encoding to blu-ray

[unix_sansei]

looking for a bit of knowledge.

i'm going to make a blu-ray for my film. my images are 4k x 6k @16bit, all audio tracks are 32/192, running time about 23 minutes or ~32,000 frames

quality is absolute benchmark, no artifacts, don't care if takes a week to encode.

for the blu-ray target at aspect ratio of 1.66, what's a good encoder and downsampler?

cheers

[Biggiesized]

Is there a reason you are targeting MPEG-2 versus VC-1 or AVC?

Are you looking for a professional tool?

[unix_sansei]

Is there a reason you are targeting MPEG-2 versus VC-1 or AVC?

Are you looking for a professional tool?



Thanks for reply.

I'm looking for the best 'professional' but low-cost solution. It's only a short film.

From what i've seen and read and experimented with the VC-1 codec seems lacking a bit, and the only tools besides Microsoft are expensive. The specs for VC-1 in pro mode is very good at 135MB/s for 1080p frames at 24fps. To be honest I haven't researched AVC very much, but it seems it is more well suited for maximum compression. I'm looking for opposite, minimum compression.

What do you suggest?

[Inspector.Gadget]

To be honest I haven't researched AVC very much, but it seems it is more well suited for maximum compression. I'm looking for opposite, minimum compression.

This is somewhat misleading, as it appears to conflate two meanings of the word "compression": noticeable compression artifacts on the one hand, and compressing raw video on the other - a process that need not introduce unpleasant artifacts. Up to the point of bitrate saturation - a location codec developers are much more qualified to discuss than I am - AVC provides better image quality than MPEG-2 at a given bitrate. On that basis, you should use AVC where you're working with a player that can handle it: either you hit the bit rate at which MPEG-2 would be transparent, and thus you're at a point where AVC would be transparent too, or you fall short of MPEG-2 transparency, in which case AVC should provide a better picture at that bitrate. FYI, the free software encoder x264 is considered to be at worst tied for first with Ateme's H.264 codec and at best the highest-quality H.264 encoder available, according to past codec comparisons here. So I wouldn't worry too much about cost :cool:

[Audionut]

The specs for VC-1 in pro mode is very good at 135MB/s for 1080p frames at 24fps. To be honest I haven't researched AVC very much, but it seems it is more well suited for maximum compression. I'm looking for opposite, minimum compression.

You are aware that the maximum bitrate for blu-ray is 40MB/s?

I would say AVC is superior to MPEG2 at all (sane) bitrates.

[Dark Shikari]

maximum compression. I'm looking for opposite, minimum compression.?That doesn't make any sense.

"Better compression" means lower bitrate for the same quality... or better said, better quality at the same bitrate. Why would you want worse quality at the same bitrate (minimum compression)?

[laserfan]

I'm looking for the best 'professional' but low-cost solution. It's only a short film.If it were longer then it might be worth a "high-cost" solution? I laughed when I read this. :)

I'm looking for opposite, minimum compression.I have a friend who's made a short film (maybe 25min) and it takes a couple hundred gigabytes on his Mac. He's having a hard time imagining that it might be squeezed to a DVD+5 or a DVD DL and still look good. You gotta jump into the pool (i.e. start trying things and learning what is possible). I'd start with x264; can't get cheaper than free. ;)

[unix_sansei]

If it were longer then it might be worth a "high-cost" solution? I laughed when I read this. :)

I have a friend who's made a short film (maybe 25min) and it takes a couple hundred gigabytes on his Mac. He's having a hard time imagining that it might be squeezed to a DVD+5 or a DVD DL and still look good. You gotta jump into the pool (i.e. start trying things and learning what is possible). I'd start with x264; can't get cheaper than free. ;)

I know the feeling, I'm sitting on 1.5 TB of images wonderiing how to get quality on a DVD, so I gave up DVD and just jumping into a Blu-Ray encoding.

I have noticed that it's slightly better to downsize in two or more stages, don't go for broke reducing to final size, let the resize divide by 2 then 2 again, I can't say numbers but qualitatively, the edges seem to be sharper.

[unix_sansei]

That doesn'ake any sense.

