x264 vs other H.264 encoders.

[Chengbin]

Let the encoder movie studios use for their Blu-ray releases called encoder x (I don't know what they use).

If x264 and encoder x get the same master print of a movie as the source and are asked to encode a 1080p version for Blu-ray. Would x264+avisynth be better than encoder x?

If x264 is better, what makes the movie studios use encoder x?

For x264. what kind of bitrate is need for a 1080p encode to reach transparency? How much difference is there with a 15mbps encode, using very slow x264 settings, and a 30mbps encode that's DXVA compatible?

DS, can you comment on how good the encodes are on a Blu-ray with the amount of bitrate they have? I know it varies, but most Blu-rays are around 25-30mbps.

[kemuri-_9]

x264 can't produce BD compliant streams (missing hrd and slices), so that's why companies use 'x' instead of x264.

[Chengbin]

What do hrd and slices do?

I'm reading a comparison of software H.264 encoders and what features they support on Wikipedia.

x264 doesn't support SI and SP Slices, FMO, ASO, RS, data partitioning, 4:0:0, 4:2:2, 4:4:4, 9-14 bit sample depth, separate color plane coding, and film grain modeling.

Are these features not supported because they're pointless or very difficult to code (or both)?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

What do hrd and slices do?

HRD is related to interlacing. Slices divide each frame into several parts, where each part can be decoded independently.

Using slices allows multi-threaded decoding without processing several frames in parallel. They also allow better error resilience. But they hurt compression efficiency!

The latter is the reason why x264 doesn't use slices anymore...

[Dark Shikari]

Would x264+avisynth be better than encoder x?Yes, regardless of what X is, because there is [in my experience] no encoder in the world that produces better general-purpose output than x264. There are encoders that might be better in specific situations, such as low-delay encoding, 1-pass CBR encoding, or with regards to features x264 doesn't support (4:2:2, or 10-bit). However, none of these are relevant to Blu-ray encoding.If x264 is better, what makes the movie studios use encoder x?Movie studios know absolutely nothing about encoding, as they have proven for a decade now with utterly incompetently encoded DVDs.For x264. what kind of bitrate is need for a 1080p encode to reach transparency?Depends on the quality and graininess of the source.DS, can you comment on how good the encodes are on a Blu-ray with the amount of bitrate they have? I know it varies, but most Blu-rays are around 25-30mbps.Blu-rays are generally crap. In my experience the majority either have way too low a video bitrate (in which case the 1080ps have hardly even 720p of detail) or a terrible source (in which case they're often no better than SD). The encoders they use are generally really terrible, which is why VC-1 is still used: the H.264 encoders are so bad that Microsoft's VC-1 actually gives decent results by comparison.

x264 would require significantly more bitrate for transparency if encoding from a lossless source than from a Blu-ray. Blu-rays generally seem to have very little high-frequency content, almost as if they were lowpassed. I wouldn't be surprised if they were--and even if they aren't, the quantizatoin matrices they use often do so for them anyways.HRD is related to interlacing.No it isn't.

[Manao]

HRD means hypothetical reference decoder. It's a way to check that a stream respect some mandatory constraints (VBV/CPB and DPB). HRD is initialized using picture timing SEI, which x264 (unpatched) doesn't write. As it happens, picture timing SEI, in addition to HRD initialization, also contains the picture structure information - which indicates pulldown / interlacing flags, thus LoRd_Mulder's mistake.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

HRD means hypothetical reference decoder. It's a way to check that a stream respect some mandatory constraints (VBV/CPB and DPB). HRD is initialized using picture timing SEI, which x264 (unpatched) doesn't write. As it happens, picture timing SEI, in addition to HRD initialization, also contains the picture structure information - which indicates pulldown / interlacing flags, thus LoRd_Mulder's mistake.

Oh, I see. With Trahald's "hrd_pulldown" patch, does x264 produce a HRD compliant stream then?

[Manao]

I haven't checked with an analyzer, but it should.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I haven't checked with an analyzer, but it should.

So the lack of slice support is the only thing left that prevents x264 from producing BD compatible streams.

Can slice support be ported back to current x264 in a way that doesn't replace the frame-based multithreading?

[Inspector.Gadget]

Hang on a second. Both MeGUI and BD Rebuilder use x264 to re-encode Blu-ray video for later Blu-ray use. So wouldn't it be correct to say that x264 doesn't support all the features in the spec, rather than that it is unable to produce BD-compatible streams?

[Dark Shikari]

Hang on a second. Both MeGUI and BD Rebuilder use x264 to re-encode Blu-ray video for later Blu-ray use. So wouldn't it be correct to say that x264 doesn't support all the features in the spec, rather than that it is unable to produce BD-compatible streams?No, it can produce BD-compatible streams.

The streams technically don't fall within the spec (no slices), but they work on all the players anyways.

[Fr4nz]

x264 would require significantly more bitrate for transparency if encoding from a lossless source than from a Blu-ray. Blu-rays generally seem to have very little high-frequency content, almost as if they were lowpassed. I wouldn't be surprised if they were--and even if they aren't, the quantizatoin matrices they use often do so for them anyways.No it isn't.

Hi Dark, what is the format for lossless sources that movie studios use?

[Dark Shikari]

Hi Dark, what is the format for lossless sources that movie studios use?Depends. I suspect it's often just raw 10-bit 4:4:4, often stored in proprietary formats like v210 or similar.

[Chengbin]

In my experience the majority either have way too low a video bitrate (in which case the 1080ps have hardly even 720p of detail) or a terrible source (in which case they're often no better than SD). The encoders they use are generally really terrible, which is why VC-1 is still used: the H.264 encoders are so bad that Microsoft's VC-1 actually gives decent results by comparison.

x264 would require significantly more bitrate for transparency if encoding from a lossless source than from a Blu-ray. Blu-rays generally seem to have very little high-frequency content, almost as if they were lowpassed.

I've never seen any Blu-rays that are not significantly better than SD. Most Blu-rays I've seen are excellent 1080p encodes (maybe not for the bitrate, but it definitely looks very good). I'm just curious, what Blu-rays have you seen to make that judgment?

I thought the human eye isn't very sensitive to high frequency content, so encoders can compress HF content harsher and it won't look that bad.

Yes, that's what I mean, from a lossless source. So can you give me a range of bitrates for transparency? Is 40mbps enough?

[Fr4nz]

Depends. I suspect it's often just raw 10-bit 4:4:4, often stored in proprietary formats like v210 or similar.

Thank for your answer. Then another question: in your opinion, what is the (medium) bitrate needed to encode losslessly their sources with their proprietary formats?

[Dark Shikari]

I've never seen any Blu-rays that are not significantly better than SD.Close Encounters of the Third Kind is no better than SD, at least from the screenshots I saw.

Of course, also remember that most DVDs aren't that great either, and so they don't make very good examples of "perfect" SD video.Most Blu-rays I've seen are excellent 1080p encodes (maybe not for the bitrate, but it definitely looks very good). I'm just curious, what Blu-rays have you seen to make that judgment?The worst example I've seen is Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, but all of them in general seem significantly less sharp than lossless footage like parkrun. And I don't have to see them to know that an awful H.264 encoder at 20 megabits cannot make 1080p anywhere near perfect.
I thought the human eye isn't very sensitive to high frequency content, so encoders can compress HF content harsher and it won't look that bad.If define the "B" values as high frequency in the DCT as follows:

A A A A B B B B
A A A A B B B B
A A A A B B B B
A A A A B B B B
B B B B B B B B
B B B B B B B B
B B B B B B B B
B B B B B B B B

And you remove them entirely, the result is exactly equivalent to cutting the resolution of the video in half. Saying "high frequency data isn't important" is equivalent to saying "high resolution video isn't important."Thank for your answer. Then another question: in your opinion, what is the (medium) bitrate needed to encode losslessly their sources with their proprietary formats?Bitrate? Did you read where I said "raw 10-bit 4:4:4"?

