FixStars Realtime Cell Encoder Samples :)

[CruNcher]

They also gonna present a Consumer Encoder on the PS3 @ NAB see news

http://www.fixstars.com/en/products/codecsys/sample.html (though they show only ~1 minute the problematic scenes aren't shown this way :P )

i wonder if they reused anything from x264 ;) (being very near @ OSS see yellowdog linux)

you can also Online Encode something :D here (on the Cloud) https://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/trial/personalData.html (be aware upload speed is slow depending if your location is outside of Asia)

[Blue_MiSfit]

Checking it out, but not expecting a whole lot :)

~MiSfit

[edison]

I have uploaded a video clip to do online encode, the video clip was used in the leadtek pxvc1100 test and convert to yuv i420 ( the file size is 1.08GB @_@).

performance:

profile/level: hp 3.0
b-frame:2
slice:4


1000kbps fast 29.80 s
1500kbps fast 30.56 s
2000kbps fast 29.31 s
2500kbps fast 29.03 s
3000kbps fast 31.10 s
3500kbps fast 29.70 s
4000kbps fast 30.41 s


CodecSys Trial VBR HP3.0

Y-SSIM (avg,2230 frames)

1000 kbps 0.942234318
1500 kbps 0.958717494
2000 kbps 0.966834899
2500 kbps 0.971830425
3000 kbps 0.97554094
3500 kbps 0.978308054
4000 kbps 0.980634944

[deekey777]

Their PDF: http://us.fixstars.com/products/market-solutions/codecsys/CE10_USletter.pdf

[CruNcher]

Jep it looks really interesting vs a GPU solution the Cell is really made for this :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxuYkKkmS5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g5KKTC1oRs&NR=1

if this really works out the PS3 could recive a major bump up in Sales after it's Quality and usability gets confirmed in June :) but you shouldn't forget it needs to beat x264 on a CPU :) 1.2 realtime can also easily done with x264 @ i would say lower power output and to what i saw Codecsys has no AQ yet so it seems not in the state of HVS enhancements x264 gone through the years (not even wanna talk about missing Psy-RD or a similiar concept like Ateme and Mainconcept have also developed). Though i guess using the PS3 Cell should have some more Encoding Power then a SpursEngine consumer card :). So Fixstars Encoder is still a smal Child that maybe has alot of Power behind it's back but the Quality is what counts for most and here i see lack of development time on Fixstars side to compete with the other solutions yet :) Unless they buildup the core from x264 then i guess they could in no time also port all the HVS stuff over to it and then it becomes really interesting :D
It's funny to see they using MPC-HC on that Presentation :P i guess they also lurk arround Doom9 and look @ x264 development alot ;)

[deekey777]

Found something in B3DForums:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1297476#post1297476
It's now on sale for the Japanese market.

http://codecsys.fixstars.com/ja/index.html

CE-10 Personal - 15,840 yen ($164) for a 1-year license
CE-10 Professional - 158,400 yen ($1,640) for a 1-year license (24,800 yen for a 1-month license)

Personal can encode movies up to 15Mbps, while it's up to 150Mbps for Professional.
No commercial encoding is allowed for Personal. All other properties are the same for the both versions.

Demo: https://codecsys.fixstars.com/ja/trial.html

[CruNcher]

http://codecsys.fixstars.com/ja/support/ce10/hardware.html

that's a little crazy :P how much power that consumes together geez :P you could use that PC alone and save alot of Power with using x264 with the right settings
also this doesn't look very advanced to me @ all.

http://codecsys.fixstars.com/ja/images/news/CE-10SettingDialog.png
http://codecsys.fixstars.com/ja/images/news/CE-10GUI.png

though there is another tab mybe their some HVS settings are hiding :)

[benwaggoner]

It's all about quality@perf, quality@watt, and quality@1U.

[Dark Shikari]

quality@1UAvail runs 1U boxes that do two simultaneous 1080i streams with x264 on high-quality settings. Don't need a fancy expensive Cell encoder for that ;)

[Atak_Snajpera]

Avail runs 1U boxes that do two simultaneous 1080i streams with x264 on high-quality settings.
What exact settings do you use in Avail?