"Better compression" means lower bitrate for the same quality... or better said, better quality at the same bitrate. Why would you want worse quality at the same bitrate (minimum compression)?

i would rather have 'minimal' compression at maximum bitrate, a big fat, fast pipe shoving data at the decompressor.

similarly, if you look at LZW, it does zero compression, so it has tremendously large files but quality is absolute. if you look at the same jpeg2000 image it's a joke.

[unix_sansei]

You are aware that the maximum bitrate for blu-ray is 40MB/s?

I would say AVC is superior to MPEG2 at all (sane) bitrates.

yes but the VC-1 spec supports 135MB/s at 1080p, although i haven't seen anyone implement this mode. even if the Blu-Ray is used a storage medium and not playable, i.e., just pull the data off the disk and let the computer play the file.

VC-1 specs
L4 135 Mbps 1920 × 1080 @ 60 Hz (1080p)
2048 × 1536 @ 24 Hz

[Dark Shikari]

yes but the VC-1 spec supports 135MB/s at 1080p135MB/s is greater than the bitrate of raw YUV. :rolleyes: Even at 60fps, huffyuv would be smaller.

And it makes no sense to say "the spec supports" since actual specs don't place real limits on the bitrate the encoder can use. The "limits" are only for compatibility with certain defined levels, not the spec as a whole.

[Sagittaire]

135MB/s is greater than the bitrate of raw YUV. :rolleyes: Even at 60fps, huffyuv would be smaller.


You are sure ... its 135 Mbps and not 135 MB/s.

135 Mbps is extremely high quality but inferior at lossless bitrate in general case for 1080p60 even with really high efficiency lossless codec.

[unix_sansei]

You are sure ... its 135 Mbps and not 135 MB/s.

135 Mbps is extremely high quality but inferior at lossless bitrate in general case for 1080p60 even with really high efficiency lossless codec.

i did mention that my images are B&W full 16-bit, 2bytes, I'd like to keep instead of dithering or rounding.

[Dark Shikari]

i did mention that my images are B&W full 16-bit, 2bytes, I'd like to keep instead of dithering or rounding.Impossible. Blu-ray doesn't support bit depths beyond 8-bit.

[unix_sansei]

135MB/s is greater than the bitrate of raw YUV. :rolleyes: Even at 60fps, huffyuv would be smaller.

And it makes no sense to say "the spec supports" since actual specs don't place real limits on the bitrate the encoder can use. The "limits" are only for compatibility with certain defined levels, not the spec as a whole.

i'm only concerned with 24fps, i'll let whatever player worry about the pulldown.

well the "specs" are a reference point.

[unix_sansei]

Impossible. Blu-ray doesn't support bit depths beyond 8-bit.

does it support log LUT?

[Dark Shikari]

does it support log LUT?No. It supports exactly what you'd think it would--and nothing more, i.e., YV12. It might support 4:2:2 if you're lucky, not sure about that.

[unix_sansei]

You are sure ... its 135 Mbps and not 135 MB/s.

135 Mbps is extremely high quality but inferior at lossless bitrate in general case for 1080p60 even with really high efficiency lossless codec.

what lossless codecs are available to encode to a blu-ray stream then question is are there tools to merge the lossless stream with dds or 5.1 surround? i've worked with usual tools for DVD but not with Blu-ray.

[setarip_old]

Hi!are there tools to merge the lossless stream with dds or 5.1 surround?"tsMuxer" can do that for you - and also create the required folders/files for BluRay discs...

[Audionut]

what lossless codecs are available to encode to a blu-ray stream

None. If your using PC for playback just mux the video and audio to MKV and burn the file to disc.

[Audionut]

Hi!"tsMuxer" can do that for you - and also create the required folders/files for BluRay discs...

tsMuxer will not accept a lossless video stream.

[qyot27]

Ok, let's sort this all out.

A) Blu-ray itself doesn't support lossless video - it only supports MPEG-2, VC-1, and H.264*. Lossless was only mentioned because 135 MB/s (that's megabytes per second) is above the datarate that a YUV stream would be without any sort of compression whatsoever, meaning that compressing with HuffYUV would be more size efficient, even if the stream were 60fps. You were confusing Mbps (megabits per second) for MB/s (megabytes per second). 'Bits per second' is the standard way of expressing video datarates - and 135 Mbps = 16.875 MB/s (conversely, 135 MB/s would be equal to 1080 Mbps, or 1.08 gigabits per second).

