@ Koepi: XviD better than NanDub SBC?!

[DJ Bobo]

You said in the DivX3 forum, that XviD is better than NanDub SBC.

Yesterday, depressed from DivX5, I've finally done my very first SBC encoding @ 1100kbps (anime of course, what else? :D), and as expected, it delivers the best quality I've seen so far, comparable to the quality of good fansubs.

XviD (CVS 06/02/03 Nic) 2-pass (int) @ 1100kbps (well, the corresponding file size) with MPEG quantisation (I'm tired of H263) makes much more mosquito noise, although the resolution was lower (512x384 instead of 640x480 of the SBC version).

So how is XviD much better than DivX3?! what am I doing wrong?! I want absolutely no mosquito noise, or at least very minimal, as in DivX3, because mosquito noise just pisses me off!

[OUTPinged_]

mpeg quantization = mosquito noise.

it should be used only for low bitrate encodes imo. all hq stuff should be done with h263 quantizers.

[majerle]

First of all: I am not an expert just an soddisfacted XviD User !!

Use mpeg quant only for hiq quality encoding : bit rate > 1300
Used and b frames or other mpeg tools ?
Use Modulate Quant.
Get sticky with CE and gmc. No other (or just bframes 1/125/100)

greetings

Andres

[DJ Bobo]

@ majerle
Havn't used any extra features.

Well, the reasons why I havn't used H263 are:
1) loose crispness
2) dancing wall problem

With SBC, the walls are kinda fixed with nails (!) so they appear very stable. And the crispness is very high, even higher than XviD w/ MPEG q.

H263 still produces more mosquito noise than DivX3.

As far as I understood, modulated quantization will switch in the 2nd pass between H263 & MPEG q. to improve quality and/or crispness. I havn't tried modulated, I just tried H263/H263 & MPEG/MPEG in quality based mode 100% along with DivX3 @ 6000kbps, both XviD clips were inferior to the DivX3 version in terms of crispness and mosquito-noiselessness.
In 2-pass mode, the difference become even bigger...

NB: all my testings are done on anime, because it's there where you can judge the mosquito noise problem at best.

[Koepi]

With VHQ, the walls are stable like hell. Even without it, I can't see where SBC is capable of outperforming current builds. Honestly I think you need to do the hard learning from ground up that you had to do with nandub - sorry for the bad news. Good news is, if you learned it properly, you can _easily_ stomp nandub into ground. (Don't even dare to ask "which setting is best" ;) )

Regards
Koepi

[ssjkakaroto]

so koepi do you recommend the use of vhq for "non-test" encodes?

[NuclearFusi0n]

Originally posted by ssjkakaroto
so koepi do you recommend the use of vhq for "non-test" encodes?
if your encode is something important to you, stick with the stable builds, but so far VHQ seems to be a pretty kick-ass feature.
use at your own risk :p

[Angrychair]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
You said in the DivX3 forum, that XviD is better than NanDub SBC.

Yesterday, depressed from DivX5, I've finally done my very first SBC encoding @ 1100kbps (anime of course, what else? :D), and as expected, it delivers the best quality I've seen so far, comparable to the quality of good fansubs.

XviD (CVS 06/02/03 Nic) 2-pass (int) @ 1100kbps (well, the corresponding file size) with MPEG quantisation (I'm tired of H263) makes much more mosquito noise, although the resolution was lower (512x384 instead of 640x480 of the SBC version).

So how is XviD much better than DivX3?! what am I doing wrong?! I want absolutely no mosquito noise, or at least very minimal, as in DivX3, because mosquito noise just pisses me off!

Well, DJ, I assume you're the same guy from over on the divx.com forum. This discussion has been had before many times, even over there.

The maindrawbacks to 'SBC' are horrible macroblocking (on staionary objects especially) horrible dust artifacts (trails of miscolored pixels in the wake of a moving object) and errant blocking on objects (if you like fansubs, you probably see them a lot, but just get used to it and may even think it's normal)

In my group (www.ishin-anime.com) we use xvid exclusively now, and target <700kbps for our video bitrates. With 1100kbps I (for one) can pretty much match dvd quality. If you're getting 'crappy' results from xvid with that much bitrate, the problem is most likely with your methodology.

[Acaila]

I understand what DJ Bobo is talking about and I have to say that I agree with him. An encode in DivX 3 gives a completely static picture (although with the occasional block that is inherent to the codec), whereas an encode with XviD always gives mosquito noise. Using MPEG quantizer this effect becomes very visible, using H263 you'll end up with much reduced noise, but also a more unsharp picture compared to DivX 3.
The only way that I know of to reduce this is by filtering, but it won't kill all the noise before you start loosing detail, so that's not really a viable option.

So from a noise/static point of view DivX3 is superior, BUT overal video quality of XviD is much much better because it doesn't have all those nasty qualities like luma blocks, shit frames, motion trails etc.

[wotef]

sbc background "fixed with nails" - er, yeah, even through scene changes :D

fwiw, i applied mb1's "andreas 78er" quant matrix as custom-mpeg in xvid and from some quick tests, you know i think it's a real good "in-between" H263 and MPEG for detail/noise - maybe give that a try!!!!

[DJ Bobo]

@ koepi
Which setting is best? :p :D
Because I know, XviD *can* achieve super results (still with lower crispness than sbc :D). I've got some juuni kokki episodes encoded with XviD. They are simply COMPLETELY mosquito noise free!!
Again, they are the only ones I know that are that clean!! and I'm really not able to produce similiar results! (they are not even close ¬.¬)

@ angrychair
Someone with the same name in the divx.com forums?! I havn't visited them in years!
Anyway, I'm aware of the artifacts that SBC can produce, and I have quite many of them in my rip from last night.
But again, I have some fansubs that are almost completely artifact free and that were encoded in NanDub, so NanDub is capable of DVD quality encodings, but I'm sure, I'm missing some things again ¬.¬
I have the first Get Backers episode from ishin. It seems to be XviD encoded @ 900kbps. It has a lot of mosquito noise!
Any advice how you achieve dvd quality would be very nice. I would really like to achieve the quality of the juuni kokki xvid episodes.