[Fr4nz]

Bitrate? Did you read where I said "raw 10-bit 4:4:4"?

Please:

don't be so harsh, I didn't offend you and I was very kind when I made my question to you.

[Dark Shikari]

Please:

don't be so harsh, I didn't offend you and I was very kind when I made my question to you.I didn't mean to offend. I was just pointing you to the relevant information (rather than answering a question that had no real valid answer).

[Fr4nz]

I didn't mean to offend. I was just pointing you to the relevant information (rather than answering a question that had no real valid answer).

Okay :)

[benwaggoner]

Movie studios know absolutely nothing about encoding, as they have proven for a decade now with utterly incompetently encoded DVDs.
I don't think that's fair at all. I've worked with a number of studio compressionists, and the best among them are very good indeed, and have developed some great techniques.

An argument can be made that they're too slow in adoping new encoders; I've seen some oriignal Toshiba MPEG-2 encoders from around the DVD launch still in use. But they have formal QA processes, get mulitple eyes on the encode, etcetera.

That said, different studios and post houses vary in their techniques, and A-list titles get a whole lot more TLC than the long-tail stuff. But I've compared the source with the output for may studio HD titles, and they often verge on the transparent.

Depends on the quality and graininess of the source.Blu-rays are generally crap. In my experience the majority either have way too low a video bitrate (in which case the 1080ps have hardly even 720p of detail) or a terrible source (in which case they're often no better than SD).
Any particular studios/titles you're thinking of for reference?

But yes, source quality is always a problem. And there's the big "grain reduction" debate. In some circles, it is felt that having an HD "pop" results in better reviews from the home theater magazines, and so the masters can wind up denoised and then sharpened. In other cases, too much degrain is used to provide a cleaner image, even if sharpening isn't done.

The encoders they use are generally really terrible, which is why VC-1 is still used: the H.264 encoders are so bad that Microsoft's VC-1 actually gives decent results by comparison.
:).

I think a big part of that is in workflow, particularly the dithering algorithm and management and previewing of segment reencoding. We also tuned it for HD DVD (0.6 sec GOP, peak bitrates below 30 Mbps), making Blu-ray a relatively luxurious spec to work within.

But real-world quality issues are much less a problem of codec than of source and workflow.

Also, why do you think Blu-ray rates are too low? There are plenty with 30 Mbps ABR, with PBR approaching 40 Mbps. That's far more bits/pixel than H.264 gets in other domains. Blu-ray was designed for MPEG-2 bitrates; modern codecs were a bonus taht came later..

x264 would require significantly more bitrate for transparency if encoding from a lossless source than from a Blu-ray. Blu-rays generally seem to have very little high-frequency content, almost as if they were lowpassed. I wouldn't be surprised if they were--and even if they aren't, the quantizatoin matrices they use often do so for them anyways.
Likely aggressive degraining.

That said, it's easy to overestimate how much real "signal" visual detail there really is in a typical 35mm production, particularly anything shot before the last round of low-grain flim stocks or now all-digital workflows. Heck, some of the early digital cinema cameras actually captured at 1280x1080 anamorphic. Lack of detail often reflects the negative more than many realize.

One of the upsides of grain is that the texture adds as lot of perceptual sharpness, one of the reasons VP6 adds it in postprocessing. And so when it gets degrained, the underlying image is revealed as rather soft, hence sharpening that gets applied.

My opinion is that film is film, and people just just get used to it. The goal of compression is to make content "as much like itself as possible" and heavy preprocessing outside of creative intent isn't part of that.

[Dark Shikari]

Also, why do you think Blu-ray rates are too low? There are plenty with 30 Mbps ABR, with PBR approaching 40 Mbps. That's far more bits/pixel than H.264 gets in other domains. Blu-ray was designed for MPEG-2 bitrates; modern codecs were a bonus taht came later.I've seen lists of Blu-ray bitrates, and most seem to be in the mid-20s or even below 20 megabits average. Assuming that many of these encoders are at least 30-70% worse than x264, that surely can't be anywhere near transparent.That said, it's easy to overestimate how much real "signal" visual detail there really is in a typical 35mm production, particularly anything shot before the last round of low-grain flim stocks or now all-digital workflows. Heck, some of the early digital cinema cameras actually captured at 1280x1080 anamorphic. Lack of detail often reflects the negative more than many realize.

One of the upsides of grain is that the texture adds as lot of perceptual sharpness, one of the reasons VP6 adds it in postprocessing. And so when it gets degrained, the underlying image is revealed as rather soft, hence sharpening that gets applied.

My opinion is that film is film, and people just just get used to it. The goal of compression is to make content "as much like itself as possible" and heavy preprocessing outside of creative intent isn't part of that.That's part of the problem as well. They need to start using real HD digital cameras ;)

[Forteen88]

List with bitrate of Blu-ray movies:
http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/

Often pretty low bitrates, as DS says.

EDIT: Blackbeard - MPEG2 13 Mbps :P
300 - VC-1 16.8 Mbps. Pretty low bitrate for such a grainy movie.

[Dark Shikari]

List with bitrate of Blu-ray movies:
http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/

Often pretty low bitrates, as DS says.10.5: Apocalypse MPEG2 1080p 1.78:1 14.9 Mbps :scared:

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Why in the world do they use these low bitrates, if they have an entire 50 GB disc available? So many extras on the disc?

[ajp_anton]

50GB is more expensive than 25GB.
The question is, why don't they use the entire 25/50GB of the disc (including extras)?

[Chengbin]

50GB is more expensive than 25GB.
The question is, why don't they use the entire 25/50GB of the disc (including extras)?

+1

The Dark Knight takes up 37GB on Blu-ray, why can't they use up the full 50GB and give like 30mbps to the movie? Nevertheless the movie looked very good.

[benwaggoner]

I've seen lists of Blu-ray bitrates, and most seem to be in the mid-20s or even below 20 megabits average. Assuming that many of these encoders are at least 30-70% worse than x264, that surely can't be anywhere near transparent.
Why would we assume 30-70% lower? Not arguing, but that seems a pretty specific assumption.

A lot of Blu-ray titles wind up having In-loop deblocking turned off for most of the title in order to eliminate the softening effect. That seems a little...aggressive to me, but that certainly would have an impact.

But anyway, I suspect you'd find that actual discs's defects are found in the IYUV masters more often than not.

But even given 20 Mbps and 70%, and using power of 0.75 as a rule of thumb, that'd be still be 14 Mbps 1080p, equivalent to 7.6 Mbps ABR 720p with x264, which should be well more than ample.

That's part of the problem as well. They need to start using real HD digital cameras ;)
They are, but we're still going to be watching movies shot with all kinds of cameras for decades to come.

Even I find excellent compresibility poor consolation for a bad story or poor acting :).

[Chengbin]

Can a 15mbps H.264 encode match a 40mbps MPEG 2 encode?

