x264 and Intel's Media Engine / Sandy Bridge

[ranpha]

this is an absurd question, if you could achieve the same quality at 10 mb/s using x264 as you can with something like cce-hd or blu-code at 30+ mb/s; do you really think that the professional movie studios would spend 40-70+ grand on a per seat license to acquire those encoders? don't you think they would try and save a butt load of dough and use the legally free open source alternative?


Blu-rays is not only where H.264 can be used. There is also this thing called digital broadcast where it also can be used.

And trust me, you can save BILLIONS of dollars if you can save bandwidth within that industry. Imagine the saving a company can get if it can get away with broadcasting a 8Mb/s H.264 stream if it has the same quality as a 40Mb/s stream.

[weasel_]

you are absolutely correct, i personally believe that there are only a few reasons to transcode something, like if the source is too dimly lit, the color saturation is off, the source is noisy and you are trying to fix said video or the aspect ratio is wrong and you can't fix it via manipulation of flags.

in these cases the output should equal the input, i.e. size and bit rate in = size and bit rate out.

in all other cases you are better off simply buying another hdd (at $90 for 1.5tb it's quite affordable).
What you presonaly belive is your thing.
Point of encoder is like shon3i said efficiency.And there is nothing else to belive.
It would be still same if 50TB =100$... that dont change nothing..


BD was created to give best possible quality for mass consumer (DVD started being not good enough on massive new TVs) and its 40Mbits is good enough to deliver it. It's not overdone, even for x264.

40Mbit for blu ray its not overdone for x264 ?
Are you really Serious ?


Saying that x264 can achieve the same at 10Mbit as BD at 30Mbit is not true at all.
If x264 can achieve the same transparency at 10Mbit than great- we can put whole series on 1 BD. It also means that other encoders can be improved.

Of course not by reeencoding bluray then must be some lose no mother what bitrate we use becouse it`s not lossless codec
with same stream x264 whoud achive SAME qualitu at MUCH SMALLER bitrate

Whatever it's, x264 at 10Mbit is worse:)
Something like Island trailer at 28mbit was good enough.
Andrew
GREAT argument :)
Depend on movie...
A lot movies will look transparent with 10Mbit x264


In terms of other usage x264 is great and has clear quality advantage, but even so, most of the paid web content is not encoded with x264, but with Carbon Coder, Ateme and other hardware solution mainly because of the workflow.

First u must understand what is transparensy and u DONT.
It`s not mean that BR and x264@10MB are metematical equal
transparensy is subjectiv and for most people there is no difference even on very large display.

" result is perceptually indistinguishable from the uncompressed input, then the compression can be declared to be transparent"


le weasel was "flabbergasted" because he seems to have spent to much time worshiping at the x264 alter and stopped thinking for himself. most people react with disbelief when you first pull the veil that has been blinding them away from their eyes.

Great. Rly. i can`t wait.
Start pulling with some arguments and comparisons

[mariush]

That's true.. in Romania for example we have here about 10-15 tv stations but i think there will be only 2 or 3 channels for DVB-T (over the air digital tv) .
A company that has 4 channels would rather mux all four in a 24 mbps (or whatever it is) ... one 1080i 10mbps for their generalist station, 3 x 4.5 mbps 720p for their news/ entertainment/women (recipes and fashion) stations.

But unfortunately I don't think x264 is there today... though all tv stations here drag their feet regarding dvb-t, it's unlikely we'll have anything all over the country by 2014-2015. We have just 2 or 3 tv stations in a few cities (2-3 emitters on some high hills doing tests)

[kieranrk]

And trust me, you can save BILLIONS of dollars if you can save bandwidth within that industry. Imagine the saving a company can get if it can get away with broadcasting a 8Mb/s H.264 stream if it has the same quality as a 40Mb/s stream.

Except many don't care much about quality and will happily broadcast 1080i @ 4mbit that looks worse than SD.

[Jarod Middelman]

With x264 they can run it at 2mbit!