@ acaila
Exactly! but as stated above, I've seen some SBC encodings that are very clean! Naruto from TW for example, I'm barely able to see anything wrong in their files, although the file sizes are pretty low (180MB and lower) and the resolution is kept on 640x480. I simply don't get it!!
There must be some gurus out there, that don't want to share their experience ¬.¬
I mean all guides here don't give the mighty keys that unleash that kind of quality, especially for anime.
I swear, I was studying 3 (!) different nandub guides simulatneously yesterday. The quality achieved was better than anything I've done before and pretty close to fansub standards, but isn't a~s good as what I'm seeing from some fansubbing groups! :angry:

@ wotef
Thanks for the tip! (man I hate encoding the same thing again & again & ag...)

[Angrychair]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo

@ angrychair
Someone with the same name in the divx.com forums?! I havn't visited them in years!
Anyway, I'm aware of the artifacts that SBC can produce, and I have quite many of them in my rip from last night.
But again, I have many fansubs that are almost completely artifact free and that were encoded in NanDub, so NanDub is capable of DVD quality encodings, but I'm sure, I'm missing some things again ¬.¬
I have the first Get Backers episode from ishin. It seems to be XviD encoded @ 900kbps. It has a lot of mosquito noise!
Any advice how you achieve dvd quality would be very nice. I would really like to achieve the quality of the juuni kokki xvid episodes.



Sorry, I don't share my personal techniques on encoding, and even though I'm probably the best encoder in my group, the only ep they've released that I encoded (in awhile) was get backers 6 (if I remember correctly) but it's not the most glowing example of work I've done, as the raw wasn't very good. If you watch through the series, you might notice some places where quality jumps significantly. Those are usually the spots where the people asked me for some advice on how to do better (asagiri no miko comes to mind, it was ep 7 or 8 before they asked me how to properly deinterlace it).

Anyway, SBC has a lot of followers because they are people that aren't ready to unlearn sbc, and learn xvid.

[ssjkakaroto]

Sorry, I don't share my personal techniques on encoding
why is that with all fansub encoders out there???:confused:

[Teegedeck]

After reading all that I feel that one of XviD's (and DivX5's, also) biggest benefits is its democratic nature [Edit: unlike putting up a filter-chain]... The actual codec-setup isn't that hard.

BTW, DJ Bobo, there must be something you've overlooked. I hope searching the forum helps you eventually.

[iago]

Originally posted by Angrychair
Sorry, I don't share my personal techniques on encoding, and even though I'm probably the best encoder in my group [...] What modesty! I really admire it. :rolleyes:

[Angrychair]

Originally posted by iago
What modesty! I really admire it. :rolleyes:

Maybe it's a comment on the state of my group's other encoder(s)? :rolleyes:

[Morbo]

I moved to Xvid for the fact it doesnt blur so bad.I use it for varying sources and have no problems(cTd's,etc).

I DONT like the new release,but if they can get the blocks out,it looks promising.

Cheers!!!

[yaz]

Originally posted by Angrychair
Sorry, I don't share my personal techniques on encoding, and even though I'm probably the best encoder in my group


whoops ... u're humble, modest and shy ... but honest, at least. the only point some could admire :-) i guess, u're the inventor of mpeg4 encoding, the creator of all stuffs round it, the heaviest beta tester ever & (of course) the beholder of the ultimate truth. not expecting but not accepting any kinda help. no doubt, u're the god. but imho, just a smaller kind :-)

Originally posted by Angrychair
Anyway, SBC has a lot of followers because they are people that aren't ready to unlearn sbc, and learn xvid.

negative. one o'reasons could be that some kinda 'gurus' are unwilling to share their knowledge & experience about it. for example :-)
maybe, u were able to figure out even the smallest trick on your own but there are lottsa people needing, accepting & appreciating other's help. anyway, that's the way of development of human mankind. sorry, been starting sidekicking :-)

don't get me wrong! i'm not blaming & not angry. just lamentating.

the bests
y

[kilg0r3]

Originally posted by Angrychair
Sorry, I don't share my personal techniques on encoding

So, what do you hang around here for? :confused: 'To let other people know how great you are? :mad:

@ wotef
where did you get that matrix from?

[mf]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
But again, I have some fansubs that are almost completely artifact free and that were encoded in NanDub, so NanDub is capable of DVD quality encodings, but I'm sure, I'm missing some things again ¬.¬

Right. I've done high quality artifact-free stuff in SBC as well. You know how much effort put in ? 1-2 hours of artifact hunting. You have to find the artifacts and force the frames which contain them to be a keyframe. Then you have to re-encode. This also further reduces the quality of your encode since keyframes take up more space than normal frames and the codec won't have as much bitrate left for the rest of the frames (this effect is minimal, but I've seen encodes with about HALF of all the frames as keyframes(!!), which is simply sick).

Exactly! but as stated above, I've seen some SBC encodings that are very clean! Naruto from TW for example, I'm barely able to see anything wrong in their files, although the file sizes are pretty low (180MB and lower) and the resolution is kept on 640x480. I simply don't get it!!

I recently encoded a 640x480 clip at 660kbit (140MB for 24mins) in XviD. Ok there was some ringing but overall the quality was higher than most SBC encodes, especially for the high-motion parts. There really isn't that much to it!
Btw, TW overfilters their Naruto eps :D.

There must be some gurus out there, that don't want to share their experience ¬.¬
I mean all guides here don't give the mighty keys that unleash that kind of quality, especially for anime.
I swear, I was studying 3 (!) different nandub guides simulatneously yesterday. The quality achieved was better than anything I've done before and pretty close to fansub standards, but isn't a~s good as what I'm seeing from some fansubbing groups! :angry:

It took me a few weeks to get the perfect Nandub settings too (before XviD existed), and a tip: don't just use guides, use intuition as well. Oh and another thing, it took me a few minutes to find good XviD settings.

