sx264 - qt based x264 gui (Linux&Windows)

[Selur]

Okay, after looking at the current MeGui profiles I can say:
1. sx264 doesn't support current profiles atm and it will take some time to adjust sx264, since sx264 does not use presets&tune options and I'm not sure if MeGui keeps the rest of it's settings consistent with the preset selection
2. Thanks for the ste-by-step notes, I can reproduce the problem now -> trying to fix it. :)

[Selur]

Think I found the problem used a - where a + should have been in the bitrate calculator when subtitle size was calculated -> will send you a new test version :)
(will have some time next week when I'll fix the megui profile import and release a new version)

[Alex_080]

Thanks Selur for this software..it is very nice soft now i m encoding many files using it but i need some help on profiles because i can't understand how to use Profile Manager means there is only one video profile custom so please help me.

one thing can you tell me how to update it?
thanks

:):):)

[Selur]

Since sx264 is still alpha, it does not come with any profiles, so yo will only find the profiles that you yourself created there. ;)
For Updating, a simple overwriting of the files should do the trick.

Cu Selur

[Alex_080]

can i overwrite new x264 with old one?

[Selur]

yup, shouldn't be a problem, as long as you don't use options that only a new one supports,..

[cybersharky]

Thanks Selur, sx264 is working well now, I'm using the newer megui x264 profiles.

[Alex_080]

thanks Selur ...sx264 working very fast (than megui) and it is working perfectly..can you tell me when come the beta or full version of sx264??

[Selur]

Nope, no time plan, but to be frank it's probably never going to hit beta in it's current state, in my free time I work on a updated (more rewritten) version, that will support audio/video passthrough, multiple audio and some other stuff, but since my free time for programming is limited atm this will quite take some time. (girlfriend and the rest of real life are demanding + I got an email from Amazon that Risen (http://www.worldofrisen.de) is on it's way :))

Cu Selur

[Alex_080]

can you tell me when your next update package will come??

[Selur]

Next sx264 update will probably come next week when I get at it to update the MeGui Profile import routines (+ no-psy switch, since I just yesterday realized that one totally slipped by me :)) , a new package will probably come when the nal hrd patch seems to be a bit more stable again. (reading in the current patches thread it seems a bit 'buggy' atm)

Are you missing something specific ? (I mean x264 can be swapped by hand normally as long as no major cli changes appear and I didn't see any major changes in mplayer and the other backend tools which would demand a package update,..)

Cu Selur

Ps.: got 'Risen' today :)

[Alex_080]

No nothing missing i only wait for next update:)

Selur can you adjust the CPU usage of sx264 because when when sx264 starts encoding is CPU usage almost 100% so that all other program work slow....

[Selur]

On Windows sx264 should set the audio&video encoder processes to lowest priority, so if the other programs run too slow it seems more like a Operations System problem since it's responsible to assign which application should get how much power. ;)
(+ I don't know if it is even possible to limit the cpu usage a process is allowed to create,..)
On linux I don't adjust any priorities because I never ran in any unexpected problems where other programs run to slow. :)

Cu Selur

[Alex_080]

On Windows sx264 should set the audio&video encoder processes to lowest priority, so if the other programs run too slow it seems more like a Operations System problem since it's responsible to assign which application should get how much power. ;)
(+ I don't know if it is even possible to limit the cpu usage a process is allowed to create,..)
On linux I don't adjust any priorities because I never ran in any unexpected problems where other programs run to slow. :)

Cu Selur

thanks for advice:)

[Pitti]

x264farm uses for Windows a tool named nice.exe to set the priority.

If you want to set your encoding to a lower priority, set <nice> to a larger number.

0 means normal priority, 20 means idle. If you are running Windows, you need to

have the "nice" program installed, either in the directory you run the agent from,

or somewhere on the path.

Unix-ish operating systems already have this program.

[Selur]

on Windows I use SetPriority (http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/SetPriority/index.html)
-> @LinuxUsers: Should I use 'nice' on linux? On my machines linux itself scales the cpu usage without a problem so I didn't change the priority and thought if this wouldn't be the case for someone, he would post. :)

[Alex_080]

Hi Selur Please can you tell me what value i set for deblocking for normal movies and Anime Video by which i can get good quality video encoding...
And can you tell what happen if i set B-frame value max 16??
Thanks

[Selur]

for normal movies I would recommend 0:0 and if you use high datarates / how quantizers (< 18) I would go for -1:-1
for cartoon like animes I wold go for 1:1
If you set B-Frames to 16 x264 will use up to 16 b-frames in a row. Normally 3-4 for normal movies and 5-6 for cartoons is kind of a sweet spot, anything on top of it doesn't really help.