[Chikuzen]

i realize in this forum DS is unto God, that he can do no wrong, but you guys need to look at things objectively and see if the facts support the myth.

oh, Dark Shikari is unto God:eek:

if so, what should we call akupenguin:confused:

[ckmox]

oh, Dark Shikari is unto God:eek:

if so, what should we call akupenguin:confused:

lol

anyway when you think of h264 what comes to mind is better compression so that means saving more bitrate so this kind of statement
what is this bizarre fascination that people have with bit rate starving their encodes?


is fail

x264 is just being true to the notion of better compression among all the h264 encoders out there

[casio7131]

Quote:
Originally Posted by deadrats View Post
that is not true, blu-ray was designed from the get go with all three major compression schemes in mind, avc, mpeg-2 and vc-1 as well as a boat load of audio compression schemes:

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/
I know that in the final spec three formats are allowed (H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2). Still MPEG-2 is by far the least efficient of those three supported video formats. And in the design of BluRay disc the bitrate (space) requirement was necessarily defined by the least efficient format that was going to be supported, i.e. by MPEG-2.
i don't believe that bluray was designed "from the get go" with all 3 codecs - i think that it was originally designed only for mpeg2 (hence the reason for 25-50gb discs) and the other 2 codecs, vc1 and h264, were added later on (after hddvd decided to use 3 codecs).

note: this comes from my memory and based on info given by amirm on avsforum (who was a hddvd guy from microsoft), so take this post how you like.

[ajp_anton]

the screen shots in the anandtech review are practically indistinguishable from the software encoded screenshots.Maybe because the software used sucks?

as i said, just want to give you the perspective of an end user, i would much rather use the quick sync encoder, raise the bit rate and encode 1080p video at 15 mb/s at almost 100 fps than use x264, use half the bit rate and only encode at 15-20 fps (depending on source) using the ultra fast preset on my x4 620.You don't have Quick Sync on your x4 620. If you have QS, you also have a fast CPU. My i7 920 does 70% of the speed of QS on x264 ultrafast (tried to replicate Anandtech's tests). Sandy Bridge will improve this a little. I don't know which looks better, but you just said you don't care.

most will probably realize that a 1.5tb hdd costs less than $100 and that blu-rays can hold 25-50 gigs of data and say "f" it, i'll just crank up the bit rate a bit and be done with my transcode in a fraction of the time.You are more likely to transcode into a portable device with a small, expensive and non-upgradable flash memory.

this is an absurd question, if you could achieve the same quality at 10 mb/s using x264 as you can with something like cce-hd or blu-code at 30+ mb/s; do you really think that the professional movie studios would spend 40-70+ grand on a per seat license to acquire those encoders?Yes.

[wlee15]

furthermore, a blu-ray disk holds up to 25-50 gigs of data and as i said a 1.5tb hdd costs under $100 (i currently have 3 of them), you feel like saving the space for a rainy day?


And do you know whats much faster than Intel QuickSync, not encoding at all.

[kolak]

What you presonaly belive is your thing.
Point of encoder is like shon3i said efficiency.And there is nothing else to belive.
It would be still same if 50TB =100$... that dont change nothing..


40Mbit for blu ray its not overdone for x264 ?
Are you really Serious ?




How many uncompressed film sources have you seen? (so you can have idea how it does look before any compression)

Passing 25Mbit x264 is not obviously any better than pro encoders and there is still lots compressed in this videos. Many sources have obvious compression artefacts even at 35Mbits. 40mbits is not overdone for BD at all. You can use 20Mbit as average and 40 as max and it will be "used" almost on every source.

BD was not designed to match BD rips quality:)

I've done 200 BDs disc and seen many masters and no one will convince me that x264 at 10Mbit achieves transparency- definately not, who has "x264 lover" in his nick description :)

I use x264 a lot also and know what it can do. If people are happy with 10Mbits we can do 3 movies on one BD- will save lots of money for studios and consumers :)

Andrew

[kolak]

Except many don't care much about quality and will happily broadcast 1080i @ 4mbit that looks worse than SD.