*Yes, H.264 does have a lossless mode, but I severely doubt that's acceptable on a video Blu-ray Disc. Anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that.

B) Blu-ray has a maximum limit for the video bitrate - that limit is 40 Mbps (or in megabytes, 5 MB/s). And at 40 Mbps, H.264 or VC-1 will outperform MPEG-2 in visual quality retained, simply because they're newer standards and more complex (barring, of course, crappy masters and inept authoring houses). The benefit of using MPEG-2 over H.264 or VC-1 is not in visual quality, it's in encoding speed - even my computer, as ancient as it is next to today's bargain setups, can encode HD MPEG-2 with decent enough speed. H.264 or VC-1 compared to MPEG-2 isn't 'more compression' it's 'more refined compression'. It's like the difference between using MS Video 1 and Sorenson 3 - ok, I just pulled that out of thin air, but basically I mean that newer, more capable solutions exist, so it makes little sense (outside of sheer encoding speed) to fall back to an older standard like MPEG-2. Of course, none of that matters if you're simply using Blu-ray as a data disk, in which case anything goes.



That said, knowing the specific stream requirements (for all three of the formats) and eccentricities of the available muxing programs to deal with the needed file structure would be useful, as I'd like to experiment with doing Blu-ray compatible MPEG-2 and H.264 encodes of some of my own content, but I don't even have a Blu-ray player to test it on, so it's still a tad premature in my case.

[unix_sansei]

Ok, let's sort this all out.

A) Blu-ray itself doesn't support lossless video - it only supports MPEG-2, VC-1, and H.264*. Lossless was only mentioned because 135 MB/s (that's megabytes per second) is above the datarate that a YUV stream would be without any sort of compression whatsoever, meaning that compressing with HuffYUV would be more size efficient, even if the stream were 60fps. You were confusing Mbps (megabits per second) for MB/s (megabytes per second). 'Bits per second' is the standard way of expressing video datarates - and 135 Mbps = 16.875 MB/s (conversely, 135 MB/s would be equal to 1080 Mbps, or 1.08 gigabits per second).

*Yes, H.264 does have a lossless mode, but I severely doubt that's acceptable on a video Blu-ray Disc. Anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that.

B) Blu-ray has a maximum limit for the video bitrate - that limit is 40 Mbps (or in megabytes, 5 MB/s). And at 40 Mbps, H.264 or VC-1 will outperform MPEG-2 in visual quality retained, simply because they're newer standards and more complex (barring, of course, crappy masters and inept authoring houses). The benefit of using MPEG-2 over H.264 or VC-1 is not in visual quality, it's in encoding speed - even my computer, as ancient as it is next to today's bargain setups, can encode HD MPEG-2 with decent enough speed. H.264 or VC-1 compared to MPEG-2 isn't 'more compression' it's 'more refined compression'. It's like the difference between using MS Video 1 and Sorenson 3 - ok, I just pulled that out of thin air, but basically I mean that newer, more capable solutions exist, so it makes little sense (outside of sheer encoding speed) to fall back to an older standard like MPEG-2. Of course, none of that matters if you're simply using Blu-ray as a data disk, in which case anything goes.



That said, knowing the specific stream requirements (for all three of the formats) and eccentricities of the available muxing programs to deal with the needed file structure would be useful, as I'd like to experiment with doing Blu-ray compatible MPEG-2 and H.264 encodes of some of my own content, but I don't even have a Blu-ray player to test it on, so it's still a tad premature in my case.

if Blu Ray is only storage and streamed through MPC

at full uncompressed HD 1920x1080 is 6.22MB per frame with RGB@8bit image at 24fps this is ~149.9MB/s

for B&W which is my film, 50MB/s or 400Mb/s so to squeeze down to VC-1 spec, i'd need to compress by a factor of 3.

if the audio is 4.1, L, C, R, S, LF, PCM 24-bit, 96kHz, i haven't worked this out yet. adding the bitrate of the audio chain.