Marvel movies are extremely compressible

[YaBoyShredderson]

Has anyone else noticed this? Why might this be? I have a few assumptions, which ill get to in a moment. I just encoded ant man and the wasp, the 4k bluray. Crf 18 hevc, slow, main10 high profile level 5.1. It came out to just under 5gbs, just the hevc stream. When i was doing my testing to see what settings i want with 4k blurays, i noticed that endgame compressed really well too, i think to like 9% of its original size iirc. There isnt anything that stands out to me as to why these movies are so compressible, but if i had to guess, its probably the amount of cgi. There essentially just extremely advancded, photo realistic animation at this point, meaning theres basically no noise. Am i correct in that?

[takla]

Because they have next to no sharpness to them. Everything is very flat. Also, ALL Marvel movies (with Avengers) on UHD Bluray were simply upscaled with bilinear filtering. They literally do not exist in native 4K (not even as master studio files).

You will get a worse image experience (ignoring HDR) using the fake 4K blurays then with the normal bluray if you use a media player that lets you configure the scale filter. MPV for example. Or MPC+madVR.

[cogman]

Lots of reasons for this.

A lot of the movies are filled with dark/pitch black scenes. That helps a lot. (Think of how many space scenes are in GotG, for example).

Many of the scenes are pure CGI, which are usually really compressible.

Very low noise (as you've noticed).

[SquallMX]

x265 is very good with upsampled content, all Marvel movies are 2K, additionally, they are filmed using top-notch digital cameras in perfect lighting conditions which equals little to no noise/grain.

[RanmaCanada]

I've said this many times, HDR is highly compressable. As we move to more and more digital only "filming" there will be no grain or noise and thus more and more movies will be able to be shrunk down to save space on your NAS while the originals are safely tucked away in your viewing room, or in a rubbermaid under your bed. The most difficult part is the time it takes to encode these.

[Boulder]

One reason in addition to the non-grainy video is that the non-graded HDR image is so flat that it confuses the encoder. It means that you should test how it looks, the numbersmay deceive you. With HDR sources, I use CRF 14 while with SDR it's 18.

[FranceBB]

You will get a worse image experience (ignoring HDR) using the fake 4K blurays then with the normal bluray

Yes and no, but I'm more prone to "no".
The original master delivered to theaters of the movie is a Motion JPEG 2000 250 Mbit/s 23.976p 4:4:4 12bit in XYZ, so, assuming that it's how they checked it and how it was supposed to look like, it makes a lot of sense to go to H.265 rather than H.264. You're right in the sense that it might have not been shot in 4K and that it has been upscaled, but it was shot in Log-C with an Arri Alexa, which offers several stops/nits and high bit depth; hence, assuming that it has been edited as such ("assuming" 'cause not even us working in TV know what they do as we only get the final product), targeting HEVC H.265 BD 1000 nits offers an homomorphism and preserves all the stops recorded by the camera, while 10bit planar preserves way more frequencies than going to 8bit (H.264 BD). Unfortunately, there's no public release that is done in 4:4:4 nor in XYZ as the best the public can get is 4:2:0 Type 2 YUV in an H.265 HEVC BD, but still, it's way better than the transformation they do when they go down to BT709 with a function similar to a Sigmoid with a knee on high frequencies to match the 100 nits offered by SDR + Manual adjustments + Colorist's view. Last but not least, Marvel's movies are full of GFX and, as such, they have plenty of "flat" surfaces, which is a good thing for the encoder as it can recognize the blocks and macroblocks that make up a surface and almost perfectly recognize them with motion-compensation, hence saving bits.

One reason in addition to the non-grainy video is that the non-graded HDR image is so flat that it confuses the encoder. It means that you should test how it looks, the numbersmay deceive you. With HDR sources, I use CRF 14 while with SDR it's 18.

This is also true.
Flat images which have purely logarithmic curves are much "easier" to encode for an encoder.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Actually, blockbusters are almost always shot in 4K or higher (5.6k or 8k etc). It's the VFX that are rendered at 2k due to compute requirements, thus the movie is generally mastered in 2k.

