On2 brags about their encoder vs x264.. [Archive]

LoRd_MuldeR

27th August 2009, 13:42

Yeah, but I want a trial-version for testing (not buying), especially since I got my lovely x264 :)

I assume they won't give it away for free (not even a trial version), because somebody could make a "real" test against state-of-the-art H.264 encoders.

At the same time people that already payed big money for VP8, will favor it anyway, because they must legitimate their investment ;)

BTW: "On2 proprietary compression solutions bring unique commercial advantages."

I guess that statement found on the On2 web-site applies to the developer/vendor, not to the user/customer :p

Forteen88

27th August 2009, 13:45

"On2 proprietary compression solutions bring unique commercial advantages."

I guess that statement of On2 applies to the developers, not to the user/customer :pAha, Ok, seems like they don't have a version for consumers, just a SDK.

Gokumon

27th August 2009, 18:06

This just in. Company tries to make itself look better than its competition. More on this breaking story at 9 o'clock.

Dark Shikari

27th August 2009, 18:11

IMO One2 don't use the best available H264 encoder. Anyway VP8 seem a really powerfull codec. VP8 seem on par with x264 at max quality for OPSNR ...And Mainconcept can beat x264 too in PSNR; that's not news.

IMO, if it cannot even beat x264 significantly in terms of PSNR, VP8 is a massive disappointment; x264's psy optimizations surely put it far ahead of VP8, so if VP8 cannot even beat x264 without psy optimizations, we cannot expect it to be remotely useful in reality.

It's been 6 years since H.264 was released--they had all this time to write their own specification from scratch--and they still fail this badly? Even I was expecting better than this. What a joke.

Edit: It's worse than I thought; they left AQ on for the x264 test, which suggests that VP8 will probably lose by >1db PSNR in reality. Nice job being completely irrelevant, On2.

smok3

27th August 2009, 18:28

brag in what way?
that vp8 is blurry?
that they have to use vp6 to show comparision between vp8 and x?

this looks like a complete anticommercial for them;

mediainfo vp8x264_vga.flv
General
Complete name : vp8x264_vga.flv
Format : Flash Video
File size : 15.8 MiB
Duration : 1mn 11s
Overall bit rate : 1 844 Kbps
Encoded date : Fri Sep 12 13:18:33 2008
Tagging application : On2 Flix SDK for Dshow_2.4.2.2
canseektoend : No

Video
Format : VP6
Duration : 1mn 11s
Bit rate : 3 272 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.355
Stream size : 28.0 MiB

CruNcher

27th August 2009, 18:45

that whole thing their is their old almost 1 year ago Introduction page i see no new info the Video is also as old so im not sure why to discuss it again, in the H.264 section :P

see http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141107

Sagittaire

28th August 2009, 00:44

And Mainconcept can beat x264 too in PSNR; that's not news.

Mainconcept at max OPSNR quality never beat x264 at max OPSNR quality in all my test for many source. As far I know x264 is the best available H264 codec in the area for OPSNR result and I make test with many H264 encoder.

IMO, if it cannot even beat x264 significantly in terms of PSNR, VP8 is a massive disappointment; x264's psy optimizations surely put it far ahead of VP8, so if VP8 cannot even beat x264 without psy optimizations, we cannot expect it to be remotely useful in reality.

VP8 seem to have advanced psy optimisation too ...

It's been 6 years since H.264 was released--they had all this time to write their own specification from scratch--and they still fail this badly? Even I was expecting better than this. What a joke.

I don't think. One2 is really serious company. In the past all the annonced result was correct for VPx. Anyway it's always easy to choose good source for VP8 codec.

Edit: It's worse than I thought; they left AQ on for the x264 test, which suggests that VP8 will probably lose by >1db PSNR in reality. Nice job being completely irrelevant, On2

It's true one2 don't use OPSNR tuned setting for x264. Anyway with max OPSNR quality x264 is just in par with the annonced result for VP8 from One2.