[Dark Shikari]

What exact settings do you use in Avail?We use an automated speedcontrol patch available on request. The settings for realtime broadcast, depending on the CPU used, tend to hover between subme=6 and subme=9. SD generally uses higher settings since they don't run 6x as many SD streams on a box as they run HD streams.

[benwaggoner]

Avail runs 1U boxes that do two simultaneous 1080i streams with x264 on high-quality settings. Don't need a fancy expensive Cell encoder for that ;)
I was just spelling out the metrics, not anointing a winner.

And of course I forgot quality@TCO, which is a combination of all of those.

[Comatose]

Dark Shikari: Can you give us some hardware info? CPU, mainly. Just curious :)

[Dark Shikari]

Dark Shikari: Can you give us some hardware info? CPU, mainly. Just curious :)Avail has a few main types of boxes that they use:

1. Quad-core SD encoding box (Core 2). Used to be more necessary years ago, but totally pointless now that x264 is so fast. Only still around because their original architecture assumed one stream per box.

2. Dual-quadcore HD encoding box (Core 2). Handles one 1080i or 720p HD stream. Usually around 3-3.2Ghz.

3. Quadcore HD encoding box (Nehalem). Handles one 1080i or 720p HD stream.

4. Dual-quadcore HD encoding box (Nehalem). Handles two 1080i or 720p HD streams. This is the new mainstay box.

Of course you can put SD streams on the dual boxes as well.

[CruNcher]

http://www.elementaltechnologies.com/products/server <- uses the pro encoder core (which hopefully sometime finds it way into badaboom)

[kaid]

Okay, I did toy around with it, but it seems my only x86 in the house (I'm a PPC man, baby!), an Athlon 3500+ is too slow for whatever it is they're still doing with the main CPU (getting constantly 100% load on the Athlon!): It seems to run out of sync with the network streaming and the CE-10 just stops writing to the target file! It doesn't tell you about this or complain, it just goes on encoding, so that sucks.
Yes, and I also did try encoding video only, so the Athlon wouldn't have to do the sound, and I did try ISO-MPEG4 AVI, m2v MPEG2 Video and YUV as Input (an Athlon 3500+ can decode 1080p MPEG2 just fine!). I did notice it got the furthest using YUV as input before it stopped writing, so it's probably just my machine not decoding fast enough for the CE-10...

btw: If you want to change the Japanese GUI to English, change computer\hkey_current_user\software\fixstars\code csys ce-10\culture from ja-JP to en-US in the Registry!

It is definately not as flexible as x264 and doesn't offer as many options. It does however also do 4x slice-encoding if wanted, unlike x264, which should be a boon for pre-Core/Phenom Multi-CPU systems that don't use CoreAVC, Divx7 or ffmpeg-mt!
Other than that you can choose between main and high profile, set B-Frames from 1-3, adjust GOP-size, set avg/max bitrate, choose between quality and fast encoding approach, set some QP level and pixel ratio and some other value I forgot (but which didn't tell me anything). It also has a profile setting for Bluray, which warns you if your settings are not bluray-compliant...

Quality seems pretty good though judging from the short clips I was able to encode before it stopped writing into the file... And it is hella fast, they didn't lie about that!

Would love to see a bit more testing from you guys...

[HouseCat]

I tired codecsys CE-10 with my copy of bladerunner blu-ray.

How do you get it to do the audio (5.1 AC3 in this case) file as it only seems to do .wav. It encodes the 1080P FAST but with no audio.

[popper]

if you read the latest official PR release from 1 July 2009 they say they are now
"AFFORDABLE, BROADCAST QUALITY, NEAR REAL-TIME H.264 ENCODER FOR PS3"

http://lists.fixstars.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2009-July/000215.html
"....
CodecSys CE-10 Personal:
- H.264 software encoder with support for 1080i/p full HD.
- Max bit-rate 15Mbps, Blu-ray standard compliant.
- Licensed for personal use only.
- $199.00 USD

CodecSys CE-10 Professional
- H.264 software encoder support 1080i/p full HD.
- Max bit-rate 150Mbps, Blu-ray standard compliant.
- Licensed for commercial use.
- $1,999.00 USD
....
"

they apparently also have a 14 day trial, "CodecSys CE-10 Professional 14 Days Free Trial

You can use the full functionality of CodecSys CE-10 Professional free for 14 days.