[benwaggoner]

I've said this many times, HDR is highly compressable. As we move to more and more digital only "filming" there will be no grain or noise and thus more and more movies will be able to be shrunk down to save space on your NAS while the originals are safely tucked away in your viewing room, or in a rubbermaid under your bed. The most difficult part is the time it takes to encode these.
If only creators would stop adding grain to digital productions! Some like the film look. Some like that adding grain makes VFX blend in better. And a surprising number of filmmakers have an intense atavistic emotional attachment to shooting with actual made-with-chemistry film.

[Otyli]

Oh man, Marvel movies go through an interesting transformation regarding compression. I can’t say I’ve done anything as technical as encoding movies myself, but I’ve noticed the same thing when streaming these kinds of films. They always look super clean and crisp despite all the CG-heavy scenes. I think it’s related to how they’re made, with limited noise and everything being so polished.

[tormento]

TBH I convert almost any UHD as 1080p HLG and it's more than enough ;)

[microchip8]

TBH I convert almost any UHD as 1080p HLG and it's more than enough ;)

Why HLG? Why not keep/convert to HDR10? Just curious

[tormento]

Why HLG? Why not keep/convert to HDR10? Just curious


Because PQ is evil.

Plus HLG is much more watchable on SDR screens too and there are free utilities to tweak the HLG cube to your needs / video brightness.

[FranceBB]

Because PQ is evil.

Plus HLG is much more watchable

You made me proud.

https://media.tenor.com/YG8C8C5gkQUAAAAM/happy-tears.gif

[microchip8]

Because PQ is evil.

Plus HLG is much more watchable on SDR screens too and there are free utilities to tweak the HLG cube to your needs / video brightness.

That's a good reasoning and strategy. Making it more compatible. For me, as all my displays are HDR capable, I just encode all my UHD sources with HDR10 in 1080p*. I'm the only one watching it (private collection, never lend them to anyone) so this is not a problem for me.

* I scale down to 1080p for a few reasons; 1080p is much faster to encode on my PC than encoding in 4K and I can't see the diff on my TV while watching an encode in 1080p or one in 4K - I use a 55" Mini LED TCL TV at a distance of about 4 meters, but even looking at it closer I still can't see a (big) difference.

[tormento]

You made me proud.
Thanks daddy. [emoji28]

[GeoffreyA]

Owing to having older 1080p SDR TVs, some of us are actually committing the crime of converting UHD to 8-bit BT.709 :)

[benwaggoner]

Because PQ is evil.
Blasphemy!

Well, it really depends on what you're trying to do. Creative intent is much more explicit with PQ, as we know exactly how bright each pixel should be in reference ambient light, and can adjust from there. Being perceptually uniform also makes encoding more efficient.

HLG has the benefit of being more backwards compatible, yeah, but it isn't as compatible for HDR TVs as PQ is, as HLG was introduced several years after HDR-10.

And while HLG may work in practice, it doesn't work in theory as it's pretty much by definition impossible to have a single set of code values express two different creative intents. Doing separate SDR and HDR allows for different, distinct grades for each with optimized looks tuned for each. HLG will always lose creative intent for SDR, HDR, or some from both. This is much more of an issue for scripted movies/TV than for sports, as sports doesn't get that kind of creative color grading.

Plus HLG is much more watchable on SDR screens too and there are free utilities to tweak the HLG cube to your needs / video brightness.
I recommend making 709 if you want 709. And if you have software that can tweak HLG, it seems like you could just do HDR-10. I'm not aware of any hardware that supports HLG without supporting HDR-10.

[benwaggoner]

Owing to having older 1080p SDR TVs, some of us are actually committing the crime of converting UHD to 8-bit BT.709 :)
Not even 10-bit?

A TV better than the best 1080p SDR TV ever made is like $300 these days. If it were me, I'd spend the time I'd otherwise do recompression and get a part time job and a new TV ;)!

[benwaggoner]

That's a good reasoning and strategy. Making it more compatible. For me, as all my displays are HDR capable, I just encode all my UHD sources with HDR10 in 1080p*. I'm the only one watching it (private collection, never lend them to anyone) so this is not a problem for me.

* I scale down to 1080p for a few reasons; 1080p is much faster to encode on my PC than encoding in 4K and I can't see the diff on my TV while watching an encode in 1080p or one in 4K - I use a 55" Mini LED TCL TV at a distance of about 4 meters, but even looking at it closer I still can't see a (big) difference.
Yeah, to see full 4K detail, you'd want to be less than 2m from a 55". At 4m no one can tell the difference.