[Dark Shikari]

Why would we assume 30-70% lower? Not arguing, but that seems a pretty specific assumption.We know for a fact that many H.264 encoders used in Blu-rays were significantly worse than VC-1. We also know that x264 wipes the floor with VC-1 by a very large margin, so the advantage of x264 over those H.264 encoders must be even greater.

I have seen Blu-rays that don't even use partitions or adaptive transform.

Part of the problem IMO is that Blu-ray requires 1080p, but many sources barely deserve 720p, so they're forced to encode a low bitrate 1080p stream rather than do the correct thing and provide only 720p.But even given 20 Mbps and 70%, and using power of 0.75 as a rule of thumb, that'd be still be 14 Mbps 1080p, equivalent to 7.6 Mbps ABR 720p with x264, which should be well more than ample.14 megabit 1080p with x264 is good, but not perfect: you certainly won't get perfect source transparency at that bitrate, especially for something really grainy like 300.Even I find excellent compresibility poor consolation for a bad story or poor acting :).That's why we compress movies rather than watch them, because they're such a waste of time these days ;)

[IgorC]

Something like this also happens to audio CD.
I think the main reason is piracy.
The best period of CDs was 1995-2002. Pirates weren't so active, there wasn't fast internet. So industy was interesting in quality of production to sell.
Now when CDs sells had fallen musician can't pay for expensive services of high qualified audio and electronic professionals.

There are still musicians who cares about quality but they must manage with limited budget and try to get some incomes from tours, marketing etc...

[CruNcher]

List with bitrate of Blu-ray movies:
http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/

Often pretty low bitrates, as DS says.

EDIT: Blackbeard - MPEG2 13 Mbps :P
300 - VC-1 16.8 Mbps. Pretty low bitrate for such a grainy movie.

Though not seen the master 300 looks good to me :) but it's no secret anymore that x264 can reduce this VC-1 to around 9 mbit without losing any of this quality (utilizing all psy features) which lets you wonder how would a x264 Blu-Ray looked like in comparison utilizing the full 16.8 mbps or even more :D
The problem is we can't imagine as we didn't saw the master ;) but we know that + 8 mbit almost double the bitrate would be hell a lot off additional details that VC-1 must have thrown away here :P (if those detail existed in the first place as we know the grain is artificial and how much more details the camera captured can be only compared on the master)

Though im quite sure if just 1 Studio would decide yeah come on lets test x264 and release 1 Film with it the Feedback from the extreme viewers like on AVS-Forum would be best Blu-Ray ever and Microsoft would shake in their Shoes if the other H.264 studios then change to x264 (though that's just a dream contracts,money and x264 being not commercial backed won't make this happen so soon but who knows maybe some boss eats one day the blue pill and crazy stuff happens) ;)

[Dark Shikari]

Sorry but does it look bad to you i mean 300 looks hell good :)Good?! 300 was covered in blocking in some dark areas.

You can hardly claim that you have enough bitrate when you have grainy blocks decimated to pure-DC blocks in the middle of a low-motion scene.

[benwaggoner]

We know for a fact that many H.264 encoders used in Blu-rays were significantly worse than VC-1. We also know that x264 wipes the floor with VC-1 by a very large margin, so the advantage of x264 over those H.264 encoders must be even greater.
...assuming that the same ratios apply at these higher bitrates and frame sizes, and that it's codec differences and not workflow or preprocessing. Lots of the advanages of H.264 in general matter less as bitrates go up, like CABAC and in-loop deblocking. Plus GOP lengths are short and the VBR/ABR ratio is a lot smaller than for file distribution.

No doubt x264 has a big advantage in "lowest bitrate without objectionable artifacts" but that's not the domain being discussed. I don't know that a good MPEG-2 encoder would have more than a 70% disadvantage at higher bitrates like this.

Part of the problem IMO is that Blu-ray requires 1080p, but many sources barely deserve 720p, so they're forced to encode a low bitrate 1080p stream rather than do the correct thing and provide only 720p.14 megabit 1080p with x264 is good, but not perfect: you certainly won't get perfect source transparency at that bitrate, especially for something really grainy like 300.
But 300 is a pretty extreme edge case; digital production, highly stylized, heavily sharpened and grainy, desatured and colorized. It's fun to do codec testing on it because it makes things so stark, but it's far from typical of general film/video content.

[honai]

Something like this also happens to audio CD.
I think the main reason is piracy.
The best period of CDs was 1995-2002. Pirates weren't so active, there wasn't fast internet. So industy was interesting in quality of production to sell.

No, it wasn't. During 1995 to 2002 the Loudness War was already waging in full force.

I guess in terms of picture quality we are now in the middle of the DNR war.

[Dark Shikari]

...assuming that the same ratios apply at these higher bitrates and frame sizes, and that it's codec differences and not workflow or preprocessing. Lots of the advanages of H.264 in general matter less as bitrates go up, like CABAC and in-loop deblocking. Plus GOP lengths are short and the VBR/ABR ratio is a lot smaller than for file distribution.

No doubt x264 has a big advantage in "lowest bitrate without objectionable artifacts" but that's not the domain being discussed. I don't know that a good MPEG-2 encoder would have more than a 70% disadvantage at higher bitrates like this.I'm not sure I would call 20 megabits that high, especially with such a short GOP length and the kind of restrictions that Blu-ray forces.

From what I've seen Blu-ray quantizers are generally around 15-25, which is well above the range at which CABAC and other such tools become meaningless.

[benwaggoner]

No, it wasn't. During 1995 to 2002 the Loudness War was already waging in full force.

I guess in terms of picture quality we are now in the middle of the DNR war.
The middle? I hope we're near the end; this started a decade ago with DVD. We can pick up on it more with HD, but DVDs got tons of denoising (and arguablly needed it given MPEG-2).

But at 1080p we're near the perceivable "real" detail for most flim sources. it's not like you can pick out small objects better in a 4K than a 1080p master for all but a very few digital productions, but the grain is actually resolvable specs instead of a scaled-down texture or noise like with 480p.

[shon3i]

Can a 15mbps H.264 encode match a 40mbps MPEG 2 encode?
No, H264 is rougly 30% better than MPEG2 in very low bitrates, so on high bitrates, H264 is still better but by invisible margin, i'd say at <25mbps MPEG2 vs H264 is totaly transparent each other, but can depend on implementation, at 30mbps i think there is no way to see any difference with any of H264, VC-1, MPEG2 implementation.

[honai]

The middle? I hope we're near the end; this started a decade ago with DVD. We can pick up on it more with HD, but DVDs got tons of denoising (and arguablly needed it given MPEG-2).

But at 1080p we're near the perceivable "real" detail for most flim sources. it's not like you can pick out small objects better in a 4K than a 1080p master for all but a very few digital productions, but the grain is actually resolvable specs instead of a scaled-down texture or noise like with 480p.

Not sure I understood you correctly, but I hope we can agree that almost all Universal titles on HD DVD/Blu-ray have excessive DNR applied that indeed removes detail, not film grain. And given the fact that most reviewers point this out but still Universal titles sell very well, I don't think anything is going to change about this practice in the foreseeable future.

Or do you have inside knowledge to the contrary?

[benwaggoner]

Why in the world do they use these low bitrates, if they have an entire 50 GB disc available? So many extras on the disc?
I think real-world bitrates are quite a bit higher than that on average. There's always edge cases for whatever reasons, but we should be looking at average discs if we're talking about BD in general.

Blu-ray also lacks a high fidelity manadatory audio codec, so a lot of discs get AC-3 640 Kbps + PCM, which eats up a lot of capacity.