Yep- as I said- even if x264 is free and so great almost no one uses it, because it's a business and there is more political decision made than logical :)

Andrew

[hajj_3]

and just like that software based x264 encoding is dead:

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/ja/download/tvmw5.html#trial

the english version will be available soon, in addition to licensing x264, pegasys will feature the cuda h264 encoder and support for quick sync.

stick a fork in x264, it's done.

I think the hardware encoding isn't for x264 but instead of the other h264 codec that they use, mainconcept or something.

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tvmw5.html

it looks like if you have nvidia card it uses cuda and if you have a new intel cpu it uses the intel sdk. Neither of which support x264 as far as i'm aware. We need intel, nvidia or amd to add support for hardware decoding, 3rd party vendors like tmpgenc can't do that as far as i'm aware.

[weasel_]

^^ Of course isn`t for x264 :)

How many uncompressed film sources have you seen? (so you can have idea how it does look before any compression)


Dont know 300-400, 200 150 dont count...
I can have better idea then you.


Passing 25Mbit x264 is not obviously any better than pro encoders

Ferrari going dowinhiill is not obviusly faster then tractor going downhill.
U cant compare encoders at big bitrate, just like u cant compare speed of vehicle when they falling from clif or going downhill :)


40mbits is not overdone for BD at all

its not for mpeg-2 only


Ive done 200 BDs disc and seen many masters and no one will convince me that x264 at 10Mbit achieves transparency

LIKE I alrady said ( u can read on page beofre this)
Depend on movie.
Some heavy grain movie need a lot more then 10 , some cgi movie need less then 10.
If u done 200Bd disc u shoud know that.
dont worry
I dont even want to convince sombody who think only one bitrate is identicly good for all movie.

[aegisofrime]

I think that all deadrats is trying to say is to consider things from the perspective of the end-user. Your average Joe probably cares a lot more about speed than quality, or rather, encoding efficiency. I do all my encodes at preset="slower". My brother will probably kill himself waiting for the same encode to finish.

I took a look at the Quick Sync review, and it's really not too shabby. I think that deadrats' points are these:

1. Quick Sync will probably be a standard feature on both Intel and AMD CPUs from now on.
2. Since it's there, why not use it?
3. Bring what DS and Team has learned from x264, and apply that to make use of Quick Sync, bringing extra speed and the quality we have all grown to love from x264.

[poisondeathray]

1. Quick Sync will probably be a standard feature on both Intel and AMD CPUs from now on.

AMD ? You sure about that?




I'm waiting for properly done review on quality, speed. (or speed at certain quality, or top quality... there are so many holes in that "video encoding part" of the review)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I think that all deadrats is trying to say is to consider things from the perspective of the end-user. Your average Joe probably cares a lot more about speed than quality, or rather, encoding efficiency.

If you have an encoder with good compression efficiency you can always choose "faster" settings in order to sacrifice quality for speed, so you can find yourself the best compromise between quality and speed. But if you have one of those "created for fancy fps numbers" hardware-encoders you get bad quality encodes in relatively short time, but you can't go anywhere from there...

(The problem with Average Joe is that he probably will never compare the output form different encoders and thus never knows how much better his encodes could have looked ^^)

[kolak]

LIKE I alrady said ( u can read on page beofre this)
Depend on movie.
Some heavy grain movie need a lot more then 10 , some cgi movie need less then 10.
If u done 200Bd disc u shoud know that.
dont worry
I dont even want to convince sombody who think only one bitrate is identicly good for all movie.

That's exactly why 40Mbit is not overkill for BD. It gives you possibility to achive very high transparency for every movie or every scene in particular movie.

Please stop saying that x264 at 10Mbit achives the same quality as found on BD disc because it's simply not true at all.

If you say that x264 at 10Mbits give good enough quality for average user than fine- your opinion, but it's not BD quality.

Encode Island trailer at 10Mbit and 30mbit and check if they look the same. This is quite easy source compared to others, even if it has lots of fast motion.