[Shamballa]

LOL you make me too laugh ishin anime is the worst team ever in encode u_u 90% of anime team in us suk's a lot he don't know how encode a 120fps raw ~_~ i am soory to tell you that but for anime raw the setting of xvid can't be magic (as normal good encoder) for anime the only "secret" can be the filters ;)

[wotef]

ahoy, mates, the matrices were discussed here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27528&highlight=andreas+78er+matrix)

for my fellow lazy users, i made them (andreas' "78er", "einfache", "doppelte") into xvid matrix files you can simply load up, once this attachment has been approved

now, i don't pretend to understand precisely how the matrices work, except from what mb1 says that it acts like a filter (echoing tr barry's thread on the same concept) but i do think they give you different results than H263 or default-MPEG

in my tests, i thought the 78er matrix gave more detail than H263!

if you test,please share your results!!

finally, for the skeptics, please apply the matrix posted by tactx at the end of thread i linked above :p

[kilg0r3]

Originally posted by wotef
ahoy, mates, the matrices were discussed here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27528&highlight=andreas+78er+matrix)

for my fellow lazy users, i made them (andreas' "78er", "einfache", "doppelte") into xvid matrix files you can simply load up, once this attachment has been approved

meravilioso! grazie tanto! THIS is fair play.

how come, i always get the goosebumbs everytime i read the word 'release group'?:rolleyes:

[AS]

Originally posted by Shamballa
LOL you make me too laugh ishin anime is the worst team ever in encode u_u 90% of anime team in us suk's a lot he don't know how encode a 120fps raw ~_~ i am soory to tell you that but for anime raw the setting of xvid can't be magic (as normal good encoder) for anime the only "secret" can be the filters ;)

You must be kidding, have you ever seen an encode from AJ?

If your setting is not suited, no matter how you filter it, it won't be good. The two goes together.

oh, for those who is impressed by tw's naruto. I think Rice-box's Witch Hunter Robin is even more impressive.

I also did quite a few (anime) tests with umaniac's 29-11-2002 build and even when I increased the bitrate by 20% , sbc divx 3.11 still isn't as good in terms of motion (trailing dust noises), detail (it doesn't look any better). Half of the encode were ending up all taken in q2, the walls looks no worst than sbc divx 3.11

To make it fair, I use ffdshow's filter to playback the video, which doesn't filter as strong as divx 3.11 nor xvid's. I tweaked the stats file for sbc and took the default option in xvid with altcc enabled.

obviously I am doing something wrong here, but for me. Xvid is better :)

[csr2000]

Originally posted by Shamballa
LOL you make me too laugh ishin anime is the worst team ever in encode u_u 90% of anime team in us suk's a lot he don't know how encode a 120fps raw ~_~ i am soory to tell you that but for anime raw the setting of xvid can't be magic (as normal good encoder) for anime the only "secret" can be the filters ;)

yeah~~~

for AviSynth2.07,IVTC like IT,some NR combo like C3D,2DC,EE like WarpSharp will produce very good Result.

for AviSynth2.5,IVTC als can be IT,NR combo like C3D,Deen(a2D),
EE use aWarpSharp or WarpSharp

it will lose some details,but very useful,Try it!

[DJ Bobo]

I'm aware of the fact that TW-Naruto files are heavily filtered. But from my testings, heavy filtering brings 10% compressibility advantage, not more. Considering that a 640x480 rip will easily fill one CD in highest quality (Q2), bringing it to 170MB with minimal artifacting is simply awesome, so it's the encoding side that brings miracles, not the filtering side.

[ssjkakaroto]

C3D,Deen(a2D)???
i think you'll lose too much detail with that, deen(a2d) alone filters a lot, imo you should just use one or another unless your source is REALLY bad

[mf]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
I'm aware of the fact that TW-Naruto files are heavily filtered. But from my testings, heavy filtering brings 10% compressibility advantage, not more. Considering that a 640x480 rip will easily fill one CD in highest quality (Q2), bringing it to 170MB with minimal artifacting is simply awesome, so it's the encoding side that brings miracles, not the filtering side.

Pff 170MB (4eps/cd) really is the max any anime episode should be, except if it's 768x576 (fabulous resolution for anime ^_^ T_T, but sources hard to find) or higher. I think people should just do 140MB per ep (5eps/cd) in XviD, and do VBR MP3 if they can't make it look good enough, or do Vorbis and mux to ogm. Exceptions again can be high res and/or DVD source. Movies are exceptions, they should be able to be fitted on 1CD or 2CD with AC3 sound (given that the movie fills the whole 1400MB, I don't wanna waste space on my cds).

[Angrychair]

Originally posted by Shamballa
LOL you make me too laugh ishin anime is the worst team ever in encode u_u 90% of anime team in us suk's a lot he don't know how encode a 120fps raw ~_~ i am soory to tell you that but for anime raw the setting of xvid can't be magic (as normal good encoder) for anime the only "secret" can be the filters ;)

'Encoding' for an anime group is a difficult thing to wiggle into. Tons of people think they can do a great job at it, tons of people want to do it because it takes no real skills (translating, timing, etc) and there's tons of ego to it. Which is why it's as I said, I might have the most skills (relatively) in my group (not saying I'm the master, saying that I'm better than the guy(s) that do it now) but there's rarely a time when I'm asked to do it, because there's tons of ego in the way now (and silly mistakes were made as a matter of course, stuff like not cropping the black edges off of raws before encoding them)

Like I said, sometimes they ask for my advice, and I give it. And, yes, I do use pretty much every beta version of xvid from umaniac and koepi.

So, what do you hang around here for? 'To let other people know how great you are?

Mainly because I can see what the developers have to say about new features, problems, timelines, etc. Certainly not to post out my step-by-step guide to a good anime encode.

