, but p4x4 is disabled for compatibility.

I have yet to find a single device that has any issues with p4x4.

@ DS:
I want to come back onto this subject. I'm recently encoding a lot of blu-rays (or compatible BD9's), and so i got interested in this subject. Better quality is allways good.

But when you say that you haven't found a device that has issues with P4x4, what do you mean? Cause "not having found a device that has issues with P4x4", isn't the same as "P4x4 is usable according to Blu-ray standards".

So i want to ask this: Are you shure that P4x4 is compatible with hardware (in other words: Is it compatible with Blu-ray standards) ?
I've just started an BD9-encode with --partitions all switched on. So I'll find out if it works anyway, but the question remains if it is acceptable according to BD standards.

[Dark Shikari]

So i want to ask this: Are you shure that P4x4 is compatible with hardware (in other words: Is it compatible with Blu-ray standards) ?The Blu-ray spec is not public, so I can't say for sure, but its surely allowed by Level 4.1 as a whole.

[G_M_C]

The Blu-ray spec is not public, so I can't say for sure, but its surely allowed by Level 4.1 as a whole.

Hmmmm ... That should also mean that it's acceptable in BD-standard (since BD-standard describes using L4.1 video) ....

If my "test-encode" works in my BD30, and gives the desired results (i.e. better quality), than i'll keep using the option. Thx for your answer :)

[G_M_C]

Hmmmm ... That should also mean that it's acceptable in BD-standard (since BD-standard describes using L4.1 video) ....

If my "test-encode" works in my BD30, and gives the desired results (i.e. better quality), than i'll keep using the option. Thx for your answer :)

Seems you are right DS (not that i doubted that), it works fine, player doesn't have any issues with --partitions all set on a Blu-ray. It looks like it achieves better quality too !

Am i right when i say that the clip seems to be more fine-detailed when using P4x4, or are my eyes just deceiving me ?

[Dark Shikari]

Am i right when i say that the clip seems to be more fine-detailed when using P4x4, or are my eyes just deceiving me ?Your eyes are probably deceiving you. It's not that useful*

*I haven't actually done any testing at bitrates as high as Blu-ray uses, so I can't say for sure.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Seems you are right DS (not that i doubted that), it works fine, player doesn't have any issues with --partitions all set on a Blu-ray. It looks like it achieves better quality too !
Wow :rolleyes: I knew that long time ago :)

[EuropeanMan]

Congrats to all involved...and many thanks.

[iNT]

I'm kind of late! But that cake is really epic!!

[Mc Onyx]

Congrats on the 1k revision, although somewhat late. Can't believe how much time has passed, I've started encoding with x264 rev. 40 and if i remember correctly at the time it didn't even have a two pass mode and look at it now, best AVC encoder available, hats off to anyone that contributed to the great encoder that is x264!

[burfadel]

I've started encoding with x264 rev. 40 and if i remember correctly at the time it didn't even have a two pass mode and look at it now, best AVC encoder available, hats off to anyone that contributed to the great encoder that is x264!

How does rev 1029 compare to rev 40 speed and quality wise? :D

(I know obviously superior, just out of interest)

[Sagekilla]

Oldest revision I can find on x264.nl dates back to.. revision 598, so you could use that as a point of reference at least ;)

[Audionut]

Oldest revision I can find on x264.nl dates back to.. revision 598, so you could use that as a point of reference at least ;)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141352

[Inventive Software]

I've got ones going back to 1xx or 2xx days. ;)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Oldest revision I can find on x264.nl dates back to.. revision 598, so you could use that as a point of reference at least ;)

Celtic Druid, whatever he may be doing now, has archived some pretty old versions too:
http://tirnanog.fate.jp/mirror/x264/

There is a CLI build of r544 and a VfW build of r459 ;)

[kemuri-_9]

the GIT repository seemingly has all the changes recorded from when x264 was still on SVN.
so if you really wanted, you could revert back to some really early revisions and play around with them.

just be sure to copy the latest version.sh
to the reverted directory so it has the revision number in the build.
(if version.sh exists when you go back that far)

i just tried and was able to make the following:
r300 w/ pthreads, avs, + gpac
r200 w/ avs
(no pthread support, incompatible with current gpac)
r196 w/ avs - ./configure has mingw32 support added
(w/ small configure fixes:
A. recognize mingw32 having avs support
B. remove debug symbols )

good luck getting any earlier ones to work for mingw (well r195 probably with more ./configure fixes)...
r196 available here (http://kemuri9.net/dev/x264/history/x264_r196.exe)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

x264 r196 -vs- x264 r1029
Uncompressed YUV source, 2-Pass @ 333 kbit/s, all settings available in x264 r196 maxed out.
x264_r196-vs-r1029.7z (http://www.mediafire.com/file/lumnwtye2bm/x264_r196-vs-r1029.7z)

Of course x264 r1029 clearly outperforms r196, but still r196 performs much better than I had expected...

[kemuri-_9]

*Edit*
major lie... got even revision 1 to compile (with just a small bit of work)
something I'll be working on for a bit is this 'history' (http://kemuri9.net/dev/x264/history/)
(i seem to have too much free time as of late... :rolleyes:)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Interesting :D

I try to run r43, first revision with 2-pass support. It's hard to do any comparison before that feature was available. But I can't get it to work :(

My commandline is:
x264_r0043.exe --bframe 5 --cabac --ref 6 --bitrate 333 --pass 1 --stats "c:\wurst.stat" --analyse all --output "c:\test_r43.first.mp4" "c:\downloads\x264_git\sample.avs"

But it doesn't encode. It always prints the help screen. No error message. What am I missing? :confused:

[kemuri-_9]

none of the builds have GPAC (.mp4) support until r299 where the GPAC API was updated
(to what's used now, thus only why it starts working then, didn't want to have to play with reverting it to get support).
and none have AVS support until r161 either.
that's probably what's doing it.

YUV input and .h264 output only for r43 ;)
and that works for me

avs2yuv -raw -o some.yuv some.avs to get a .yuv of your .avs
and then mp4box for .h264 -> .mp4 needs (as usual)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

none of the builds have GPAC (.mp4) support until r299 where the GPAC API was updated (to what's used now, thus only why it starts working then).
and none have AVS support until r161 either.

I see ;)

[Sagekilla]

What was used pre r43 for input then?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

What was used pre r43 for input then?

Uncompressed YUV data, it seems.

[crypto]

@kemuri-_9
Thanks for the history compiles. Its great to see the improvements over the time.

[kemuri-_9]

What was used pre r43 for input then?

up until avis input in r161, it was strictly limited to raw YUV input.
then came y4m input (similar to yuv format, except with a header for fps, resolution, and SAR) with r484.
.yuv and .y4m are raw data formats, like raw RGB24, so they take up a good bit of space.

yuv input can be created easily with akupenguin's avs2yuv tool
which converts a .avs to a .yuv/.y4m (.yuv with -raw, .y4m without)
(i'm inferring it was made specifically for x264 use back then)
so if you want to try some of the really old builds, going to need that.

*edit*
i'll go ahead and supply avs2yuv on the page as well, for convenience.

[burfadel]

I think we're all grateful that development of x264 has continued, it must have seemed an overwhelming task to some extent at the beginning - but rewarding that it has been so successful.

[akupenguin]

it must have seemed an overwhelming task to some extent at the beginning
Not at all. The marginal improvement of quality per development effort was much greater.