I remeber when some people wehere showing Big Bunny saying- look good HD at 2Mbit :)


Andrew

[weasel_]

Rly u asking me that ? u dont know basic stuff that much ?

x264 ITS NOT LOSLESS encoder. I cant get same quality by reencidng something with lossy encoder at 1/3 bitrate no mother of how good encoder is.
U asking imposible and something that even noob in video world shouldnt ask.
Give me master that studio have.
And i will encode with x264 in 10Mb with same quality as studio encode with h264 @ 30Mbit...

What i can with bluray source is to get transparanet encode with much less bitrate. pls read what i wrote.... transpart is not same quality , it perceptually indistinguishablesame from source , and that is all imporant.

[kolak]

It's about preceptual quality for home user and BD offers very high, but even so there are still users, who complain:)

There is no problem to do 10Mbit encodes for BD- if it will be accepted than everything will get cheaper.

I bet you if you did study with typical film source, watched on eg. 42inch TV, BD would be voted better quality than 10Mbit x264 encode.

Island trailer raw source is available- good luck with 10Mbit :)
I think I still have it- can encode for you with x264 at 10Mbit.

Andrew

[weasel_]

They didnt complain about blu ray quality becosue h264 and bitrate...
They complani about other aspect of master quality ( like gladiator with lot of filtrering for example DNR and EE )
They done latter remaster version with simillar bitrate and 3x better quality..
THAT why people complain not about bitrate..
If raw is encoded in x264 @15mbit for bluray nobody will complain about to litlle bitrate.
U must understand that x264 is much more efficient then mpeg2 h264 ... and will get same quality with less bitrate ( of coruse if we encode same soruce , not by your theory of comapring : reencoding bluray with lossy codec and then compare qualtity = its very stipid ).On page before u asked me to get same qualuity with lossy codec... i still cant belive u asked fo that.


There is no problem to do 10Mbit encodes for BD ..
NOW there is no problem.. but 1 year ago x264 wasn`t Blu-ray-compatible .

[mp3dom]

What i can with bluray source is to get transparanet encode with much less bitrate. pls read what i wrote.... transpart is not same quality , it perceptually indistinguishablesame from source , and that is all imporant.
I read that with 10 Mbps you can achieve a quality that with *your* eyes, *your* tv-set and *your* taste seems transparent. Something that is so many subjective and variable to be negligible. :rolleyes:

[LoRd_MuldeR]

x264 ITS NOT LOSLESS encoder. I cant get same quality by reencidng something with lossy encoder at 1/3 bitrate no mother of how good encoder is.

x264 does have a "true" lossless mode, which is mathematically lossless. That mode, of course, isn't suitable for BluRay authoring/backup.

However you can produce "visually lossless" (transparent) encodes with x264 easily by using something like CRF=18 and the resulting bitrates usually won't be that high.

Moreover you must keep in mind that under normal conditions you won't compare the encoded video frame-by-frame against the source, but watch the video "in motion" without having the original source at hand.

Therefore "visually lossless" is still overkill for a final encode. "Very good" is sufficient here and that's what x264 in my experience will usually deliver at CRF=20-22 with (often) surprisingly low bit rates...

(Another thing to consider is that there is a difference between re-encoding a source that already was compressed in a lossy way, like BluRay source, and encoding straight from the original lossless source)

[weasel_]

Of course i know of lossless mode in x264 :) but generaly use of x264 isn`t that that why i said x264 is not lossless

and i writing in 4-5 post same as you but they cant or dont want to understand.
We cant get mathematically same but we can get visually indistinguishablesame and that is caleld transparent.

But even if we have source at hand and waching one after another ... with crf 18 or litle less nobody can distinguish encode from source.
Only when we can is when we get screenshot and fast swiching or even zooming on some part.