[DJ Bobo]

@ mf
I don't agree with you, if you wanna keep 640x480, the best way would be 2 episodes per disc. But as said, there is people, that are able to tweak the encoding settings so much, that it looks good (not perfect!!) even with 175MB filesize. How they do that?! I don't know
I personally put most of the time 3 episodes per CD, and 4 when the series comes to an end, and I don't wanna put 2 on a single CD.
The problem is, I'm not able to get good results unless I lower the resolution to 512x384 or 448x336. With good results, I mean mosquito noise free. The backdraw is: lower sharpness. While that is not tha~t dramatic, because you get used to it after 2 minutes watching, you've always got that idea in the rear of your head, telling you that it would be fine to have 640x480 and getting the same clean picture. The only codecs able to achieve that are DivX3 using NanDub or XviD with tweaked parameters. While I'm pretty close to achieve that using NanDub, with XviD I've got a lot to learn...

[haibane]

I don't think encoding an anime series at 4eps per CD is that difficult. Lots of anime have many still scenes, and many of the anime I ran into only has a 1-pass size around 230-300 MB with xvid. Some even has a 1-pass size of about 120MB. so, 5 eps or 4 eps per CD is enough for anime without drop the quality significantly. Normally, I think anime can be encode about half its 1-pass size without losing too much quality from the source.
However, I think SBC can generate very good results if someone is really good at it. The release from rice-box is very impressive, they always have smaller size and better visual quality than most of the other encodes.

[DJ Bobo]

@ haibane
Not most, only some! I've never got saturation at 300MB with 640x480. They all go over the 500 MB barrier! Saturation at 200 to 300MB is possible with 512x384, but just possible! To put it clearly, I refuse to use b-frames because they reduce quality (you get then a clip that is supposedly saturated but you're still able to see artifacts ¬.¬)

[mf]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
@ mf
I don't agree with you, if you wanna keep 640x480, the best way would be 2 episodes per disc. But as said, there is people, that are able to tweak the encoding settings so much, that it looks good (not perfect!!) even with 175MB filesize. How they do that?! I don't know
I personally put most of the time 3 episodes per CD, and 4 when the series comes to an end, and I don't wanna put 2 on a single CD.
The problem is, I'm not able to get good results unless I lower the resolution to 512x384 or 448x336. With good results, I mean mosquito noise free. The backdraw is: lower sharpness. While that is not tha~t dramatic, because you get used to it after 2 minutes watching, you've always got that idea in the rear of your head, telling you that it would be fine to have 640x480 and getting the same clean picture. The only codecs able to achieve that are DivX3 using NanDub or XviD with tweaked results. While I'm pretty close to achieve that using NanDub, with XviD I've got a lot to learn...
Geez are you really that stupid ?
It's really not hard to get a good encode at 170MB. And 3 eps/cd is really unnecessary. Here are some screenies from something I encoded at 140MB.

Very high motion:
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_1.png
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_2.png
(notice the snow in the screenshot below, this comes flying by at super-high motion, Nandub wouldn't have been able to handle this):
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_3.png

Medium motion:
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_4.png

Low motion:
(I challenge you to find ringing ( = mosquito noise) in the screenshot below.)
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_5.png
(There is a little bit of ringing in the middle in the pic below because there was text that disappeared one frame earlier, for the rest it's clean)
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_6.png
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_7.png
http://mf.onthanet.com/wolfsrain_scrshots/d9_8.png

Ok. Now note, this is HALF the size of your encodes. This is done with XviD, at almost the default settings, only a few things changed and/or enabled/disabled. There isn't that much to it.

[digitize]

@DJ-Bobo
I totally agree with mf on this one. Along with that, b-frames reduce noise, not too sure how that would lower quality...
Also Im not too sure why anyone would want to use nandub for encoding in divx3 anymore.... use ffvfw, uses libavcodec as the encoder, much better mostion estimation = much better compressibility, and an over all better look, take a look at the ffvfw thread here in the xvid forum.

[DJ Bobo]

OK people, I think I got it now. Have you noticed that almost all fansubs have non standard sizes? Wouldn't that mean those people don't use 2-pass at all?! I mean you see 150, 190, 210MB, but less 175 or 233MB sizes. Common point: all heavily filtered.
Well, thinking about the Wolf Rain screenshots, I just made a test, with Smart Smoother full throttle (11/200) and Temporal Smoother on 5 (I think more is barely possible without causing motion blur). You get a typical fansub picture (like that of Naruto :p) and you get 33% compressiblity gain! 33%! Thinking that most fansub groups become already compressed files, and recompress them again (compressed files are more compressible than original ones), that they are captured from TV or VHS (lower crispness than DVD), this makes sense to have 640x480, low size and "perfect" picture ;)
Even with 2-pass, when they're trying to aim to a given size, they choose a size that is the closest to saturation.
So this may backup the theory of shamballa a bit :D

BTW, mf, the problem was never high motion scenes, but low motion ones, because high motion look good most of the time will all codecs (I would even say NanDub has here a disadvantage as it tends to produce macroblocks more than XviD and DivX5)

So, prefering videos with more details (SS *KILLS* the picture), I would rather resize down and keep high file size :p

[digitize]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
So, prefering videos with more details (SS *KILLS* the picture), I would rather resize down and keep high file size :p


Well why the hell wouldn't sshiq kill the picture with high settings??!?!?!!? You gotta learn how to moderate the filter use in order to keep detail....

And NO most fansub groups don't use 1 pass, heh if any..... Just because their files sizes aren't exactly at 175mb etc.... doesn't mean they only use one pass. They aim for a certain file size and depending on the setting they have and the nature of the video the file size drops or raises..

[Schlumpf]

One question popped up in my head while reading this thread: How can you distinguish between the codec's and the filters' benefits?
I mean: Not all filters work that obvious like temporal or spatial smoothers.
Take my 2 favourite filters for example:
DUP copies duplicated frames and thus works extremely well on anime sources, if you tweak the threshold right. Is somebody able to recognize if this filter is used in an encode? I doubt it.
Or Tom's DCTFilter. With a parameter like (1,1,1,1,1,0.5,0,0) , I almost can't distinguish the output from the input but have a nice gain in compressibility.