[benwaggoner]

Not sure I understood you correctly, but I hope we can agree that almost all Universal titles on HD DVD/Blu-ray have excessive DNR applied that indeed removes detail, not film grain. And given the fact that most reviewers point this out but still Universal titles sell very well, I don't think anything is going to change about this practice in the foreseeable future.

Or do you have inside knowledge to the contrary?
As a matter of policy I can't really talk about the particulars of particular studios or titles I've worked on.

I do agree that overuse of DNR is a problem in the industry, and I fear we're encouraging viewers to adopt an inappropraite aesthetic expectation for what HD should look like.

[benwaggoner]

No, H264 is rougly 30% better than MPEG2 in very low bitrates, so on high bitrates, H264 is still better but by invisible margin, i'd say at <25mbps MPEG2 vs H264 is totaly transparent each other, but can depend on implementation, at 30mbps i think there is no way to see any difference with any of H264, VC-1, MPEG2 implementation.
30%? That's far, far too low. MPEG-4 pt 2 ASP was perhaps only 30% better than MPEG-2, but even VC-1 can outperform MPEG-2 by 2x or more for movie content at moderate bitrates.

[Dark Shikari]

No, H264 is rougly 30% better than MPEG2 in very low bitratesAre you nuts? Even in PSNR, I've seen x264 beat Xvid by over 100% at medium bitrates. And surely you wouldn't say MPEG-2 is better than Xvid.

Heck, MPEG-4 ASP's entropy coding advantage over MPEG-2 alone might even more than 30%.

[CruNcher]

hehe look @ simps his current 640x encode now do the same with hcenc and look at the quality difference i mean not being able to decipher any object anymore because of all the blocks is surely more then 30% :P

[Chengbin]

DS, with RDRC, do you think 30-35mbps is enough for transparency for most 1080p encodes?

Would you use RDRC if you're a compressionist for a studio?

Is 40mbps a hard limit for Blu-ray players? Can you go over 40mbps for peaks, or you must VBV it at 40mbps?

[Dark Shikari]

Would you use RDRC if you're a compressionist for a studio?No, it's not stable enough visually, especially in fades. Plus, the entire concept of RDRC is antithesis to Blu-ray encoding; in Blu-ray encoding you want good quality everywhere, while RDRC is built around sacrificing quality in the places that have the least temporal impact.

[Chengbin]

I thought it was a very bad idea to turn off in-loop deblocking. Why is some blu-rays have deblocking disabled? Is it another example of the studio's stupidity in video encoding?

[Dark Shikari]

I thought it was a very bad idea to turn off in-loop deblocking. Why is some blu-rays have deblocking disabled? Is it another example of the studio's stupidity in video encoding?At such low quantizers, it doesn't hurt too much. And it's a great way of creating fake sharpness if you don't have a good enough encoder to do it properly.

[benwaggoner]

I thought it was a very bad idea to turn off in-loop deblocking. Why is some blu-rays have deblocking disabled? Is it another example of the studio's stupidity in video encoding?
The feeling is that the loop filter increases softness too much. It'd be turned on scene-by-scene as needed vai segment reencoding.

This seems unlikely to me, but this is what I'm told. This was presented as a feature by Sony at NAB when describing thier updated encoder.

Now, it is definitely true that there have been H.264 encoders where this was an issue several years ago (like the first DVD Forum tests where H.264 came in behind MPEG-2 and VC-1), but since the strength is both adjustible and QP-adaptive, I don't see how turning it off entirely makes sense due to a limitation of the bitstream itself.

I'd say that in-loop debocking is the single best feature of H.264, followed by CABAC. The total of the rest of the efficency gains are probably less than those two put together.


...perhaps it also makes decoding in software eaiser? Although dropping CABAC would be a bigger help there with less efficiency impact at these bitrates.

[Chengbin]

...perhaps it also makes decoding in software eaiser? Although dropping CABAC would be a bigger help there with less efficiency impact at these bitrates.

Wouldn't every Blu-ray player must be able to decode 40mbps H.264? Why would the difficulty of decoding matter?

[benwaggoner]

Wouldn't every Blu-ray player must be able to decode 40mbps H.264? Why would the difficulty of decoding matter?
Well, yes they'd need to be able to decode it, but the spec doesn't say how many fps they need to actually get to the screen :).

But no, that doesn't make much sense to me anyway. And if they're struggling with 1080p24, 1080i30 would be completely out of reach.

[Chengbin]

Why would interlace video be harder to decode?

Why would you encode interlace anyway?

[benwaggoner]

Why would interlace video be harder to decode?
First, it's 30 fps instead of 24 fps.

Second, there's an overhead in dealing with MBAFF and all that, and then recostructing 60p video out of it for display

Why would you encode interlace anyway?
If the source is 1080i.

So far, most 1080i Blu-ray has been concert videos or nature programming. Hopefully they'll move to 720p60 production or 1080p60. In the flat-screen era, 720p60 has as much better chance of a high quality presentation than 1080i30.

[Chengbin]

If the source is 1080i.

So far, most 1080i Blu-ray has been concert videos or nature programming. Hopefully they'll move to 720p60 production or 1080p60. In the flat-screen era, 720p60 has as much better chance of a high quality presentation than 1080i30.

What I mean was, why would the videos be interlaced? Does interlace offer any advantage of some sort?

[benwaggoner]

What I mean was, why would the videos be interlaced? Does interlace offer any advantage of some sort?
No, interlaced has no practical utility in the modern era, since all our displays and imagers are progressive. Anything shot in 1080i would be better in 1080p24/30 or 720p60.

Interlaced is the new standard def; it's anti-future proofing your content.

It's just a matter of a half-century of industry momentum being hard to reverse. Sony in particular has been fighting for years to keep interlaced alive, presumbably because they feel they have a differential advantage in doing it well.

Tragically, the big reason that we have interlaced in HD at all is because the TV and Broadcast comapnies thought that real-time deinterlacing would be too hard for the PC industry to do, and would keep PC/TV convergence from eating their lunch.

Fast forward to today, and PCs have better deinterlacing than most TVs!


My book has a sidebar threating public shame to any reader discovered creating any new interlaced content :).

[*.mp4 guy]

This is relevant (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=144068&page=1). Also, I generally agree with Dark Shikari.

[shon3i]

30%? That's far, far too low. MPEG-4 pt 2 ASP was perhaps only 30% better than MPEG-2, but even VC-1 can outperform MPEG-2 by 2x or more for movie content at moderate bitrates.

Are you nuts? Even in PSNR, I've seen x264 beat Xvid by over 100% at medium bitrates. And surely you wouldn't say MPEG-2 is better than Xvid.

Heck, MPEG-4 ASP's entropy coding advantage over MPEG-2 alone might even more than 30%.

Sorry guys my mistake :), i totally mix things

Blu-ray also lacks a high fidelity manadatory audio codec, so a lot of discs get AC-3 640 Kbps + PCM, which eats up a lot of capacity.Agree, well DD + was a good way to send the DTS into past. But someone probably pay for that :D

[benwaggoner]

Agree, well DD + was a good way to send the DTS into past. But someone probably pay for that :D
Well, DTS is mandatory in Blu-ray (it has to at least decode it to stereo analog output), so it's now feasible to do DTS-only discs, which wasn't true with DVD. So if anything it's slightly better for them on a standards level. DD+ isn't mandatory, however, and the Blu-ray implementation is this lame enhancement layer model that only is useful for adding two channels to a AC-3 5.1 to make 7.1. And TrueHD on Blu-ray is just a AC-3 stream and a lossless stream muxed together.