CodecSys CE-10 Professional requires both a PC and PS3. Read Required Hardware and download here.
"
but i m not sure how you would install that, as they also say
"Connected to a PC via a gigabit ethernet, the PS3 performs as an external,
dedicated video encoder. All encoding is handled by the PS3 which runs an
embedded version of Yellow Dog Linux entirely from ROM, thus shifting the
CPU-intensive processing away from the workstation.
"

and again, i assume they are using the latest faster YDL v6.2 with Xfce, perhaps even using Markos's
libfreevec, http://www.codex.gr/ http://www.freevec.org/ a (LGPL) library with replacement routines for
GLIBC, such as memcpy(), strlen(), etc. These routines, which have been
rewritten and optimized to use the AltiVec vector engine found in the G4/G4+
PowerPC CPUs, can provide for up to 25% increase in application performance.


that PR page leads to the main page
http://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/ce10/
and the tech specs look pritty much pro even for the limited 15Mbit/s Max personal version...
http://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/ce10/specs.html


its odd, but they only did a 1 minute 1920x1080 Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny rather than the full encodes
http://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/ce10/gallery.html

even odder, it seems while the http://codecsys-dl.fixstars.com/gallery/ED_7.2Mbps.mp4 (7045 Kbps,High@L4.0,ref 2,1920x1080,etc) is well below the 360s valid spec of ref3,10Mbit/s,H@L4.1, it didnt Manage to stream with PS3Mediaserver1.20 to the 360 without stopping a few times over a wired LAN connection...., it may be my 2gig E4400 xp os playing up i suppose!, but even then it looks rather sharp on my cheap 32" LCD TV connected HDMI 360.

[SquallMX]

:helpful: I made a little test using CE-10 Pro Trial:

Source: Blu-ray Promo from Gran Torino BR disc
Details: VC-1 1080p 23.976 fps 13 Mbps (Max 23 Mbps)
Decoder: NVTools + AviSynth (Hardware Accelerated)
Laptop Specs: Intel Core2Duo T5800, GeForce 9300M, Windows 7 Build 7260 x64
Others: Resized to 1440x1080p using Spline36

CodeSys CE-10
Settings:
http://i25.tinypic.com/29qfodc.png
Desired Bitrate: 5000 Kbps
Real Bitrate: 4250 Kbps (Aprox)
Encoding Speed: 12 fps (Aprox)
Total Encoding Time: 3:13.150

x264 core 68 r1183M f21daff 1-Pass ABR (Blu-ray Compliant)
Settings:
--profile high --level 4.1 --keyint 48 --min-keyint 4 --direct auto --deblock -2:-1 --psy-rd 0.8:0.2 --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --qpmax 40 --ipratio 1.1 --pbratio 1.2 --vbv-bufsize 15000 --vbv-maxrate 15000 --thread-input --aq-strength 0.8 --ssim --output "J:\Gran Torino\BDMV\STREAM\1440.mkv" "J:\Gran Torino\BDMV\STREAM\1440.avs" --mvrange 511 --aud --nal-hrd --sar 4:3
Desired Bitrate: 5000 Kbps
Real Bitrate: 4675 Kbps
Encoding Speed: 5.39 fps
Total Encoding Time: 7:37.000 (Aprox)

Comparative Stills:
http://i28.tinypic.com/sqqq02.png
http://i25.tinypic.com/28k3lzq.png

http://i31.tinypic.com/104p4d3.png
http://i26.tinypic.com/2upfgbl.png

http://i27.tinypic.com/oiyujt.png
http://i26.tinypic.com/20r1fsl.png

Full Promo:
CE-10 (http://rapidshare.com/files/257385679/CE-PS3.mkv)
x264 (http://rapidshare.com/files/257377609/X264_PC.mkv)

Conclusions on CE-10:
1.- Only half "Real Time" speed.
2.- Laptop's CPU at 90% (Using NVTools for Decoding).
3.- Only 2.2x faster than x264 using mid range CPU for laptop, with mid settings (Desktops QuadCore are probably faster than CE-10).
4.- Lower Quality than x264

[Astrophizz]

I don't think "only 2.2x faster than x264" is something to scoff at if it were at the same quality as x264 (assuming each of your conclusions is independent of the others), but it clearly comes at loss of quality.