[mp3dom]

Are we serious? O_o?
Maybe I've "overstimated" the movie 'fanatics' but what I want to achieve with an encode is to be close as much as possible to the original master. Not to encode in a quality that a user cannot distinguish from the source (since also it doesn't have the master to compare to). For the latter basically it's only necessary to provide an encode that doesn't show high macroblocks or excessive distortion during playback and nothing more. For the most of the users during playback it will be perfectly fine. Personally even if a 10Mbps is 'transparent' (highly doubt this, but let's say is true) I'm not satisfied at all, I'm not satisfied at all even at 35 Mbps to be honest since for delicate footage the result can be too much different from the source (different without creating visible macroblocks) and this happends with *every* h264 encoder I've tested so far.

[weasel_]

agree but still even if u have source u cant tell difrence by waching one after another

and stop saying 10Mbitps

Its not same bitrate needed for Cgi movie for some avrage drama nad for some heavy grain action....so stop saying 10mbit
For some movie 10mbit is to much, for some is good, for some is not enough.

[kolak]

agree but still if u have source u cant tell difrence by waching one after another

and stop saying 10Mbitps

Its not same bitrate needed for Cgi movie for some avrage drama nad for some heavy grain action....so stop saying 10mbit
For some movie 10mbit is to much, for some is good, for some is not enough.

Hehehe- we know this :)

What is your 10mbit for grainy, complicated source?


Andrew

[weasel_]

bad choice :)

it will need more bitrate to get transparent but still less then bluray bitrate
Heavy grain and complicate movie is litle % of all movies ;)

[mp3dom]

For some is good probably because they're most of the times statics (drama?) with 2.35:1 aspect ratios. In that case I agree with you but it's quite uncommon footage. Also you understimate CGI footage. You'll be surprised to see how much bitrate a CGI scene can eat if you want to preserve fine details like color smoothing (unless the footage is only flat colors of course). And if you add CGI scene with fine details (smoothing to preserve) + complex parts in the same time you'll see that 40 Mbps is not enough (macroblocks with smooth gradients or no macroblocks with absurd color banding? Which one do you prefer? :))

[kolak]

bad choice :)

it will need more bitrate to get transparent but still less then bluray bitrate
Heavy grain and complicate movie is litle % of all movies ;)

It's more than you expect.
Only new movies have nice, clean masters.

Give me number please, since you know it all so well.

Andrew

[weasel_]

mp3dom :
I know, i saw that i some latest cgi movies ;)
I never say 10mbit is enough for all movies...
I just saying x264 can make transparent encode with a lot less bitrate then h264/vc1/mpeg2 ;)

kolak:Heavy grain and complicate movie that need x264@16,17,18... and more bitrate to be transparent ?
I dont know exact number but its very small :)

[kolak]

Don't forget about 50/60i content which is mostly full frame.
Your 16Mbit becames quikcly 25Mbit with peeks 30Mbit+

So we established that BD limit is not overdone :) (or that BD can't be used for interlaced content).

Andrew

[weasel_]

we established ?
You look on yourself at plural ?

[kolak]

Ok- you established.
Based on your estimation and obvious facts. It's your job :)

Andrew

[Didée]

Short reminder - back to topic:

Presumably SB QuickSync can achieve transparency on 1080p at 100~150 mbit.

[kolak]

Probably :)

[weasel_]

^^ and that is good becouse of there speed ?
Assume bluray encode done with SB QuickSync @10-15Mbit ... that`s not transparant even to people who are partial blind :)
Ok- you established.
Based on your estimation and obvious facts. It's your job :)

Andrew

what facts ?
Fact that 90% of movie with x264 get transparent at bitrate less then 15mbit ?

And what bitrate hardware encode need for same quality ? 10 time more :devil:

[kolak]

I never used a hardware encoder in my life :)

Yes and BD is for 100% cases, so it's established :)


Andrew

[weasel_]

@40Mbit : Bravo BD

And 20Mbit x264 is for 100% cases , still half less bitrate
so it`s established ;)

[kolak]

Average- add peek and than established and about what is currently used :)

Andrew

[weasel_]

OK , still is a significant less then bluray encoders need for same quality ;)

[kolak]

OK , still is a significant less then bluray encoders need for same quality ;)

What Blu-ray encoders have you tried?