That said, you should be careful with conclusions derived from watching fansubs, unless you find an encoder that is willing to share his methods (Does such a person even exist? ;) )

[DJ Bobo]

@ digitize
SS hq kills too, but not as much as the normal ss
And how would you explain that they get less size than aimed if they havn't overfiltered the video?! bring me *ANY* anime episode from DVD, and get it through DivX3 @ 6000kbps without any kind of filtering with 640x480 resolution and see how much size you get!! reasonable filtering nevers gives you more than 10% compressibility gain!

[EDIT]
@ Schlumpf
That would also explain things ;)

[mf]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
OK people, I think I got it now. Have you noticed that almost all fansubs have non standard sizes? Wouldn't that mean those people don't use 2-pass at all?! I mean you see 150, 190, 210MB, but less 175 or 233MB sizes. Common point: all heavily filtered.
Well, thinking about the Wolf Rain screenshots, I just made a test, with Smart Smoother full throttle (11/200) and Temporal Smoother on 5 (I think more is barely possible without causing motion blur). You get a typical fansub picture (like that of Naruto :p) and you get 33% compressiblity gain! 33%!

What? Are you a complete moron ? Smart smoother full throttle?!
First, you should use Smart Smoother HiQuality or eDeen, Smart Smoother is simply outclassed by now. Second, Temporal Smoother ALWAYS causes motion blurring (ghosting), it's a major NO to use that filter. You probably screwed up your video as far as backgrounds not being more than a few colored blobs.

Thinking that most fansub groups become already compressed files, and recompress them again (compressed files are more compressible than original ones), that they are captured from TV or VHS (lower crispness than DVD), this makes sense to have 640x480, low size and "perfect" picture ;)

Nobody captures from VHS. And TV caps can also be very sharp (look at wolf's rain), and then there's also the fact that there are HDTV (1152x864px, YES i'm serious) broadcasts which are much higher quality even than DVD.

Even with 2-pass, when they're trying to aim to a given size, they choose a size that is the closest to saturation.

Bullsh*t theory.

BTW, mf, the problem was never high motion scenes, but low motion ones, because high motion look good most of the time will all codecs (I would even say NanDub has here a disadvantage as it tends to produce macroblocks more than XviD and DivX5)

You saw my low motion screenshots as well, why haven't you commented on those ?

So, prefering videos with more details (SS *KILLS* the picture), I would rather resize down and keep high file size :p
DUH, WTF would you think you'd keep ANY detail with Smart Smoother at MAX strength ?! To me it shows a certain lack of intelligence to do such a thing. And another thing: I don't filter for compressibility (heck, my filtering LOWERS compressibility), but to get rid of the artifacts of the original raw, and to sharpen the image if it's an anolog TV capture.

[digitize]

@DJ BoBo
You ever think about the nature of the video?!?! Depending on the texture, color (like if it's generally dark), or if there is just little action it compresses extremely well. And even if you aim for a high file size you may come out with a huge compressibility gain b/c each frame gets basically maxed out and the bitrate cannot get higher..

[DJ Bobo]

@ mf
You're getting nervous aren't you?! baaaaaaka! :devil:
And I lack now of intelligence just because you loose your nerves and don't take the time to read my posts properly (or may be slowly? :rolleyes: )
I don't even use SS or SS HiQ at all in my rips, because they just kill details (both). I *tested* full throttle because your *low motion* screenshots seemed filtered full throttle, and I wanted to have an approach ;)
TS *doesn't* cause motion blur as long as it is used lightly. That's also the only filter I use for my rips. Most of the time with 1 or 2 strength. With Motion blur, I mean you see a ghost from the previous frame in the present frame, like when you use really the motion blur filter of VD.
TV caps can't be sharp like DVD because broadcast resolution is estimated at 352x480. DVB is a bit sharper (480x480? so lower than DVD) but from what I'm seeing, *very few* are taken from DVB, like Saint Seiya Hades for instance.
HDTV is even less used and I don't know any anime series being broadcasted on HDTV or any group becoming raws in real HDTV quality, they mostly get through usual capture cards or even through VHS or S-VHS.
When you think, you're seeing a sharper picture than usual, it's very easy to explain: when you push SS a bit, you'll see the drawing lines becoming aliased more and more. That gives a sharper effect to the picture.

Somebody tells me now who's the complete moron? :D

@ digitize
I'm totally aware of that. For example, Blood compresses extremely well, because it's quite dark. Talking about your average (colorful) anime, don't try to convince me that it has good compressibility, I'm dealing with tons of them, and not a single one got saturated at lower sizes. Not because it looks simple, it will compress good. Anime are truely the less compressible videos there is.

[mf]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
@ mf
You're getting nervous aren't you?! baaaaaaka! :devil:
And I lack now of intelligence just because you loose your nerves and don't take the time to read my posts properly (or may be slowly? :rolleyes: )
I don't even use SS or SS HiQ at all in my rips, because they just kill details (both). I *tested* full throttle because your *low motion* screenshots seemed filtered full throttle, and I wanted to have an approach ;)

Ahou. I'm not getting nervous, and I haven't filtered at full strength. That wolf's rain encode was filtered with sshiq at 10 threshold with 50 strength, and the raw already contained some smart smoothing. It was pretty hard to filter out most of the artifacts from the raw while keeping all details, and I had to make a concession.

TS *doesn't* cause motion blur as long as it is used lightly. That's also the only filter I use for my rips. Most of the time with 1 or 2 strength. With Motion blur, I mean you see a ghost from the previous frame in the present frame, like when you use really the motion blur filter of VD.

TS ALWAYS causes ghosting, at small strengths you just don't see it.