[popper]

I don't think "only 2.2x faster than x264" is something to scoff at if it were at the same quality as x264 (assuming each of your conclusions is independent of the others), but it clearly comes at loss of quality.

do we know , or can we work out why that is ?, it seems they have a rolling monthly upgrade/fix schedule though so these things may work themselves out, and you can always email them to report any problems you might have it seems.

i also wonder if we can get their techs to come over here and contribute and inform etc, if as we suspect they are using some OSS in their business, clearly they like and advocate OSS and Freeware apps such as FFmpeg, PS3Media Server, along with tsMuxer and howto references to ImgBurn to make BR disks etc... and thats a good thing.

http://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/support/ce10/releases.html

"Future upgrade

The following are planned future upgrades to CE-10 Personal and Professional.
* Note: These upgrades, as well as their release dates, are subject to change."

re the speeds etc i wonder if an iSCSI 1gig LAN connected "FreeNAS" http://www.freenas.org/ and the http://www.freenaskb.info/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=204 Windows initiator(client) for your windows storage might help throughput ? my FreeNAS iSCSI mounted drive tests or starwind iSCSI Target are way faster than any of my generic windows shares for sure.

"only 2.2x faster than x264" remember in the specs sheet they do say "*Encoding speed decreases if the speed of reading the hard disk or the Ethernet transfer rate is slow. However this has no impact on the encoded image quality. "

and in the http://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/support/ce10/faq/howto_use.html#q5003
"...The encoding speed seems to be slow. Why?
In CE-10, when the PS3 is used as the accelerator for the H.264 encoding process, a full HD (1920x1080) image can be encoded into 22-23 frames per second. CE-10 achieves high speed processing by transferring each frame data through Ethernet and compressing them in PS.

Therefore, if intended performance is not achieved, the following reasons may be considered:
HDD read capability on PC is not sufficient.
Your Ethernet adapter only supports 100base-T.
PC and PLAYSTAION3 are connected via a network HUB.

In order to realize the high speed encoding and maximize the power of the PS3, you have to use a high speed part as the HDD where movie files are stored or install a RAID-0 storage system and connect the PC and PS3 directly to Gigabit Ethernet using crossover cables.
The read speed of movie files during encoding appears in [Input image read speed (average)] of the status bar; if this value is low, review the items above.
..."

BTW SquallMX, did they use the newest YDL 6.2 on that USB install ?

[lance79]

I've downloaded the english version of codesys, 3 days ago and encoded one bluray movie to avchd.
1080p to 720p conversion at +- 19fps @ best quality... This is realy an amazing encoder.U can input any movie when loading it trough avisynth.. I hope someone is gonna make an free version of this soon with more options, like good bitrate calculation and muxing video/audio to avchd/bluray,subtitles, menu's etc...

Awesome encoder!!

realy worth a try if u own a ps3

greetz,

lance

[benwaggoner]

I've downloaded the english version of codesys, 3 days ago and encoded one bluray movie to avchd.
1080p to 720p conversion at +- 19fps @ best quality...
Best quality as in that encoder's best quality mode, or the best quality of any encoder.

It's good to try and test perf@quality and quality@perf when evaluating hardware encoders, so:

What's the speed difference for two different encoders tuned to achieve the same quality/efficiency target?

What's the quality difference between two different encoders at the same encoding speed target?

So, it'd be interesting how x264's quality would compare calibrated to run at the same speed on the same machine.


Historically hardware-accelerated encoders offered better quality@perf for high-speed encoding, but would hit a maximum perf@quality threshold beyond which it couldn't match the software encoder's quality.