And for movies that were upscaled from theatrical 2K in the first place (2048x instead of 1920x, but that's not enough to really matter), you're really not losing any actual source detail. And downscaling is an effective low-pass filter for film grain and noise removal.

More and more theatrical is native 4K, though, so newer titles on a bigger TV may see some loss with that process. Although typically not VFX heavy stuff, as doing VFX at 4x resolution adds a lot of expense and time, and doesn't really matter much for any shots with motion blur.

I'd always pick 1080p HDR over 2160p SDR!

[GeoffreyA]

Not even 10-bit?

A TV better than the best 1080p SDR TV ever made is like $300 these days. If it were me, I'd spend the time I'd otherwise do recompression and get a part time job and a new TV ;)!

It's not a problem to buy a new TV, but the current one works all right, so we haven't got a need as such. When the time comes, it will come and then 4K (or dare I say 8K) ;)

Honestly, though, most of the content we watch is not through recompression.

I wonder, in reference to film, does 35 mm resolve to a maximum of 4K, and 65/70 mm to a maximum of 8K? Or can they be scanned at even higher resolutions, and it's just a matter of time and cost?

[Emulgator]

Required/necessary resolution will differ quite a bit per stock.
You may consider film stock's spatial properties as silver grain "blooming" with desired (sensitivity) gain.
Blooming is not a desirable parameter here because I suggest the term "blooming" to describe
"growing bigger grain while developing more sensitive emuslsions/solutions breeeding more black silver per photons even at longer wavelengths but sacrificing spatial resolution"
If the decision was made to have maxed resolution you may assume positive stock with low sensitivity.
This delivers max b/w resolution, worth 4k from 35mm, and 8k from 65mm, and I am talking b/w stock here.
so this would apply to colour formats that are based on b/w stock as well (3-stripe)
The desire to shoot with "available light", well "lets spare the expensive and artificial professional lighting"
led to emulsions with bigger grain, worth 4K for 35mm at its best, 2K if judged by cost-conscious professionals,
and some ~800 lines IIRC if BBC and the then mainstream footage was to be judged.
And this may well apply to colour negative stock used for budget to midrange films from 1980 on.
BTW, you may even run FFT on your footage and see what frequencies it contains and which sampling rates it might need to be represented properly.
Grain will eat most of that spatial information, not necessarily picture detail. But: later algos will try to guess from there, so it might be beneficial later.
Tests (and my findings) have shown that aside from pure Nyquist (you know just enough if you sample twice ;-))...
if luxury allows: Spend a bit more on sampling and maybe you gain later, and this finally would confirm your assumptions.

[GeoffreyA]

Thanks for the explanation, Emulgator. I think film is fascinating, and it's lamentable to many that it is seemingly being phased out, except in the hands of the Nolans and Peeles out there.

[Emulgator]

A nice reading:
https://cool.culturalheritage.org/videopreservation/library/film_grain_resolution_and_perception_v24.pdf

[benwaggoner]

Thanks for the explanation, Emulgator. I think film is fascinating, and it's lamentable to many that it is seemingly being phased out, except in the hands of the Nolans and Peeles out there.
Film is fascinating, but is also an incredible pain to deal with, much more expensive, and has much bigger environmental impact.

I was surprised to learn that Kodak is actually seeing increases in film use in the last couple of years, more film schools buying it, and are making long-term capital investments in film stock production.

[GeoffreyA]

Film is fascinating, but is also an incredible pain to deal with, much more expensive, and has much bigger environmental impact.

I was surprised to learn that Kodak is actually seeing increases in film use in the last couple of years, more film schools buying it, and are making long-term capital investments in film stock production.

I remember David Lynch saying that he'd never touch film again because it was such a pain to worth with!

But if film use is increasing, that's good news, of which I'm glad.

EDIT: As fate would have it, I posted this comment on Lynch, and a short while later read on the news that he died today. This makes me sad because he was, arguably, my favourite director. Alas, there won't be a Twin Peaks season four from his hand, nor more of his strange, surreal works. Rest in peace, David Lynch.