TV caps can't be sharp like DVD because broadcast resolution is estimated at 352x480. DVB is a bit sharper (480x480? so lower than DVD) but from what I'm seeing, *very few* are taken from DVB, like Saint Seiya Hades for instance.
HDTV is even less used and I don't know any anime series being broadcasted on HDTV or any group becoming raws in real HDTV quality, they mostly get through usual capture cards or even through VHS or S-VHS.
When you think, you're seeing a sharper picture than usual, it's very easy to explain: when you push SS a bit, you'll see the drawing lines becoming aliased more and more. That gives a sharper effect to the picture.

Afaik there isn't even DVB broadcast in Japan. In any case almost ALL major channels that broadcast anime are also available on HDTV, and YES those raws are available, just very hard to find. I'd love to get my hands on a bitstream-copied raw @ 1152x864, and show the world what anime should *really* look like :p.

Somebody tells me now who's the complete moron? :D

Yes, you are. You've proven it multiple times in this thread.

[DJ Bobo]

@ mf
That Ahou pleases me *lol* (Saito Hajime is one of my fav. characters, I think you know what I'm talking about ;))
Well, your filtering was (yappari) quite high, I mean 10 threshold is really high! what I would consider as reasonable is 3 :eek:
So your filtering (oh well, the result of it) was almost (comparable to) full throttle after all, considering that it was already filtered, see? ;)
Again, considering that you've become an already compressed file, it is even more compressible than usual, see? ;)

AFAIK Saint Seiya Hades is broadcasted on DVB on Sky channel in Japan, and I've seen many sites talking about "having original DVB stream of it" ;)
Have no idea about HDTV channels in Japan. We share at least the same wish :D

And I think we should keep that "moron" thing aside, nobody of us is an idiot, you got nervous, that's why you talked bullshit sometimes :D

Anyway, at least I've finally realised the truth. You know that (wanna be) samurai that admired the ultimate swordsmanship of another samurai killing 3 people on a dark night, kept improving his skills seeking that ultimate swordsmanship, until the day came, when he killed that one samurai he once admired, to finally realize what he saw that night was only an illusion his mind made up for him? ;)

[mf]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
@ mf
That Ahou pleases me *lol* (Saito Hajime is one of my fav. characters, I think you know what I'm talking about ;))
Well, your filtering was (yappari) quite high, I mean 10 threshold is really high! what I would consider as reasonable is 3 :eek:
So your filtering (oh well, the result of it) was almost (comparable to) full throttle after all, considering that it was already filtered, see? ;)
Again, considering that you've become an already compressed file, it is even more compressible than usual, see? ;)

10 treshold is about as low as you can go, as 200 is the maximum for sshiq. As I said before, my filtering heavily reduced compressibility, as I've sharpened it quite a bit.

AFAIK Saint Seiya Hades is broadcasted on DVB on Sky channel in Japan, and I've seen many sites talking about "having original DVB stream of it" ;)
Have no idea about HDTV channels in Japan. We share at least the same wish :D

In any case DVB sucks, 480x480 is an insane resolution.

And I think we should keep that "moron" thing aside, nobody of us is an idiot, you got nervous, that's why you talked bullshit sometimes :D

a) I didn't get nervous (2nd time).
b) I didn't talk bullshit. I know better what I'm talking about than you, I'm backed by part of the XviD team (the part that is on IRC anyway), and by 3 very experienced anime encoders (well I only know for sure about digitize but G-Dragon and AllTimeStoneD would probably also agree with most of my views :D), while you have only yourself.

Anyway, at least I've finally realised the truth. You know that (wanna be) samurai that admired the ultimate swordsmanship of another samurai killing 3 people on a dark night, kept improving his skills seeking that ultimate swordsmanship, until the day came, when he killed that one samurai he once admired, to finally realize what he saw that night was only an illusion his mind made up for him? ;)
I guess I'm the ultimate anime encoding kenkaku then, as I encode in XviD armed with the ultimate sharpening technology, things that most anime encoders would dream of doing (but are not allowed by their fellow fansub members who force them to use divx3) :D.

[ssjkakaroto]

mf besides SS did you use any other filter on wolfs rain?

[mf]

Originally posted by ssjkakaroto
mf besides SS did you use any other filter on wolfs rain?
sshiq
crop
supersampled xsharpen
cartoon filter
warp sharp

[RadicalEd]

xvid divx what I use RV9 OMGWTF

;P

well on the original topic, there are other reasons which weren't mentioned relating to why people prefer XviD over SBC. Theres the issue of DivX 3.11 being an illegal hack of microsoft's (crap) partial-mpeg 4 codecs, theres the issue of DivX 3.11 not being compliant (tom says this compliance can be fixed, but last I heard of it the details were sketchier than originally thought). Theres the issue of DivX 3.11 being old. Then when you consider XviD, its a completely open source legal and compliant mpeg 4 implementation, constantly being updated and refined for the better. Taking the varying reports on which is better quality wise into consideration, and not getting any solid answer, people are likely to turn to details like this to choose what tickles their fancy.

Another thing to consider is encoding technics. Unless you're lucky enough to get a better quality encode with the default or near-default settings in Nandub, you're going to do a shitload of tweaking, especially to juice out the 'best'. XviD isn't nearly as hard to get a solid encode out of. The same argument can be used for DivX 5 vs XviD, on a less severe level. Most people find XviD a good medium between enough control and too many settings.

Then finally there's the potential quality. Taking the other subjects into consideration, most find that XviD and DivX are equal enough to divert their attention to the other said matters. Not to mention the already mentioned issues of DivX 3, the motion trails, the shit frames, those weird mini gradient-in-a-block artifacts that pop up in animated encodes every so often, none of which plague XviD and the like.