Dark Shikari

28th August 2009, 00:51

VP8 seem to have advanced psy optimisation too ...Then why did VP7 look so bad if On2 is supposedly good at psy optimizations? It fell victim to the "blurring is good" RD fallacy worse than any other modern encoder I have ever tested, completely destroying detail across a wide variety of sources.

G_M_C

28th August 2009, 08:43

What i seaid before; I think that whole page is NOT aimed at really comparing differences. It's only disigned as a marketing tool. It says more about their potential clients than it does about the encoding software itself.

From this i can deduce that their potetial customers are at least sort of gullible, since they fall for this kind of misleading marketing. Also you can deduce that they dont know how to use Google, else they would try to find out what this 'x264' they mention actually is. Not that that would help, i think they would not know how to compare encoding software for them selves for that matter.

And when you take all this into account; VP8 is good for people like that, let them; Imagine the flooding of n00b-questions if they they actually did start to use x264 :D

Anyway, in short: The comarison on that page is not intended to be fair, it's just intended to mislead potential customers in to buying that crap.

benwaggoner

30th August 2009, 06:19

Then why did VP7 look so bad if On2 is supposedly good at psy optimizations? It fell victim to the "blurring is good" RD fallacy worse than any other modern encoder I have ever tested, completely destroying detail across a wide variety of sources.
That's really been a hallmark of On2 codecs going back to VP3, and was certainly a big part of VP6.

And that's probably not entirely wrong from a consumer expectation perspective; people notice added wrong stuff (blocking and ringing) than they notice right stuff missing (loss of detail). Blocking is particularly HVS attractive due to all those nice horizontal and vertical edges, which are about the most interesting thing to the human eye. Perhaps should have taken a lesson from Sony's ClearVID patterns and rotated our blocks 45 degrees, or from our misspent wargaming youths and used hexagons :).

Even semi-pro compressionists can often get into the trap of doing QA by looking for artifacts, and assuming that if there's no blocking and ringing, the encode is going to be "good enough." But that's not a good assumption with a modern codec, or an advanced decoder with postprocessing. Comparing a VP6/VP7 AVI with different postprocessing settings in the DirectShow decoder can be very revealing.

Dark Shikari

30th August 2009, 06:24

That's really been a hallmark of On2 codecs going back to VP3, and was certainly a big part of VP6.

And that's probably not entirely wrong from a consumer expectation perspective; people notice added wrong stuff (blocking and ringing) than they notice right stuff missing (loss of detail). Blocking is particularly HVS attractive due to all those nice horizontal and vertical edges, which are about the most interesting thing to the human eye. Perhaps should have taken a lesson from Sony's ClearVID patterns and rotated our blocks 45 degrees, or from our misspent wargaming youths and used hexagons :).This would explain why Microsoft's psy optimizations are such a failure: this entire paragraph is completely wrong.

Blurring is horrific HVS-wise; blocking and ringing are vastly preferable. Compressionists easily spot them, but what ordinary users will spot is the complete destruction of detail throughout the video. Artifacts are far more preferable than destruction of detail, especially as the former tends to mask the latter. Blocking is only noticeable in flat areas of the frame; in high-complexity areas it actually improves perceived quality in many cases, especially at low bitrates and in high motion, where the blocks appear for too short a time to be seen, but for long enough to create perceived sharpness.

The human eye loves sharpness and the appearance of detail. In particular, just like the human ear, it wants to see energy conserved. The heavy blurring of encoders like VP7 is the exact opposite of this, which is why it has such a terrible ratio of PSNR to actual visual quality. The same problem exists with wavelets; they destroy perceptual detail and sharpness.

(Should I really be helping our competitors this much? ;) )

benwaggoner

30th August 2009, 06:37

This would explain why Microsoft's psy optimizations are such a failure: this entire paragraph is completely wrong.
Well, bear in mind I didn't play much a hand myself in the psychovisual optimizations in any Microsoft codecs. I've pointed out issues in a number of real-world samples in the last few years, but I can't claim much credit or blame there.