[weasel_]

that is rhetorical question ?
and still i will answer :

I dont need to try everything in this world to know quality and efficiency of that.


Are you saying that bluray encoders will give same quality as x264 on 10-15mbit bitrate ?
OR that they need same bitrate for identical quality ?

not only x264... MC and much more encoders are better then 3 encoderes used in BluRay.



And we rly need to get back to topic and topic is :
how bad SB encoder will be

[deadrats]

I think the hardware encoding isn't for x264 but instead of the other h264 codec that they use, mainconcept or something.

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tvmw5.html

it looks like if you have nvidia card it uses cuda and if you have a new intel cpu it uses the intel sdk. Neither of which support x264 as far as i'm aware. We need intel, nvidia or amd to add support for hardware decoding, 3rd party vendors like tmpgenc can't do that as far as i'm aware.

i'm well aware of this, i made a mistake, i meant to say that all software based h264 encoding, including x264, is dead.

[deadrats]

I think that all deadrats is trying to say is to consider things from the perspective of the end-user. Your average Joe probably cares a lot more about speed than quality, or rather, encoding efficiency. I do all my encodes at preset="slower". My brother will probably kill himself waiting for the same encode to finish.

I took a look at the Quick Sync review, and it's really not too shabby. I think that deadrats' points are these:

1. Quick Sync will probably be a standard feature on both Intel and AMD CPUs from now on.
2. Since it's there, why not use it?
3. Bring what DS and Team has learned from x264, and apply that to make use of Quick Sync, bringing extra speed and the quality we have all grown to love from x264.

WOW!!! someone actually understood exactly the message i was trying to convey.

i was starting to think that i was typing in swahili.

[deadrats]

Short reminder - back to topic:

Presumably SB QuickSync can achieve transparency on 1080p at 100~150 mbit.

where the hell did you get this from? the only review thus far that has screenshots shows that the x86 encode and the quick sync encode, 1080p@15mb/s, are identical.

the beauty of quick sync is that it's also present on dual core SB cpu's, so you can buy a low end processor and still get the same encoding speed.

hardware encoding is the future and something to be embraced, as soon as i get my tax refund i plan on building a SB based setup. when that happens i'll use the latest tmpg express, which uses x264 for software encoding and supports quick sync to put this debate to rest.

[dj_tjerk]

WOW!!! someone actually understood exactly the message i was trying to convey.

i was starting to think that i was typing in swahili.

And what about your claim that the so-called "software" encoders are dying? Where do you put the line between a hardware encoder and software encoder when the cpus offer many optimized instructions commonly used in video encoding or decoding?

Though I'm not really sure what Quick Sync is and how it can be used; but if it's some extra hardware implementations on the cpu and Intel is not putting up any fences to protect their baby's internals, I see no reason not to see it as an extended instruction set of some sort that your so-called "software encoders" can use. (Or am I totally wrong here?)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Though I'm not really sure what Quick Sync is and how it can be used; but if it's some extra hardware implementations on the cpu and Intel is not putting up any fences to protect their baby's internals, I see no reason not to see it as an extended instruction set of some sort that your so-called "software encoders" can use. (Or am I totally wrong here?)

Apparently it is a complete encoder in hardware, which you can either use as a "black box" instead of a software encoder or not use at all.

It is not an instruction set extension that can be used in (existing) software encoders, like the MMX/SSE extensions...

[Dark Shikari]

Apparently it is a complete encoder in hardware, which you can either use as a "black box" instead of a software encoder or not use at all.

It is not an instruction set extension that can be used in software encoders, like the MMX/SSE extensions...No, it's a set of hardware tools that can be used to make an encoder. They just don't expose the API for this, so it's a useless pile of silicon.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

No, it's a set of hardware tools that can be used to make an encoder. They just don't expose the API for this, so it's a useless pile of silicon.

I see. But where exactly is the encoder implemented then?

Is it implemented in some Intel-provided library that makes use of these "hardware tools" through some undocumented API or is it implemented inside the CPU as firmware/microcode?