[popper]

regarding perf@quality and quality@perf the ONE THING i really wish someone would also do, is make the time to get a current PPC/Altivec x264 codebase from the x264 GIT http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git&a=search&h=364d7dff8dd96f71465bed10594b9f1e78fe6139&st=commit&s=altivec and COMPARE THAT on the PS3 PPC/Altivec/Cell (its a shame you cant also get,install and run an Authorised PPC/360 linux from MS's new corporate Linux friends for a nominal fee, and run it on an unmodified 360 ,or you could also compare that 3 core 3gig PPC/Altivec with some real tested data sets and options too) running a PPC linux against both these x86 x264 and PPC/Cell CE-10 AVC Encoders.

also doesnt a current ffmpeg-mt ppc exist, i cant seem to find one, that too might be an interesting Encoding app to try for its decoding and Encoding x264lib threads etc run on the PS3 (and chipped 360 PPC linux.... if you have one handy).

it also seems finally that Markos's FreeVec http://www.freevec.org/ SIMD optimised GLIBC replacement has got on to the latest official PPC YDL 6.2, but its unclear if they currently use it in any OS compiles to get any vast speed improvements in any YDL OS/apps or as in this case, the x264/VLC content Encoders etc, if you lance79 can be bothered you might look into that! and report back.

[benwaggoner]

regarding perf@quality and quality@perf the ONE THING i really wish someone would also do, is make the time to get a current PPC/Altivec x264 codebase from the x264 GIT http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git&a=search&h=364d7dff8dd96f71465bed10594b9f1e78fe6139&st=commit&s=altivec and COMPARE THAT on the PS3 PPC/Altivec/Cell (its shame you cant also install and run a PPC linux on an unmodified 360 or you could also compare that 3 core PPC with real tested data sets options too) running a PPC linux against both these x86 x264 and PPC/Cell CE-10 AVC Encoders.
Yeah, I don't think that x264 would be anything special on a Cell without using the SPEs. It's a single core and not that fast. Xbox 360 should be about 3x faster since it has three cores, but even then it's hard to imagine anyone putting in all the Altivec optimzation effort to get it anywhere as close to its hardware potential as it is on x86.

I haven't looked at PPC versus x86/x64 encoder perf for some years now. Is there any reason to think that any PPC product would enable anything interesting compared to i7?

[popper]

Lu-zero has done lots of Altivec optimizations for ffmpeg etc, and Markos continues to slowly optimise the Algorithms for each CPU's Altivec in his codebase above, i assume they dont have any access to the 360's extra set of Altivec+ registers though and its not likely to get an official PPC linux for homebrew use EVER ;) so they probably wont be working on that Altivec+ extension.

i dont know right now if he's done any serious SPE refactoring though, he does say his main platforms chosen are now AltiVec (of course :), SSE (SSE2, SSE3 and possiby SSE4), ARM NEON and Cell SPU. so potentially someone can put/refactor these inside any x264,ffmpeg-mt ppc too.

still, the MS 360 Devs might make the effort and have a serious word with them to see if they can collaberate on producing these far faster/better 360 firmware codecs/containers etc,we are all hopeing to get one day soon....

[wlee15]

Here's Digitalfoundry's take on the encoder, not surprisingly the view is fairly negative.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/codecsys-video-encoding-on-ps3-article

[CruNcher]

no real surprise a lot of H.264 codecs invested research time is still far far away from the codecsys engineers invested time and another far from x264 :D
he could also have tested DivX 7 (Mainconcept) and would see it beats it, interesting would have been if Apples Encoder also beats it or Microsofts ;)

[kolak]

If we're talking about high speed AVC encoding, Cinemacraft HDe is the fastest available encoder. 2x faster than RT for full 1080p source, with top notch quality on 8 core i7 machine.

Andrew

[nm]

If we're talking about high speed AVC encoding, Cinemacraft HDe is the fastest available encoder.

I think you need to present a bit more evidence than one sentence to support this claim. :)

[kolak]

I think you need to present a bit more evidence than one sentence to support this claim. :)

I don't need to- no one on this forum will use this software, becuase it's professional and cost a small fortune. I've seen it on my eyes and don't have to prove it for anyone. It's just an information. Some link if you're realy interested:

http://www.bd-author.com/node/25


Andrew