Blurring is horrific HVS-wise; blocking and ringing are vastly preferable. Compressionists easily spot them, but what ordinary users will spot is the complete destruction of detail throughout the video. Artifacts are far more preferable than destruction of detail, especially as the former tends to mask the latter. Blocking is only noticeable in flat areas of the frame; in high-complexity areas it actually improves perceived quality in many cases, especially at low bitrates.
I'm in fact speaking about cases where blocking is visible, due to high quantization in flat/smooth regions. When high texture detail masks block boundaries, there's no problem.

Up to a point, a little blocking and ringing can produce some perceptual sharpness that can mask some loss of detail. But once it's easily detectible by viewers, I think it's more actively distracting than a slight loss of detail; the real question is how much artifacting versus how much blurring is the right balance at a give level of compression.

I'm thinking of MPEG-2 as the canonical example here; the Canopus MPEG-2 encoder does a better psychovisual job by preventing blocking, even though detail may not be preserved as well.

The human eye loves sharpness and the appearance of detail. In particular, just like the human ear, it wants to see energy conserved. The heavy blurring of encoders like VP7 is the exact opposite of this, which is why it has such a terrible ratio of PSNR to actual visual quality. The same problem exists with wavelets; they destroy perceptual detail and sharpness.
I think we're actually in agreement on the salient points here.

VP7 looks a lot better viewed without reference than in an A/B comparison with the source, or with another encoder. And this goes back to VP3 at least; a lot of what Xiph has done has been to fix tables and such to allow high detail when sufficient bitrates are available.

(Should I really be helping our competitors this much? ;) )
x264 is open source; do you even have competitors :)?

Dark Shikari

30th August 2009, 06:41

I'm in fact speaking about cases where blocking is visible, due to high quantization in flat/smooth regions. When high texture detail masks block boundaries, there's no problem.That's not related to blocking or ringing, that's a failure to use proper adaptive quantization.I'm thinking of MPEG-2 as the canonical example here; the Canopus MPEG-2 encoder does a better psychovisual job by preventing blocking, even though detail may not be preserved as well.MPEG-2 doesn't have a loop filter. Of course, VC-1 doesn't have a useful loop filter either.
x264 is open source; do you even have competitors :)?Yes, our competitors are the entire commercial world of encoders who wish we didn't exist.

Recent blind tests by a major French broadcaster put x264 ahead of the best commercial broadcast encoders, despite the testing being interlaced and x264 not supporting MBAFF.

There are very few applications where x264 isn't a competitor.

benwaggoner

30th August 2009, 06:58

That's not related to blocking or ringing, that's a failure to use proper adaptive quantization.
Which is a relatively new feature of codecs. I'm taking an historical view here.

MPEG-2 doesn't have a loop filter. Of course, VC-1 doesn't have a useful loop filter either.
Well, it's still better than nothing :). And really, the In-Loop Deblocking and Overlap Transform filters should really be considered as two halves of VC-1's in-loop postprocessing; the loop filter itself isn't the whole story and wasn't designed to be used in isolation. But yes, I'd say that the H.264 in-loop filter is probably its single most impressive and impactful feature.

Yes, our competitors are the entire commercial world of encoders who wish we didn't exist.

Recent blind tests by a major French broadcaster put x264 ahead of the best commercial broadcast encoders, despite the testing being interlaced and x264 not supporting MBAFF.
Congrats. That's quite impressive given the lack of MBAFF.

There are very few applications where x264 isn't a competitor.
Well, x264 certainly competes with those encoders, but do they really compete with x264? You don't really lose anything if someone uses another encoder. x264 doesn't require commercial competitors to lose in order to "win" on its own terms.