There's no clear answer, but it comes down to how the above factors affect the encoder and perhaps even relies on personality a bit.
Thats my 5 cents :\


oh I forgot. Quick comparison between major codecs I did one day to try out 5.03 (http://digitalinsanity.ath.cx/~tab/divxtest/tableCompare.html). The source isn't DVD so it isnt exactly the perfect test, but it still shows off the goods and bads of the latest codecs :\
All were encoded at ~ 1mbps
The click comparison test is a better method for seeing the results. Thought this might be of some use considering the thread topic :\
note - I also consistently spelled 3ivX wrong 3vix.. 3xvixivskvisnwknm whatever, same thing :\

[emmdeeell]

DJ Bobo and Angrychair represent nearly everything I hate about fansubbers. The only person we need in order for this thread to degenerate completely into a giant cockslapping ego-fest is Killshok.

mf wins the thread because he actually knows what he's talking about. :/

[Defiler]

Originally posted by emmdeeell
DJ Bobo and Angrychair represent nearly everything I hate about fansubbers.Replace that with digisubbers, and you've got total agreement from me.

[digitize]

Hehe I do not think they are fansubbers, or at least I hope not =P. I myself am, and yeah those are the people that kinda piss you off.

@emmdeeell
Lmao, yeah etg fansubbers utterlly (sp?) hate killshok, but he's also a good source of entertainment, or any member of aj for that matter.

btw I used to be a former e-f member, i've been with various groups such as keep (ugh), aoi, e-f, a-e, etc... yeah i get around ^_^.

[DJ Bobo]

@ emmdeeell & Defiler
What the hell are you talking about?! I'm not a fansubber at all ¬.¬
Where was mf right where I was wrong you ass leechers?! :p

@ mf
10 threshold?! 50 strength?! nani?! now that I think about it, what the hell are those settings?! don't you mean diameter 10 and threshold 50?! (or is my sshiq version outdated?! ¬.¬)

[mf]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
@ mf
10 threshold?! 50 strength?! nani?! now that I think about it, what the hell are those settings?! don't you mean diameter 10 and threshold 50?! (or is my sshiq version outdated?! ¬.¬)
I bet my version is pretty old (6 months I guess), but I mean diameter 7, (or was it 5? gotta check tomorrow, I'm on laptop now), threshold 10, strength 50.

[ChronoReverse]

Woohoo, filter the heck out of everything encode it to some huge file size and then release. Gotta love all the work done there.


BTW, RB has nice small even filesizes, but the crappy ME in divx3 really hurts their encodes.

[c0de_v0id]

Many seasoned encoders knows XviD is better than sbc. They just dont want to use it for the leechers' sake.

@dj bobo
I dont know why u think nandub is better. Play around with the settings, im pretty sure you will get better results with xvid. (Also XviD can go to insane bitrates where sbc can't)

[OUTPinged_]

Mmm...

[smartass mode]
It's interesting, why all group rippers think they are better than other' group rippers?

(I am exception, of course i am better than any other group' rippers)
[./smartass mode]

Here are big questions to all those "ripping masters":

1.Why the F. do i see such a big difference between raw and your encodes? (Encodes look far worse than a simple reencode of raw with no filters and default xvid settings. Worse = bigger visual diference in that case)

Why should i download 4 different fansubs in order to find the one that was encoded by a guy who isnt a "master ripper" and doesnt use tons of spatial+sharpening filters to make himself proud?

Why do you blame AJ when your rips look overfiltered too?

Do you get paid when you use spatial filters instead of temporal even when it's obvious?

And a topic remark: You can make good looking encode with any decent codec nowadays. It's a raw and a filter set that makes the encode look shitty. Mosquito noise absense in divx3/4 encodes is due to preprocessing imo and that could be done in xvid too.

("background shimmering" = high quantizer+h263matrix effect?)

[Nic]

Keep it as friendly and constructive as you can guys or ill close the thread.

[OUTPinged_]

Nic, it is impossible with the way these guys are communicating.

It's like:

-"I am best and i want to know why i dont get good result with XXX"

-"No, it is I who is best and you are lame cause i get good result with XXX"

-"You all are lame cause i know XXX sux cause i am better than all of you"

And when you ask them to prove they tell "i use a top secret technique i learned from readme.txt file so i can't tell you"

To put it short, they are raising that "mosquito noise" issue again. They don't like the way h263 quantizers work (btw, who was first to say that nonsense that h263 smooths more than mpeg?), and they want to make mpeg/old-modulated encodes that dont have mosquito noise while using noisy source.

Also, how are you going to compare divx311 to xvid? Xvid is faster and offers better compression while the only portion of divx311 that is superior is that "somewhat sharper and less mosquito noise" prefiltering advantage.

[Angrychair]

Originally posted by OUTPinged_
Nic, it is impossible with the way these guys are communicating.

It's like:

-"I am best and i want to know why i dont get good result with XXX"

-"No, it is I who is best and you are lame cause i get good result with XXX"

-"You all are lame cause i know XXX sux cause i am better than all of you"

And when you ask them to prove they tell "i use a top secret technique i learned from readme.txt file so i can't tell you"

To put it short, they are raising that "mosquito noise" issue again. They don't like the way h263 quantizers work (btw, who was first to say that nonsense that h263 smooths more than mpeg?), and they want to make mpeg/old-modulated encodes that dont have mosquito noise while using noisy source.

Also, how are you going to compare divx311 to xvid? Xvid is faster and offers better compression while the only portion of divx311 that is superior is that "somewhat sharper and less mosquito noise" prefiltering advantage.

Right. It's degenerated into 'digi-subbers suck' 'this team sucks' 'that team sucks' 'you don't know anything about encoding'.

The sad thing is how so many people jumped on me just because I mentioned I was from some little digi-subbing group and that I happen to encode better than the other people IN THAT SMALL GROUP.

As for xvid vs sbc, xvid is just the better codec.

[digitize]

Xvid is the better codec, but for those of you who are forced to use divx3 why use nandub... Im pretty sure I said it in this thread before, maybe i didn't i forget, anyway use ffvfw. Uses libavcodec as the encoder, much better motion estimation and overall better quality.