Cu Selur

Ps.: for those who can/want to help my test avi can be found at: http://www.selur.info/test/Test-AC3-5.1.avi

[Riki]

Setting BFrames in the positive numbers will soften it right? I thought setting it to -1:-1 will make it sharper.

[flebber]

Setting BFrames in the positive numbers will soften it right? I thought setting it to -1:-1 will make it sharper.

Bframes don't have anything to do with sharpen or soften but overall image quality as perceived by you I never really exceed 6 Bframes and mostly use 3.

The -1:-1 you refer to is the deblocking parameters its actually a bit more complex see here for a good brief guide http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=109747 but yes minus is effectively sharp and positive soft :)

[Selur]

Little warning about the mentioned thread, it's quite old and with the introduction of adaptive quantization and psychovisual enhancements I prefer the settings mentioned above. Only for grain retention I would lower the deblock settings additionally. :)
But there's no really good recommendation for specific settings since it always also depends on the source. ;)

[Riki]

what about a screen-captured video. The source would have 0 grain, so then would it be best to use -1:-1?

[Selur]

Depends on the content of the screen in general screen captures got lots of unicolored areas so it would be like a cartoon (1:1), for mixed contend, e.g. if a good part of the screen is quite complex I would stay with the default (0:0) and if it's mainly complex content and the data rates are high enough I would choose -1:-1. In the end yo probably would have to test, if yo are unclear stay with the default (0:0). :)

Cu Selur

[Riki]

yeah that makes sense. I will post results after some tests hopefully

[Alex_080]

waiting for your next update Selur!

[Selur]

Atm I'm a bit reluctant to make a new sx264 windowsPackage release since I'm not sure which sx264 Version to include, since x264 causes a lot of problems the last weeks,... (e.g. nal-hrd, vbv 2pass,...)
Will do an sx264 update later today since I fixed a bunch of small bugs. :)

[Riki]

Which versions of x264 are having problems, Id rather avoid them! :)

[Selur]

Which versions of x264 are having problems, Id rather avoid them
see the posts in the x264 development thread of the last weeks,..

running into another problem with neroAACEnc atm.:
ffmpeg -i "Test-AC3-5.1.avi" -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 6 -ar 48000 -f wav - | neroAacEnc -if - -br 128000 -ignorelength -he -of "test.aac" works, but:
ffmpeg -i "Test-AC3-5.1.avi" -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 6 -ar 48000 -f wav - | neroAacEnc -if - -br 128000 -ignorelength -hev2 -of "test.aac
doesn't and gives:
Output #0, wav, to 'pipe:':
ERROR: Unsupported encoding configuration
Stream #0.0: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 4608 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.1 -> #0.0
Press [q] to stop encoding
av_interleaved_write_frame(): Error while opening file
Now my problem is: "Where's the problem and how to fix it?"
"What input is needed for neroAACEnc to work?"
(problem is probably around since supporting anything -he/-hev2)

Cu Selur

[microchip8]

@ Selur, simply use mplayer to dump to WAV files. It has never failed here and Nero has always accepted its input, no matter which AAC profile one uses in Nero

[Selur]

Will mplayer fix the channel order like ffmpeg does?
Will mplayer dump to stdOut?

[microchip8]

I thought mplayer has channel reordering, no? I don't do much 2+ channels encoding so I'm not sure. For stdout, I don't think so, use a named pipe :p

[Selur]

haven't found a way go get named pipes working in windows ;)

[microchip8]

Have you looked at this? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365590%28VS.85%29.aspx
it may give you info on how to do it on Win

[Selur]

yup, but couldn't get it working so I dumped the idea of named pipes in windows. ;)

[microchip8]

Then I guess you'll have to find out why ffmpeg/nero behaves like that. Is it only with hev2 or is lc also affected?