Even though Microsoft has its own H.264 encoder, I don't view x264 as a competive threat to anything we're doing, but as another complementary part of the H.264 ecosystem that we also participate in.

Dark Shikari

30th August 2009, 07:04

Which is a relatively new feature of codecs. I'm taking an historical view here.MPEG-2 encoders have had adaptive quantization for years now. Good ones have, at least.Even though Microsoft has its own H.264 encoder, I don't view x264 as a competive threat to anything we're doing, but as another complementary part of the H.264 ecosystem that we also participate in.That's because you aren't trying to sell your encoder; it's not a significant part of the business model. You merely need to have an encoder. In fact, if you dropped it today and used x264 wherever the license made it possible, you wouldn't lose much of anything. You wouldn't even be admitting defeat, since your goal was never to produce one of the world's best encoders to begin with.

By comparison, Mainconcept can't do such a thing, because their business is selling an encoder.Well, x264 certainly competes with those encoders, but do they really compete with x264? You don't really lose anything if someone uses another encoder. x264 doesn't require commercial competitors to lose in order to "win" on its own terms.Perhaps this legend might be relevant here.

One day in the pavilion at Karakorum Genghis Kahn asked an officer of the Mongol guard what, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness.

"The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse under you," responded the officer after a little thought, "and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares."

"Nay," responded the Kahn, "to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet -- to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best."

Victory is nothing without the defeated.

benwaggoner

30th August 2009, 07:42

That's because you aren't trying to sell your encoder; it's not a significant part of the business model. You merely need to have an encoder. In fact, if you dropped it today and used x264 wherever the license made it possible, you wouldn't lose much of anything. You wouldn't even be admitting defeat, since your goal was never to produce one of the world's best encoders to begin with.
Well, our goal certainly is to produce one of the best video encoding and publishing products. But the codec implementation itself is a relatively small part of that. Most compression tools fail at source decode, preprocessing, or workflow before they ever get to the codec itself.

I hope we'll get MPEG-4 passthrough working in a future version so x264 encoded content can be used with Expression Encoder to do trimming, metadata insertion, and player generation without recompression.

By comparison, Mainconcept can't do such a thing, because their business is selling an encoder.
True. It's interesting how small a part that pure codecs play in the overall compression tools business. In terms of revenue and headcount, codec development is well less than 10%.

Perhaps this legend might be relevant here.

One day in the pavilion at Karakorum Genghis Kahn asked an officer of the Mongol guard what, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness.

"The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse under you," responded the officer after a little thought, "and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares."

"Nay," responded the Kahn, "to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet -- to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best."

Victory is nothing without the defeated.
Exactly.

You need to be better than Main Concept for you to win.

Main Concept needs people to buy licenses for their stuff anyway for them to win.

And everyone's happy :)!

creamyhorror

30th August 2009, 08:05

Exactly.

You need to be better than Main Concept for you to win.

Main Concept needs people to buy licenses for their stuff anyway for them to win.

And everyone's happy :)!
Actually, I think he needs to have many more commercial users than MainConcept in order to have beaten them :D But to do that x264 has to win the marketing war.

Underground78

30th August 2009, 08:48

Recent blind tests by a major French broadcaster put x264 ahead of the best commercial broadcast encoders, despite the testing being interlaced and x264 not supporting MBAFF.

I guess the name of this major French broadcaster has to be kept secret ?

Sagittaire

30th August 2009, 11:45

Blurring is horrific HVS-wise; blocking and ringing are vastly preferable.

Perhaps for your eyes but it's completely false for common users. Personnaly I don'k like blur but I don't like blocking and particulary mosquito noise too. For example DivX active by defaut PP4 for MPEG4 ASP because common user prefer decoding like that. In VP8 vs H264 demo I prefer by far VP8 bluring vs H264 blocking+ringing ...

drmpeg

30th August 2009, 12:13

Recent blind tests by a major French broadcaster put x264 ahead of the best commercial broadcast encoders, despite the testing being interlaced and x264 not supporting MBAFF.