BD does support AC-3 up to 640 Kbps, which is a nice improvement over DVD's 448 Kbps max, particularly for music-centric content. It helps the hi-hats; high frequency random percussion have always been the biggest challenge for DCT-based audio codecs.

I miss HD DVD, which was better designed in so many ways. Mandatory DD+ and TrueHD, so you could have a single 1.5 Mbps DD+ audio track for 20-bit output.

[tetsuo55]

What are your opinions on superbit DVD's?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbit

If i understand Dark Shikari correctly, assuming good source sime of these should rival the average bluray.

[Fr4nz]

Well, DTS is mandatory in Blu-ray (it has to at least decode it to stereo analog output), so it's now feasible to do DTS-only discs, which wasn't true with DVD. So if anything it's slightly better for them on a standards level. DD+ isn't mandatory, however, and the Blu-ray implementation is this lame enhancement layer model that only is useful for adding two channels to a AC-3 5.1 to make 7.1. And TrueHD on Blu-ray is just a AC-3 stream and a lossless stream muxed together.

BD does support AC-3 up to 640 Kbps, which is a nice improvement over DVD's 448 Kbps max, particularly for music-centric content. It helps the hi-hats; high frequency random percussion have always been the biggest challenge for DCT-based audio codecs.

I miss HD DVD, which was better designed in so many ways. Mandatory DD+ and TrueHD, so you could have a single 1.5 Mbps DD+ audio track for 20-bit output.

Ben, speaking of opensource AC3 encoders, did you ever try Aften? What do you think about that? Is it a good encoder?

[Dark Shikari]

What are your opinions on superbit DVD's?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbit

If i understand Dark Shikari correctly, assuming good source sime of these should rival the average bluray.Why would they? Going from 4 megabit to 6 megabit doesn't magically make them have 720p-1080p of detail.

[tetsuo55]

Why would they? Going from 4 megabit to 6 megabit doesn't magically make them have 720p-1080p of detail.

You said this:


Blu-rays are generally crap. In my experience the majority either have way too low a video bitrate (in which case the 1080ps have hardly even 720p of detail) or a terrible source (in which case they're often no better than SD).

You must have meant something different from what i read:

Good source, high quality DVD can rival a bad source bad quality Blu-ray

[Dark Shikari]

You must have meant something different from what i read:

Good source, high quality DVD can rival a bad source bad quality Blu-rayIn theory, but usually if the Blu-ray's source is bad, the DVD's source is no better.

[benwaggoner]

What are your opinions on superbit DVD's?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbit#Superbit_Deluxe_.282-Disc.29
Marketecture for the most part. A 2-disc set is barely more expensive in total costs than a single-disc, so if extras had any impact on video quality, you'd should just punt them to a second disc. Having a brand for high-quality compression leaves me asking what's up with their other discs.

The primary limit for DVD qualty is PBR, not ABR in most cases. And the SuperBit discs were AC-3 + DTS, using a lot of bits that way, and extra audio is right off the top of PBR as well as ABR.

Other than for concert videos, I've never found that DTS's minor-at-best quality improvement was worth the impact on video quality for DVD. That said, I'm more of a video guy than an audio guy :). DTS's 1.5 Mbps mode is pretty impressive, but DVDs almost always used the half-rate mode due to space reasons.

So if I was going to use DTS on DVD, I'd only both to use it at 1.5, with content where the audio merited it and the video could afford it. Fingers crossed for 24p, not 30i :). Unfortunately there's a lot of bad-looking concert DVDs shot 30i with lots of strobes etcetera. Makes for a good DCT and quantization tutorial...

[benwaggoner]

In theory, but usually if the Blu-ray's source is bad, the DVD's source is no better.
Well, there's a couple of things going on there.

If we consider grain "noise" the SNR of film goes down as the frame size goes up, as frequency detail is increasingly dominated by grain. So simply scaling down from 1080p to 480p (that's 1/6th the pixels) averages out that grain and so results in a better SNR all by itself.

We wouldn't expect a given 16x16 block of SD to look like a 16x16 block of HD. I think its that expectation that's driving a lot of this degraining/sharpening trend.

But, depending on your expectations, the HD master can look a lot "worse" than a SD downconverted version of it, even without any image processing, and even with both being as accurate to the source as possible.

So we can definitely have cases where a BD doesn't appear to be that much more detailed than the DVD of the same content, and it just reflecting that the source was soft and grainy, not any defect in preprocessing or compression.

This is going to be more true as we get into older, indie, and particuarly 16mm shot content. Something like the 40 Year Old Virgin wasn't a tentpole big-budget studio film when they were making it, although it turned out to be quite popular. I doubt it got a digital intermediate or a lot of CGI VFX, certainly. So the interpositive was probably pretty grainy and without the kind of detail we're going to see in a Transformers 2 or whatever.

I haven't seen that disc, so it's perfectly plausible that they messed it up further trying to make it not like that. But there's no way that it was going to turn out like a film with a $40M post budget where every frame with through digital grading. Pixel-perfect is just not going to be possible for 95% of content, and we really don't want the studios thinking that overprocessed look is neccesary for marketing reasons.

Sometimes, we just have to lean back, stop focusing on the pixels, and enjoy the movie. Even if that means pushing our couch back a little further from the screen :).

[shon3i]

Well, DTS is mandatory in Blu-ray (it has to at least decode it to stereo analog output), so it's now feasible to do DTS-only discs, which wasn't true with DVD. So if anything it's slightly better for them on a standards level. DD+ isn't mandatory, however, and the Blu-ray implementation is this lame enhancement layer model that only is useful for adding two channels to a AC-3 5.1 to make 7.1. And TrueHD on Blu-ray is just a AC-3 stream and a lossless stream muxed together.sadly but true

I miss HD DVD, which was better designed in so many ways. Mandatory DD+ and TrueHD, so you could have a single 1.5 Mbps DD+ audio track for 20-bit output.Well yes, realy shame on BD side.

Anyway since you know many details :) about BD and HDDVD, did is somewhere AAC mentioned as at least option codec? in some alfa stages of BD or HDDVD discs?

[Lyris]

I thought the human eye isn't very sensitive to high frequency contentThis argument was used in justifying the routine low-pass filtering of just about every DVD-Video encode ever made, and I've always thought it was bunk.

But yes, source quality is always a problem. And there's the big "grain reduction" debate. In some circles, it is felt that having an HD "pop" results in better reviews from the home theater magazines, and so the masters can wind up denoised and then sharpened. In other cases,
It's a scary world where magazine reviewers are allowed to dictate content. Yes there are some good ones, but I've also read some truly incompetent video quality analysis from people absuing their position.

What are your opinions on superbit DVD's?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbit

If i understand Dark Shikari correctly, assuming good source sime of these should rival the average bluray.
I know you didn't ask me :) but I'll add my 2c. Some of the SuperBit titles were certainly pre-filtered less than other titles so did indeed have more resolvable detail. But in the end, as others have alluded to, it became a marketing exercise. There's a truly dreadful release of "Leon: The Professional" which is branded as SuperBit.

One last thing which people here may be forgetting: the perceived quality varies so, so much depending on the display device, and how it's set up. My own projector's optics do a fantastic job of masking compression artefacts in 1080p sources (which is why I use it to enjoy films... scrutinising their video quality is best done elsewhere).