[benwaggoner]

I remember David Lynch saying that he'd never touch film again because it was such a pain to worth with!

But if film use is increasing, that's good news, of which I'm glad.
It's increasing in absolute terms, but so is content production in general, so it may not be gaining market share in production. Certainly the last couple of years have seen some high profile blockbusters shot on film, most notably Oppenheimer. Very few projects will get a budget allowing for end-to-end IMAX film, though. Those big frames raise cost per minute a ton.

As long as grain is either small enough to not have much visual impact or coarse enough that it isn't just spatially random (as in particles have shapes), it's not too bad . But grain that's close to pixel level both makes compression very challenging at native resolutions and just vanishes at lower resolution due to the low-pass filtering of downscaling. That's a creative intent that it's simply not possible to deliver in pristine quality over IP without film grain simulation.

[FranceBB]

Blasphemy!

Alright, alright, hear me out.
The beauty of HLG is that it allows anyone to shoot in HDR anytime without any further processing required. Strictly speaking, up until this point we've been talking about cinema productions where you have a very controlled environment, you shoot log in a totally logarithmic curve (Slog3, Clog3, LogC, ZLog) at high bit depth and then you grade the raw footage to create the final PQ version. That's all fun and games, but not the life of an average user. With HLG you could be in the middle of a forest, by the lake, having a picnic during the weekend, and you may wanna record a video for some personal memories. You can pick up your camera and you don't have to shoot BT709 SDR. You have the benefit of BT.2020 for Wide Color Gamut and the ability to record up to 1000 nits if your sensor has enough stops. Sure, you're not gonna have details in the blacks (which are mostly noise anyway in non professional cameras and difficult / unpredictable environments) but at least you have HDR. Modern cameras nowadays have way more than 6 stops (i.e what was needed to record natively in BT709 SDR 100 nits), so recording in BT709 feels like a total waste. And sure, you don't need a Sony FX6 to shoot log, so one could say that an enthusiast private consumer who has a Sony A7III for private use could very well shoot Slog3 and then create the final PQ version out of it, but realistically aside from me, you and a bunch of people on Doom9, who's ever gonna do that for private free time stuff? I made that very same mistake myself and I still have a bunch of Slog3 footage sitting in my HDD waiting to be re-encoded and it probably never will (I've been procrastinating this for years). Going back to the "more than 6 stops" argument and BT709 SDR, obviously modern camera manufacturers are well aware of their sensors having way more than 6 stops, so they also allow you to record in a "smarter" way than just plain old BT709. Sony cameras for instance have things like "Cinetone" which is still BT709 SDR 100 nits, but it's converted internally by the camera with soft highlights rollback to give a "better" feeling and preserve a bit more details. Anyway, why would anyone go through all these compromises when he could just shoot BT2020 HLG? With HLG you can shoot HDR in any condition, you don't need to grade it again (unless you want to) and you can play it back on your TV, on your phone, on your PC... anywhere! It's ready to use, easy to record and it allows the world to finally move away from using BT709 SDR by default.

HLG isn't evil, it works extremely well in practice and I'm sure it's gonna be here to stay. :)

p.s I've been shooting all my personal video for personal private memories in BT2020 HLG for years now.

[benwaggoner]

HLG makes sense for consumer content production, as it can be played as-is and captures more dynamic range than 709. A huge deal to lots of people, even if not to me personally (although I do shoot some HLG + Dolby metadata on my iPhone).

The professional content I am concerned with isn't shot in any consumer color volume or EOTF. It's going to be film, a RAW (cinematic) or a Log (live) variant of some sort. Nothing is going to be delivered in the camera format, and creating separate 709 and PQ versions provides more control and quality than HLG would have by itself.

[GeoffreyA]

It's increasing in absolute terms, but so is content production in general, so it may not be gaining market share in production. Certainly the last couple of years have seen some high profile blockbusters shot on film, most notably Oppenheimer. Very few projects will get a budget allowing for end-to-end IMAX film, though. Those big frames raise cost per minute a ton.

As long as grain is either small enough to not have much visual impact or coarse enough that it isn't just spatially random (as in particles have shapes), it's not too bad . But grain that's close to pixel level both makes compression very challenging at native resolutions and just vanishes at lower resolution due to the low-pass filtering of downscaling. That's a creative intent that it's simply not possible to deliver in pristine quality over IP without film grain simulation.