There are very few applications where x264 isn't a competitor.
x264 competes in the broadcast encoder market? Is there a real-time encoder that takes in HD-SDI and outputs DVB-ASI that's based on x264?

Ron

Dark Shikari

30th August 2009, 15:54

x264 competes in the broadcast encoder market? Is there a real-time encoder that takes in HD-SDI and outputs DVB-ASI that's based on x264?

RonNo, but a major broadcast company sells headends which use nothing but x264 ;). So I guess the answer would actually be "yes", you just can't buy it as a separate box.Perhaps for your eyes but it's completely false for common users. Personnaly I don'k like blur but I don't like blocking and particulary mosquito noise too. For example DivX active by defaut PP4 for MPEG4 ASP because common user prefer decoding like that. In VP8 vs H264 demo I prefer by far VP8 bluring vs H264 blocking+ringing ...So you debunk my claim by saying that "common users" prefer blurring... and then back that up with... your own preferences? You're not a common user; stop trying to pretend you are one.

Feel free to keep thinking that Blur().Blur().Blur() is a great psy optimization--the rest of the world will keep moving on without you. It is people like you who are the cancer killing video quality, believing that it is a valid "optimization" to lowpass every source before encoding it because there's nothing wrong with blurring.

The fact of the matter is that the eye likes sharpness, which is why so many Blu-rays and DVDs are oversharpened, because it often simply looks better. As such, an appearance of sharpness and detail is extremely important.

Of course the whole argument is stupid because you will happily endorse any encoder out there merely because it isn't x264. If a competitor to x264 blocked more than x264 did, you would claim that blocking was good. If a competitor to x264 ringed more than x264 did, you would claim ringing was good. The opinions of shills have zero value.

CruNcher

30th August 2009, 16:55

The most annoying artifact though is happening in the restricted area (Broadcast,Blu-Ray) and that is by far "I frame pulsing" it kills any other artifact you are used too and exactly that is where VP8 i think tried to demo back then: "look same bitrate same I frame interval but we have no visual pulsing, and our Demo doesn't falls apart" (we put the bits more balanced so you see only some detail lose in the way of a blur out all frames the same) :)
At least that is what i saw in their Demo Video the artifacts you see there are happening in x264 when it reaches the bitrate resolution boarder to stay stable (Chroma falling apart, the old ASP trials,AQ is firing back edges fall apart in motion,all the motion problems with B-frames, and especially the pulsing @ the i frame change).
Though x264 since these 1 year old results was enhanced and improved especially for such situations it's much better and hits this boarder not so soon anymore (compression efficiency improved again) even in 1 pass (live encoding).

benwaggoner

30th August 2009, 16:56

Feel free to keep thinking that Blur().Blur().Blur() is a great psy optimization--the rest of the world will keep moving on without you. It is people like you who are the cancer killing video quality, believing that it is a valid "optimization" to lowpass every source before encoding it because there's nothing wrong with blurring.
I don't think he or anyone is making such an extreme statement. Everyone agrees that accurate detail is the goal; the question is what sorts of degredation are preferable when that goal can't be met.

Really, deblocking in post-processing is fundamentally a blur, but as it is blurring out erroneous detail it's much less controversial. No encoder should bake in a low-pass, but there are times where reducing detail to prevent artifacts is a good context-specific psychovisual optimization.

The fact of the matter is that the eye likes sharpness, which is why so many Blu-rays and DVDs are oversharpened, because it often simply looks better. As such, an appearance of sharpness and detail is extremely important.
I find ringing from oversharpening pretty much as annoying as ringing from overcompression :).

But getting back to On2, the VP6/7 decoder will actually synthesize noise as part of postprocessing to exactly achieve the effect you're talking about. I'm somewhere between horrified and admiring by that :), but it inarguably produces more visually pleasing results when it's on but not off.