Movie studios know absolutely nothing about encoding, as they have proven for a decade now with utterly incompetently encoded DVDs.
I wouldn't like to say they know nothing about encoding, but I wholeheartedly agree with the latter part. I would hope their inability to take MPEG-2 to its max potential would be some sort of internal bureaucracy rather than out-and-out incompetence.

[Dark Shikari]

I wouldn't like to say they know nothing about encoding, but I wholeheartedly agree with the latter part. I would hope their inability to take MPEG-2 to its max potential would be some sort of internal bureaucracy rather than out-and-out incompetence.Well, somewhere between the hard telecining, field-blending, double telecine, chroma bleeding, rainbowing, and outright epic failures like this (http://i39.tinypic.com/2uhsept.png), I think they're pretty incompetent.

[Lyris]

Agreed. That looks like a difficult scene, but there's no excuse for artefacts that bad on a legitimate DVD.

Lucky you're in the US, or you could have added "crappy standards conversion performed on film material that should not have been standards converted in the first place" to your list. Have you seen some of the UK Studio Ghibli DVDs? Yikes....

[CruNcher]

In the test phase of WMVHD (preparing for VC-1) studios sourced out the Encoding into Romania (Paramount) and the quality was nice even with the low capabilities of WMV :P so i really wonder what goes wrong in Hollywood, the 40 Virgin Blu-Ray VHS should have made big news and Hurt them really bad for fooling customers it's so hilarious.
I still have the 720p WMVHD of Tomb-Raider here and the Grain amount is fantastic if i look @ some Blu-Rays i feel like in the past and 40 YAV blows it :D. They shouldn't try to compensate bad Encoders they should start replacing them and if they even decide for Commercial stuff like from Ateme or Mainconcept geez still better then what you see these days used from the so called ELITE Companies with the big money in the back.
Superbit is also such a customer fooling selling higher bitrate as new technology is the master fool but these days you get fooled by everyone that's also why i started to look more into the Indie movie world im so pissed of Hollywood and the movies quality is so low now even the final output quality starts to suffer for the last saved buck (and i really wonder what buck try to save with 40 YAV sorry it's unacceptable if i had been the compressionist in charge of that Blu-Ray i would have quit the next day, the day before i would have gone right into the boss office and told him that wouldn't work the quality will be nothing near HD we gonna make fools out of ourselves). Executives should get replaced fast and new fresh people should take over and bring back Hollywood. I would have even told the boss i work these 3 days for free on it you dont have to pay me just to save them from these mess.

The only one that are Happy here are Microsoft currently winning this war again by being much more clever then the rest it sucks now Microsoft could try to sell the other H.264 studios their Framework with very special advertising i hate all those that drive H.264 into the Joke area and make it so easy for Microsoft to take over.

They could startup a new Marketing Campaign and mark these Blu-Rays as Recession HD Quality (RHD) :P

[benwaggoner]

Agreed. That looks like a difficult scene, but there's no excuse for artefacts that bad on a legitimate DVD.
Who was the post house on that title? I agree it doesn't look good, but that's doesn't look like a major studio disc.

Lucky you're in the US, or you could have added "crappy standards conversion performed on film material that should not have been standards converted in the first place" to your list. Have you seen some of the UK Studio Ghibli DVDs? Yikes....
Oh, you mean 24p to 23.976 to 3:2 to 60i to 50i conversion?

There is a ciricle of hell for people who do that.

Back around '99-'00 we had a contract to do a bunch of music videos, many of which came from Beggars Banquet in the UK. So what we had was stuff shot 24p, edited 30i, converted to 25i, and then captured.

And they had the gall to complain that the motion wasn't smooth! I told them that all they had to do was get us the original NTSC D1 tapes before the PAL conversion. I even offered them a discount. Turns out they didn't care all that much...

As a professional compressionist, I'd say the single most valuabele thing you can have is a good relationship with the archive librarians so you can get the real version of the piece the sales guy sent you a VHS tape of.

[Dark Shikari]

Who was the post house on that title? I agree it doesn't look good, but that's doesn't look like a major studio disc.I think Bandai did the R1 release.

Unsurprisingly, R2 looked far better.

[benwaggoner]

In the test phase of WMVHD (preparing for VC-1) studios sourced out the Encoding into Romania (Paramount) and the quality was nice even with the low capabilities of WMV :P
Yeah, that was a really paleolithic encoder back in 2004. Only 1-pass CBR wouldn't drop frames in some cases, B-frames weren't implemented yet, no chroma search, I don't even know if in-loop deblocking was on for higher bitrates.

We can do in 4 Mbps VBR what took 8 Mbps back then, via improved tooling.

so i really wonder what goes wrong in Hollywood currently though the 40 Virgin Blu-Ray VHS should have made big news and Hurt them really bad for fooling customers it's so hillarious. I still have the 720p WMVHD of Tomb-Raider here and the Grain amount is fantastic if i look @ some Blu-Rays i feel like in the past and 40 YAV blows it :D. They shouldn't try to compensate bad Encoders they should start replacing them and if they even decide for Commercial stuff like from Ateme or Mainconcept geez still better then what you see these days used from the so called ELITE Companies with the big money in the back.
Tomb Raider was an A-list action title with lots of VFX, so we'd absolutley expect it to have a much more detailed, low-grain master. Among other things, it's a lot easier to do effects matching with lower grain, so those pictures have long paid extra for lower-grain negatives, and light accordingly.

[kolak]

I've seen lists of Blu-ray bitrates, and most seem to be in the mid-20s or even below 20 megabits average. Assuming that many of these encoders are at least 30-70% worse than x264, that surely can't be anywhere near transparent.That's part of the problem as well. They need to start using real HD digital cameras ;)

Which of these "many" AVC encoders used by the studios are 30% to 70% worse than x264????
I know most of them and none of them is even 30% worse than x264 and saying 70% makes your statement radiculous.

Just to note- we're not talking about encodes <15Mbit average, but around 25Mbit average.

[Chengbin]

I'm a bit of a noob in this, but what is DNR and VFX?

[kolak]

No, H264 is rougly 30% better than MPEG2 in very low bitrates, so on high bitrates, H264 is still better but by invisible margin, i'd say at <25mbps MPEG2 vs H264 is totaly transparent each other, but can depend on implementation, at 30mbps i think there is no way to see any difference with any of H264, VC-1, MPEG2 implementation.

Not true- definatelly not for interlaced stuff.

[benwaggoner]

I'm a bit of a noob in this, but what is DNR and VFX?
Sorry.

DNR=Digital Noise Reduction

VFX=Visual Effects (aka "special effects")

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

Movie studios know absolutely nothing about encoding, as they have proven for a decade now with utterly incompetently encoded DVDs.

You can say that again. My jaw just dropped when I watched the DVD version of The Dark Knight a while back. I mean, DVD is ~10 years old and some people still cant put out a decent quality encode? The Blu-ray version was awesome though.

[shon3i]

Not true- definatelly not for interlaced stuff.
I alredy said that i mixed stuff about percents http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1289759#post1289759, but i am still convinced that any encoder at 30mbps can not make poor quality(if is everything normal with implementation), and still MPEG2 can probably keep higher fidelity easier than others, like for example DTS 1.5 comparing to DD 448/640 in most cases. I don't know about interlaced stuff because i always deinterlace.

[Lyris]

@Yoshiyuki Blade: Dark Knight, even the BD was sub-optimal, though.