[Selur]

it's only with hev2, all other modes give no problem with the command line, even something like:
ffmpeg -i "Test-AC3-5.1.avi" -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 6 -ar 48000 -f wav - | neroAacEnc -if - -q 0.1 -ignorelength -of "test.aac"
which should create a hev2 stream afaik

[Kurtnoise]

Hint : hev2 = Parametric Stereo...

[Selur]

DOH,..!!!!! YOU ARE SO RIGHT!!!
Thanks ! ;)

[microchip8]

Yep, I completely missed the part too where you forced channels to 6 and then trying to encode to HEv2 :S
I'll also have to update h264enc to catch this thing ;)

[Selur]

rev560

*fixed*
- some small bugs
- size calculation looping

-> updated links in 1st post

[Riki]

Its been a while so I thought i would throw in another feature request, haha. This one is minor but I usually have a huge list of videos and sometimes 4+ encoding at the same time. Its hard to see them all and it would be great to have an option to toggle the output off or a way to drag just the jobs window bigger which will make the output smaller, etc. Like I said, this is minor so no biggie, I have a high resolution monitor so I just usually make the window huge.

Also in the status column the text seems to be centered and when a video is finished it pushes the other text out of range usually, it would be nice if the text was set to left instead of center.

Cheers!

[Selur]

Changing Layout settings without a restart of the GUI is a really pain ... but assuming I'm the only one that really looks at the console output I minimized the console output. (since it's also possible to see the console output in a separate window this should be okay for most people ;))
What OS are you using? (so I can send you a test version)

Cu Selur

Ps.: May be I should make a list what OS each user is using since I can't remember it and I always have to ask. ;)

[Riki]

haha, Ill always be on 64-bit Windows. :)

[microchip8]

haha, Ill always be on 64-bit Windows. :)

Too bad, so sad :P

[Riki]

haha, I have no choice! I use alot of graphic apps that are windows only (like 3ds Max, Unreal Editor 3, etc). Im actually on a Mac Pro but I never really go into osx.

edit: I would use fusion or parallels or something but until they can use the full power of the mac for windows apps, its pointless for me.

[Riki]

Thanks Selur, works perfect!

[Riki]

I have a couple questions, hopefully I could get some insight.

#1 Would you happen to know how to set a keyframe interval with sx264?

Below is some support response Im getting from the wowza streaming server guys.

Another issue might be the key frame interval. What key frame interval did you use when you encoded the video? If it is high(key frames are not very often) then when it reloads the buffer it will go back in time to get the previous key frame to its current location. If there are not a lot of key frames then it will keep jumping back in the video and replay the same segment.

#2 I currently use CRF for everything. Forgive me for a noob question but does this give the mp4 file a crazy variable bitrate throughout the video? For a web streaming server, would it be better to use specific bitrate rather than CRF?

[Selur]

#1 Would you happen to know how to set a keyframe interval with sx264?
Encoding->GOP size min/max -> min = minimal keyframe interval, max = maximal keyframe interval

#2 I currently use CRF for everything. Forgive me for a noob question but does this give the mp4 file a crazy variable bitrate throughout the video? For a web streaming server, would it be better to use specific bitrate rather than CRF?
Nope, should be fine assuming you set the VBV values accordingly. ;)

For streaming, set bufsize equal to (maxrate) * (number of seconds the player is set to buffer).
see: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=147153

Cu Selur

[Riki]

Thanks!

Nope, should be fine assuming you set the VBV values accordingly.

Yeah about that, I havent been using 2-pass but it sounds like I need to. I just hate that it takes so much longer to encode. So if I use 2-pass it will automatically set these values for me?

[Selur]

1st all mode except 1pass constant quantizer should support vbv nowadays. (crf and 2pass should both work fine <- there have been a lot of optimizations for this in the last months in x264)
2nd if you need/want other values than defined by the profile you selected, you always have to set them manually. ( (s)x264 can't know the 'number of seconds the player is set to buffer' ;))
3rd yes, for streaming it's probably the best to use 2pass encoding since you normally want a specific bit rate; '1pass average bit rate' might also be fine, but to be frank I'm not sure how bad quality will be hit when using 1pass cbr with vbv (best ask Dark Shikari, he probably can answer this in a sentence or two without breaking a sweat)
-> best use 2pass and set vbv values manually

Cu Selur