One non-technical downside to the H.264 loop filter is that by preventing artifacts it allows less efficient encoders to get away with poor detail retention (looking at you, Apple) because the output still doesn't look "compressed" with palpable artifacts. At least with VC-1, when it's mangled the source, there's no hiding it :).

VP6 and particuarly VP3 had a pretty low maximum detail retention capability which became more obvious when postprocessing was off. I didn't spend enough time with VP7 to see if that was true there as well.

Does anyone know if VP8 continues any of that advanced postprocessing technology, or if they've moved everything in-loop?

Dark Shikari

30th August 2009, 16:59

But getting back to On2, the VP6/7 decoder will actually synthesize noise as part of postprocessing to exactly achieve the effect you're talking about. I'm somewhere between horrified and admiring by that :), but it inarguably produces more visually pleasing results when it's on but not off.I would say the primary reason for that is as a dither, which is IMO a very good idea; it reduces the need to waste bits in flat areas to avoid blocking and blurring. I would completely agree, for example, with putting gradfun2db as a required postprocessor in some future video standard.

benwaggoner

30th August 2009, 17:02

The most anoying artifact though is happening in the restricted area and that is by far I frame pulsing it kills any other artifact you know and exactly that is where VP8 i think tried to demo look same bitrate same I frame interval but we have no pulsing (therefore we put the bits balanced so you see only some detail lose) :) at least that is what i saw in their Demo Video
What do you mean by "restricted area?"

Keyframe strobing is one of those things that causes far more psychovisual pain than PSNR or SSIM would imply.

benwaggoner

30th August 2009, 17:07

I would say the primary reason for that is as a dither, which is IMO a very good idea; it reduces the need to waste bits in flat areas to avoid blocking and blurring. I would completely agree, for example, with putting gradfun2db as a required postprocessor in some future video standard.
Well, hopefully we'll get universal > 8-bit support down the road as well for the same reason; Windows 7 now supports GPUs and imaging running in all kinds of > 8-bit modes, including linear.

Encoding in 10/12-bit and having the decoder handle correct conversion to 8-bit for legacy displays would be the ideal way forward, I'd think. Heck, you could even do some display-specific tweaks, using a heaver dither for low luma on LCD for example.

3+ years out at least, though.

FWIW, zambelli did a cool demo using the Silverlight pixel shaders to add noise postprocessing with a QP-adaptive strength. Worked pretty well as a lab test, although probably not worth the extra CPU load for many users.

CruNcher

30th August 2009, 17:44

What do you mean by "restricted area?"

Keyframe strobing is one of those things that causes far more psychovisual pain than PSNR or SSIM would imply.

was still editing i meant especially areas like Broadcast and Blu-Ray with for them uncommonly low bitrates (efficiency loss), and yes it's the most painfullest things even i would prefer a whole blur out (like VP8 showed it) of everything instead of every x seconds seeing this rapid not expected detail change :(

Sagittaire

30th August 2009, 20:59

Feel free to keep thinking that Blur().Blur().Blur() is a great psy optimization--the rest of the world will keep moving on without you. It is people like you who are the cancer killing video quality, believing that it is a valid "optimization" to lowpass every source before encoding it because there's nothing wrong with blurring.

Agree or not agree common user prefer blur vs blocking or ringing. I don't understand why you use default inloop at 0,0 if for you bluring is the really most important artefact. Really popular codec like old RV10 are here for prove that.

The fact of the matter is that the eye likes sharpness, which is why so many Blu-rays and DVDs are oversharpened, because it often simply looks better. As such, an appearance of sharpness and detail is extremely important.

Well you don't know anything in bluray encoding simply because you are not compressionist. In the past the most impresive quality for common user are HDDVD (VC1 title ... sorry) and they are not really oversharpened but more too blury (for my eyes anyway).