Oh, you mean 24p to 23.976 to 3:2 to 60i to 50i conversion?
I've seen that done too, but in this case, it was 24p -> 50i with field blending. Nothing like as bad as that nightmare scenario that you describe, but still, I'd rather have nice clean, whole frames, even if it means the film is running one frame too fast.

The PAL version of "Mamma Mia" looks like it was done the way you describe, understandably it wasn't done at 2:2 25fps to preserve the speed of the music, but if they absolutely have to use frame interpolation on a movie, you'd think they'd do it with some better hardware. This was done by Deluxe as well, not a rinky dink authoring house.

I think Bandai did the R1 release.
Any idea if Bandai encode and author in-house?

[benwaggoner]

I've seen that done too, but in this case, it was 24p -> 50i with field blending. Nothing like as bad as that nightmare scenario that you describe, but still, I'd rather have nice clean, whole frames, even if it means the film is running one frame too fast.
Oh, field blending is definitely an act of callous evil as well.
The only good way to do 24p on PAL is 4% speedup to 25p.

And converting from SD NTSC itself is a crime, since it's 720x480 to 720x576, and hence a vertical stretch.

The PAL version of "Mamma Mia" looks like it was done the way you describe, understandably it wasn't done at 2:2 25fps to preserve the speed of the music, but if they absolutely have to use frame interpolation on a movie, you'd think they'd do it with some better hardware. This was done by Deluxe as well, not a rinky dink authoring house.
Deluxe is normally pretty good. But yeah, a musical's a hard one.

PAL HD supports 30i and hence 24p content, so the Blu-ray should be good. But that kind of format conversion really merits a good motion-adaptive conversion, even if it's a few weeks of software rendering with scene-by-scene tweaking.

I'm sure it's a big-selling title, so they should have had the budget.


Any idea if Bandai encode and author in-house?
Bandai Digital's got a pretty impressive operation these days (and a very cool office! Full-sized Gundam in the conference room), but I don't know how old that disc is.

Also, foreign-market discs might get outsourced anyway. The Japanese version could well have been higher quality.

[benwaggoner]

I alredy said that i mixed stuff about percents http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1289759#post1289759, but i am still convinced that any encoder at 30mbps can not make poor quality(if is everything normal with implementation), and still MPEG2 can probably keep higher fidelity easier than others, like for example DTS 1.5 comparing to DD 448/640 in most cases. I don't know about interlaced stuff because i always deinterlace.
You may be overestimating MPEG-2. I've got 1080i content I can't even get an ATSC compatible mux out of at 18 Mbps CBR.

1080p24 30 Mbps ABR is generally good, but 1080i30 is at least 50% more challenging to encode, and typically is full frame so you don't get off the hook with letterboxing.

I don't know if any MPEG-2 enocder at 40 Mbps could make the HBO logo look good, with that fade in from static.

[Chengbin]

I alredy said that i mixed stuff about percents http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1289759#post1289759, but i am still convinced that any encoder at 30mbps can not make poor quality(if is everything normal with implementation), and still MPEG2 can probably keep higher fidelity easier than others, like for example DTS 1.5 comparing to DD 448/640 in most cases. I don't know about interlaced stuff because i always deinterlace.

I have to agree with Ben. You are way overestimating MPEG 2. For the hell of it, I played with hcenc. The quality was terrible! MPEG 2 needed about 5 times more bitrate to look as good as H.264. MPEG 2 is really an outdated format. I don't know why the hell did they allow MPEG 2 to be on the Blu-ray specs. It is SO BAD compared to H.264.

[kemuri-_9]

I don't know why the hell did they allow MPEG 2 to be on the Blu-ray specs. It is SO BAD compared to H.264.

I would say they allowed it for the reasons of

A. guarantee that BD players would be backwards compatible with DVDs - to smooth things over for the consumer side transition to BD.
- let's not repeat that VHS -> DVD transition where VHS's became useless with the new dvd players (until the combo players came around, but those got clunky too)

B. smooth out the transition to BD on the production side, as companies (likely) needed to purchase and understand new encoding tools for VC-1/AVC
- and as everyone knows you can't fully understand an unfamiliar codec within the period of a few days.

[Chengbin]

What makes x264 better than other H.264 encoders?

More specifically, what does x264 have that makes it output such nice quality videos? Or, why are other encoders crap?

[Dark Shikari]

What makes x264 better than other H.264 encoders?

More specifically, what does x264 have that makes it output such nice quality videos? Or, why are other encoders crap?Many encoders don't go beyond basic heuristic-based mode decision (SAD at best) and have very limited analysis based on algorithms from the 80s and 90s. x264, like other Pretty Good Encoders (Mainconcept, JM, etc) performs significantly more analysis with better algorithms and heuristics. This is generally what sets apart Pretty Good Encoders from the general crap that's out there.

Part of this is just that the knowledge to build good encoders is surprisingly hard to come by, since 99% of academic papers on the topic are crap and those who know how to build good ones rarely advertise the information.

What brings one from Pretty Good to Very Good is psy optimizations (AQ, psy-RD, etc).

[benwaggoner]

I would say they allowed it for the reasons of

A. guarantee that BD players would be backwards compatible with DVDs - to smooth things over for the consumer side transition to BD.
- let's not repeat that VHS -> DVD transition where VHS's became useless with the new dvd players (until the combo players came around, but those got clunky too)
Clearly Blu-ray players would need a MPEG-2 decoder in order to play back DVDs.

B. smooth out the transition to BD on the production side, as companies (likely) needed to purchase and understand new encoding tools for VC-1/AVC
- and as everyone knows you can't fully understand an unfamiliar codec within the period of a few days.
Well, that wasn't really a factor. HD DVD launched before BD, and virtually all titles were H.264 or VC-1 from day 1 there. It was pretty funny to see BD launch some months later with a lot of lousy looking MPEG-2 25 GB discs, totally invaldiating the whole "only BD can give good quality with 50 GB and 40 Mbps!" claims

Lots of the weirdness from Blu-ray is that it wasn't really designed for packaged media. The orginal concept was to replicate the broadcast-to-DVD-recorders then popular in the Japanese market into the digital broadcasting HD era. So, Blu-ray was a recordable medium originally, with the goal of being ale to record ATSC/DVB bitstreams straight to disc. Players capable of that launched in Japan before BD Movie players, and turned out to be BD Movie incompatible down the road. And a lot of the replication issues BD had to deal with came from making a recordable media into a replicatible one. Ironically, BD's still not very affordable as a writable media either; DVD and HD are both offer better $/GB, with flash storage catching up quickly.

BD was originally going to be MPEG-2 only, in fact. Once HD DVD announced VC-1 and H.264 support, BD eventually had to add the advanced codecs, as 30 GB of VC-1 or H.264 would give a lot more runtime than 50 GB of MPEG-2.

[Comatose]

Is this where I start hating Sony?

[Mr VacBob]

Any idea if Bandai encode and author in-house?

SpeeDVD (http://www.speedvd.com/) did it; I think Funimation is the only US company that can afford to do their own DVD production.

Usually you can blame this on bad masters, but in this case the DVD goes down to QP31 across the entire scene. I wonder how many of the other 99% of DVDs would look better if they'd just fix the hard-telecining, though.

[Snowknight26]

I've never seen any Blu-rays that are not significantly better than SD.

Doesn't mean they don't exist.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14474813#post14474813

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/index.php?full=1&vergleich=escape_from_new_york

[benwaggoner]

Is this where I start hating Sony?
Start? No :).