Even if one looks at Christopher Nolan, his earlier movies were shot on 35 mm, and when he started using IMAX, first in The Dark Knight, it was only for a selection of footage. As time went by, he used it more, along with 65 or 70 mm film solely, from Dunkirk onwards. As for Oppenheimer, Kodak made a black-and-white IMAX stock specially for the movie.

I agree that film grain is a curse to encoders and the chief problem when it comes to delivering respectable quality at lower bitrates. It's no wonder that modern codecs and encoders have spent so much effort on denoising and film grain synthesis.

[excellentswordfight]

I remember David Lynch saying that he'd never touch film again because it was such a pain to worth with!

But if film use is increasing, that's good news, of which I'm glad.

EDIT: As fate would have it, I posted this comment on Lynch, and a short while later read on the news that he died today. This makes me sad because he was, arguably, my favourite director. Alas, there won't be a Twin Peaks season four from his hand, nor more of his strange, surreal works. Rest in peace, David Lynch.
You can also go the Denis Villeneuve route and shot on digital cameras than transfer it 35mm and back again; Dune is done this way, and although that sounds ridiculous, that movie looks great and has a very nice fine grain structure to it. And on topic, its also compresses pretty good.

And tbh, I never liked Nolans format-fixation, I find the constant change of cameras and formats in his movies are more distracting than the value of the 70mm sections brings. I also dont understand, if he now likes the taller imax format, why the 35mm stuff isnt non-anomorphic open matte, so he can present the whole movie in a taller format.

[GeoffreyA]

You can also go the Denis Villeneuve route and shot on digital cameras than transfer it 35mm and back again; Dune is done this way, and although that sounds ridiculous, that movie looks great and has a very nice fine grain structure to it. And on topic, its also compresses pretty good.

And tbh, I never liked Nolans format-fixation, I find the constant change of cameras and formats in his movies are more distracting than the value of the 70mm sections brings. I also dont understand, if he now likes the taller imax format, why the 35mm stuff isnt non-anomorphic open matte, so he can present the whole movie in a taller format.

Villeneuve's movies are shot well and look beautiful. From a cinematography point of view, I particularly like Blade Runner 2049 and think it blows even shot-on-film stuff out of the water, demonstrating what can be done in the right hands. However, not everyone behind a camera is Roger Deakins.

Regarding Dune, I think it doesn't look that great, and yes, I know I'm in a minority to speak such sacrilege. It's framed beautifully, but I've never been happy with the texture and softness of the picture; and let's not even talk about the frequent CGI, marring the whole effect. As a movie, though, I am fond of it. And it compresses well!

With regard to Nolan, I find the switching of aspect ratio is done, on the whole, "transparently" and isn't that noticeable. I think it adds a certain effect, a theatrical feeling or charm. These days, he is shooting his whole movies in both 65 mm and IMAX. Interstellar was the last with 35-mm footage. Peele's Nope is another recent example that used a combination of 65 mm and IMAX to great effect.

[Z2697]

I have a question, are the silver grains (or whatever grains in color films) the smallest recording unit of a film? In other words, will a grain contain details within?

P.S. Thanks for the recommendation of Nope, it looks great and the story is thrilling. I came up with this question when watching it, because I think the details are finer than the "film grain noises".

[Emulgator]

The silver particles are the smallest parts. Hi-Res Film 0,05µm..X-ray 2µm, these will agglomerate to clumps, forming the ~10 times larger grain.
Color: dye clouds are the remaining parts here, larger size, differing wide with film speed

[Z2697]

A nice reading:
https://cool.culturalheritage.org/videopreservation/library/film_grain_resolution_and_perception_v24.pdf

Oh, I should read this, it literally said "Fundamental film particles (silver particles) are distinct from film grain" in the first page.

[GeoffreyA]

P.S. Thanks for the recommendation of Nope, it looks great and the story is thrilling. I came up with this question when watching it, because I think the details are finer than the "film grain noises".

Glad you enjoyed Nope! The antagonist is reminscent of the angels from Evangelion, particularly that diamond-shaped one.