Of course the whole argument is stupid because you will happily endorse any encoder out there merely because it isn't x264. If a competitor to x264 blocked more than x264 did, you would claim that blocking was good. If a competitor to x264 ringed more than x264 did, you would claim ringing was good. The opinions of shills have zero value.

I've had enough of your insults (for me and other). It's not because you are a x264 developer that you are always right my friends. If a moderator could remind that it would be nice. You should stop to spend most of your time in front of your computer and go out a little. Find you a girl too because you seem really to need that ...

Atak_Snajpera

30th August 2009, 21:58

I've had enough of your insults (for me and other). It's not because you are a x264 developer that you are always right my friends. If a moderator could remind that it would be nice. You should stop to spend most of your time in front of your computer and go out a little. Find you a girl too because you seem really to need that ...
What he does in spare time it is not your business. This forum is not a place for personal advices.

Sagittaire

30th August 2009, 22:09

What he does in spare time it is not your business. This forum is not a place for personal advices.

Speak about that with Dark Shikari and not with me ...

Theliel

30th August 2009, 23:36

Sagittaire, both. DS and you.

IMO, im considered me a normal user, and i prefer a lot of more a blocking that a bluriring. For me, Blurring its a detail killer

IgorC

31st August 2009, 00:15

I see two very extreme positions:
1. Blocking
2. Bluring

But what happens in the middle? Is there good balance between blur and blocking. It's somehow adjustable with -psy -deblock and maybe other options too.

Why it should be exactly 0 or 1? There is also 0.5678...... infinite combinations.

Qubit is a superposition of values: 0 and 1.

Of course, everybody heard about Schrodinger's cat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SjFJImg2Z8&fmt=18

There is no such things as absolute 0 neither 1 in nature.

plonk420

31st August 2009, 05:46

No, but a major broadcast company sells headends which use nothing but x264 ;).

heh, the company i work for uses the company that merged with your company as VOD provider :O

Revgen

31st August 2009, 06:26

I don't know if I'm a common user, but I will say this. I kept using Xvid for years instead of X264 because I simply couldn't stand the blurring. Until DS and others significantly improved the AQ, Psy, Inloop and other factors of X264 to keep it from becoming a blur beast, I wouldn't even use it.

Do I hate blocking? Sure, but not as much as I hate blurring. With blocking, my brain can at least piece together what's missing. With blurring, I sometimes wonder if I need glasses before I realize it's the actual video doing it.

nakTT

31st August 2009, 06:38

Sagittaire, both. DS and you.

IMO, im considered me a normal user, and i prefer a lot of more a blocking that a bluriring. For me, Blurring its a detail killer
For me, I prefer blurring over blocking (somewhere in the middle would be better, though). But the thing is, I get non of those by using x264 because even at 500kbps, I can get myself a very good visual quality video.

Blue_MiSfit

31st August 2009, 06:55

I prefer blocking over softening in most cases, except in extremes when it becomes impossible to overlook the blocks.

I find things like keyframe pumping and banding much more objectionable, to be honest. But, these are more easily avoided IMO, and should be handled in pre / post processing. I'm really looking forward to higher bit depth video, and more advanced post-processing. I'm getting tired of fiddling with ffdshow's noise generator! :)

And guys... keep the personal insults out of the forums. That kind of stuff doesn't belong here. Let's try to be thankful for each other's perspectives :D

~MiSfit

Dark Shikari

31st August 2009, 08:33

Find you a girl too because you seem really to need that ...Oh how so many of our competitors wish it were so... ;)I don't know if I'm a common user, but I will say this. I kept using Xvid for years instead of X264 because I simply couldn't stand the blurring. Until DS and others significantly improved the AQ, Psy, Inloop and other factors of X264 to keep it from becoming a blur beast, I wouldn't even use it.This is where my logic originally came from: I listened to people whining for days upon weeks upon months about how Xvid looked "sharper" and "more detailed" than x264, which seemed ridiculous--until I did comparisons that showed that in many cases it was true. And then I fixed x264, of course.