I shouldn't rag on Sony too much. Their contributions to video certainly are a net positive. But as Overdog they've certainly done more than any other company to:

Slow down the inevitable and neccessary death of interlaced
Enforce tiering of product features for consumer/industrial/professional content creation, even on the part of other companies
Make software-based workflows needlessly painful and expensive.
Purchase victory for Blu-ray without addressing its limitations, essentially blocking off short-run optical disc business models we had for DVD.


But they gave us the Trinitron and HDCAM-SR too, and Vegas is quite a nice product.

[Chengbin]

OK, let's change the negative atmosphere in this thread.

What are some of the best Blu-ray transfers you've seen?

For me, the best was Kung Fu Panda. Unbelievable detail, stunning colors, the movie just looks amazing in 1080p. Wall-E was stunning as well. Jumper is probably the best camera shot movie I've seen on Blu-ray (partly because the video is 34mbps, if I remember correctly)

[tetsuo55]

OK, let's change the negative atmosphere in this thread.

What are some of the best Blu-ray transfers you've seen?

For me, the best was Kung Fu Panda. Unbelievable detail, stunning colors, the movie just looks amazing in 1080p. Wall-E was stunning as well. Jumper is probably the best camera shot movie I've seen on Blu-ray (partly because the video is 34mbps, if I remember correctly)

I use jumper as my main test movie, especially because the first scene has a difficult pan and ends with the sun shining into the camera

[kolak]

I use jumper as my main test movie, especially because the first scene has a difficult pan and ends with the sun shining into the camera

Disney does it properly- they have people who knows how to use Cinemacraft HD. Most of their stuff is done with Cinemacraft HD and high bitrate and does look very good. It's not always a case with other studios unfortunately:(

[Daiz]

Speaking of DVD authoring, how about double hard telecined (or simply hard telecined, I don't remember) video with 60i credits credits overlayed on top of it? And then having the resulting mess being just purely decimated to 25fps?

I haven't witnessed this myself but I heard about this being the case for an Australian anime DVD. I can only imagine the kind of horror it would be.

[benwaggoner]

Disney does it properly- they have people who knows how to use Cinemacraft HD. Most of their stuff is done with Cinemacraft HD and high bitrate and does look very good. It's not always a case with other studios unfortunately:(
Disney also gets to encode a lot of animated content, which (if recent) is noise free.

Plus Disney has a lot of respect for their masters these days, and care a lot about presentation quality.

...making up for the era when they'd taken 4:3 (pre-TV) movies, cropped them to 1.85:1 for theatrical re-release, and then pan and scaned THOSE for the VHS release...

[Lyris]

PAL HD supports 30i and hence 24p content, so the Blu-ray should be good. But that kind of format conversion really merits a good motion-adaptive conversion, even if it's a few weeks of software rendering with scene-by-scene tweaking.
My thoughts exactly. The DVD reminded me of the standards conversions I used to watch in the 1990s on TV here.

Fortunately, the BD is as you'd expect, 24p/60hz centric.

OK, let's change the negative atmosphere in this thread.

What are some of the best Blu-ray transfers you've seen?

For me, the best was Kung Fu Panda. Unbelievable detail,Really? The entire thing is low-pass filtered (http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/hdcaptures/panda13.jpg) and lacks the finest detail possible. It still looks good, of course, but it could have been better. The little wrinkle (http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/hdcaptures/panda1.jpg) at the top and bottom of the active picture area and around what were once clean edges is the giveaway.

The Simpsons Movie has the same problem. I wonder if the HD version of Cinema Craft has the filter turned on by default like the SD version...

One of my favourite Blu-ray Discs is Warner's "How The West Was Won". Detail down to the single pixel level, which is surprising for Warner Home Video. http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/hdcaptures/west11.jpg

Speaking of DVD authoring, how about double hard telecined (or simply hard telecined, I don't remember) video with 60i credits credits overlayed on top of it? And then having the resulting mess being just purely decimated to 25fps?
(Facepalm)

Disney also gets to encode a lot of animated content, which (if recent) is noise free.
Even their old material has been degrained (very well for the most part though, which makes a change) to the point of looking weird when it's projected. Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty look great for the most part, but not great in the way they "should"...

[Inspector.Gadget]

Really? The entire thing is low-pass filtered and lacks the finest detail possible. It still looks good, of course, but it could have been better. The little wrinkle at the top and bottom of the active picture area and around what were once clean edges is the giveaway.

That little dark line about 4px in from the actual black border is caused by low-pass filtering? I see that on a lot of Blu-ray discs and a few DVDs and I always wondered...thanks.

[Lyris]

Yes, the sudden transition between the black bar and the active picture is past the limit of the filter.

A lot of people see these scabby halos on DVD titles and think that it's deliberate edge enhancement.

[CruNcher]

Yeah Disney gives a lot into quality even years before the others did i remember the new Herbie with lindsay Lohan my good was the detail crazy (the film not so but the technical work was excellent up to the encoding) even for the HD Broadcast i didn't saw the Blu-Ray but i guess it should look much much better they did a lot of postprocessing on that movie (though it seems part is the Artistic style of it cartoonish color usage flat textures low noise) and i guess this is the style people love that wanna go fully digital away from film and grain but with keeping the details and dont suffer from BAD DNR :) Yeah http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400497/ if their would be technical awards for films on imdb i would give it a 10 for this new look and feel it created ;) And after that Pirates of the Caribean blown everyone else away the best H.264 Encode @ that time so definietly Disney is the top 1 for me and especialy as they are setting on H.264 and blow VC-1 away and seem the only ones that do it right even better then Sony themselves :D
Hmm seems they still didn't released the Blu-Ray i want to see that in Blu-Ray Quality up to the inner pores of the main characters *grml*

[*.mp4 guy]

looking at kung fu panda, its been lowpass filtered in essentialy the same way as most dvd's. This is quite annoying, as most of the time the lowpasses used in such cases don't have a well defined cut-off point (this reduces ringing) which makes it more dificult to clean up the mess.

[kolak]

Disney also gets to encode a lot of animated content, which (if recent) is noise free.

Plus Disney has a lot of respect for their masters these days, and care a lot about presentation quality.

...making up for the era when they'd taken 4:3 (pre-TV) movies, cropped them to 1.85:1 for theatrical re-release, and then pan and scaned THOSE for the VHS release...

Yep- because they do care :)


Andrew

[kolak]

I wonder if the HD version of Cinema Craft has the filter turned on by default like the SD version...



Yes it does, but low pass filtering at default setting with Cinemacraft HD will remove just a very small amount of the details- it's not going to be realy visible. Default setting in CCE-SP was set relatively way highier.

[kolak]

looking at kung fu panda, its been lowpass filtered in essentialy the same way as most dvd's. This is quite annoying, as most of the time the lowpasses used in such cases don't have a well defined cut-off point (this reduces ringing) which makes it more dificult to clean up the mess.

You have quite big control over cut-off point and also curve shape of the low pass filter. Have a look here:

http://www.omni-cinemacraft.com/images/cchde-filter.jpg

You can set it up as you wish even differently for Y, Cb and Cr, but the best is to turn it off as long as encode looks good.
Sometimes is good to filter Cb only, becuase it quite often looks bad in case of the source from digital cameras.

Andrew

[Guest]

Gents, you're way OT now.

Get back on topic or the thread will be closed.

[Chengbin]

What is "high frequency"?

Is there a comparison pic that shows the difference between a normal frame and a low passed frame?

Can x264 (or any other encoder) low pass an encode?

[Guest]

Open a new thread for new topics. Thread closed as warned.