This is why I distrust "professional" opinions from compressionists; I have dealt for years now with the complaints of ordinary users--people who have no idea how codecs work and are just complaining about how the video looks to their eyes. And I have not once seen a complaint that x264 is "too blocky" compared to a competitor, but I have hundreds of times (pre-psy) seen complaints about detail and sharpness. In general, I'm going to trust the ordinary users, not the professional with trained (and biased) eyes.

Plus, blurring everything out is easy. Retaining detail is hard. I prefer a challenge.

Sagittaire

31st August 2009, 10:09

Then why did VP7 look so bad if On2 is supposedly good at psy optimizations? It fell victim to the "blurring is good" RD fallacy worse than any other modern encoder I have ever tested, completely destroying detail across a wide variety of sources.

http://www.on2.com/image.php?blob_id=539

Here I prefer by far the VP8 bluring over x264 blocking+ringing. I don't know if this test is realistic (certainely not good test for x264) but VP8 seem promising.

Always the same problem with you ... exaggeration !!! You speak about VP7 and other codec too like mainconcept but you are unable to make encoding with good setting for other codec. I have always better result than yours when I make myself the encoding with mainconcept for example. In the same time you always destroy the other tests because they don't use top settings for x264.

Dark Shikari

31st August 2009, 10:15

http://www.on2.com/image.php?blob_id=539Er, are you trying to prove my point or what?

Fine detail, like the woman's sunglasses and collar, are completely gone in the VP8 version. And the human eye is better able to perform temporal interpolation through artifacts than it is through blur (the latter is actually impossible), so in motion the win by x264 will be even larger.

And this is despite the fact that On2 was able to cheat in that test all they wanted (pick bad settings for x264, pick best possible test clip for VP8, cherry-pick the best possible frame, etc).

Arguing with you is hopeless; no matter what the facts say, you will instantly take a contrary opinion solely because you are paid to hate x264 and promote inferior competitors. There is no point in taking this further.

Sagittaire

31st August 2009, 10:36

Er, are you trying to prove my point or what?

Fine detail, like the woman's sunglasses and collar, are completely gone in the VP8 version. And the human eye is better able to perform temporal interpolation through artifacts than it is through blur (the latter is actually impossible), so in motion the win by x264 will be even larger.

Well if here you seriousely prefer H264 picture vs VP8 picture then you are right: it's definitevely useless that I speak with you. Only one solution: change your glasses ... :devil:

And this is despite the fact that On2 was able to cheat in that test all they wanted (pick bad settings for x264, pick best possible test clip for VP8, cherry-pick the best possible frame, etc).

Certainely true ... anyway OPSNR is really exceptional and it's difficult to pervert that.

Arguing with you is hopeless; no matter what the facts say, you will instantly take a contrary opinion solely because you are paid to hate x264 and promote inferior competitors. There is no point in taking this further.

Stop to watch XFiles ... stop your trolling ... and read my previous thread in the past about x264 vs XviD for example. You definitively should stop to spend most of your time in front of your computer and go out a little.

microchip8

31st August 2009, 11:44

Sagittaire, I think it's you who's trolling here and this is not the first time you do so. Looking at the above pictures, I prefer the H.264 one instead of the smeared, almost out of focus blurred VP8 one. When it comes to blocking + detail retention and blurring + no blocking, I'll virtually always pick the former one unless it is really extreme in blocking, which x264 never does that with sound settings, no matter your claims. The eye is very sensitive to detail and prefers it so when you show someone a blurred pic or video and one that has all the details there but blocks not too strongly, it'll virtually always prefer the latter one. Ringing? I don't mind a bit of ringing but since I've never experienced in normal x264 encodes any ringing so far (at least if it was there, I couldn't notice it), the point your trying to make here is non-existent and most of the things you say border on trolling and bogus claims. That's all I have to say and if this conversation continues like it is now, it's a waste of time