[OUTPinged_]

Digitize, you think i (and lots of others) have spent days of nandub' source and doom9 forum' browsing only to move to another bugfest only because it has better ME(=1-5% smaller fileseize)?

[digitize]

Heh, the better me is just one of the things better about it, and the build i have is bug free. And like I said the overall results are much better, no need to be an ass. And also I said those who are stuck having to encode in divx3, I was just suggesting a better solution, so go act like an asshole else where..

[OUTPinged_]

I can't go elsewhere, the flaming thread is here and all smartasses are present, me incuding.

About using libavcodec: I know the difference between divx311 and xvid. I know a difference between divx311 and libavcodec.

If i would need to make divx311 encode for some wierd reason, i will use nandub. For anything else i would use xvid.

What would i need to learn libavcodec for?

Same thing applies for any other old nandub llamah who switched to xvid.


(Interesting thing, i didnt encode a single file in nandub in last 5 months... :/ )

[Pen-Pen]

Originally posted by Acaila
I understand what DJ Bobo is talking about and I have to say that I agree with him. An encode in DivX 3 gives a completely static picture (although with the occasional block that is inherent to the codec), whereas an encode with XviD always gives mosquito noise. Using MPEG quantizer this effect becomes very visible, using H263 you'll end up with much reduced noise, but also a more unsharp picture compared to DivX 3.
The only way that I know of to reduce this is by filtering, but it won't kill all the noise before you start loosing detail, so that's not really a viable option.

So from a noise/static point of view DivX3 is superior, BUT overal video quality of XviD is much much better because it doesn't have all those nasty qualities like luma blocks, shit frames, motion trails etc.

happy to finally read something like that from someone inside Doom9, the problem doesn't come from my XViD configuration but from my love of sharp images and my hatred for mosquito noise ;)

btw, SBC rules :D

[mf]

I think calling DCT artifacts "mosquito noise" is a sign of somebody who doesn't know very much about it, no offence.

[DJ Bobo]

@ mf
Don't be picky, you call it DCT artifacts, the other calls it mosquito noise, another ringing, etc (and if I remember well, mosquito noise is the term used in the CCE documentation :p)

The same can apply to: Block noise = macroblocking = pixellation = etc

[mf]

If I talk about pimples I don't say "little red spots" either. Sometimes using a term can aid in understanding.

[DJ Bobo]

Don't make me laugh.
Mosquito noise is an official technical term.
See CCE documentation
see here: http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/docs/MosquitoNoise2000.pdf
And I'm sure you'll see this term in many other technical documents.

Don't feel too important 'kay?

[iago]

I still have not figured what the hell the meaningless discussion in this thread is serving for. The most useless thread I've seen in the XviD forum for a long while...

[Didée]

Indeed.

How do we send'em to a chatroom?

[DJ Bobo]

@ iago
That's what I'm wondering about too! nearly nobody gave me useful tips ¬.¬

[iago]

@DJ Bobo

Man, first, I was really glad to see you step into the XviD forum, dumping that DivX5 stuff ;), but then, all of a sudden, everything turned a bit weird in this thread! Anyway, I hope from that point on the discussion switches toward a more useful route.

edit - and personally, I don't think I can be of any help to you since I (have) never encode(d) anime and I guess it's totally a different realm in terms of filtering, etc.

But I'm almost sure that with either XviD or Nandub SBC you will usually get much better results than you do with DivX5, and I agree with Acaila that XviD will deliver better overall quality than Nandub SBC.

[esby]

...
I ventured in this thread thinking to find some interresting
discussion about xvid & sbc...
If i understood well, aside from fansub wars,
the main disavantage of xvid is the 'mosquito bites' (or any terms you call them... not really the matter), which can be compensated by the use of Bframes & qpel...
I'm hoping i'm not wrong -not very versed in xvid...

For divx3.11 sbc it seems the weaknesses are the usual luma inverted block... and the pixel flip in subs...

What i can add to this:

For a small quantity of work, xvid is better.
If you are used to sbc, ready to sacrifice time, searching
for the nasty encoding problem the anti-shit didnt catch. You might get better work.
For getting ride of lb block in sbc, reencoding as a kf the frame can work, but increasing the drf ( i mean setting from 3 to 4) can help too, and not necessary witout forcing a keyframe. Some people may object that the average drf will goes up, but the drfs are an indicator, and drf of 2 is not necessary better than a drf of 2...

About anime & filtering, it's true that filtering may be important, but sometimes it's better to seek for a better source than to use chain filter of death... And i have the personal feeling that the less you filter your anime, the more natural the result looks. Of course, you are forced to filter most of the time, but this should be done with parcimony.

I forgot a side effect of xvid, if the encoder used a non stable version, we end with compatibility related issue at playback.
Of course this issue may be non existing & minor, but should be taken in account before using such or such built of xvid.

esby

[sungey]

hmm quite a "colorful" thread ....
this thread is supposed to be a place to share knowledge ... so lets start doin that ...

lately some fansubs has been using developmental xvid ...
which probably will not work with future xvid ... (it works in ffdshow though , imho its better to make sure the encode works in standard mpeg-4 playback ( xvid and divx5 ). when newer xvid appear ... users are troubled bc they have to download the newest xvid .... imho if encoders wanna use xvid bframe .. make it divx5 compatible and use DX50 fourcc .. so less trouble for users ...
make sure the DX50 compatibility is checked and use h263 ...
that way we can have an encode that works with DX50, the xvid build used to encode it and ffdshow ... isnt that nice .. ^^ .. best of all ... use xvid stable with DX50/DIVX playback (speaking from experience, many ppl have trouble with xvid playback ) .. no idea why ...

just my 2 cents ...

P/S : anyone here watch anime on XBox ?... can we install ffdshow on XBox ?

[OUTPinged_]

The persons who _release_ incompatible xvid encodes, made quite a number of people think it is "immature" and "not safe to use", comparing to divx5.

Somehow no one actually cares if a build is alpha or not when encoding releases and those who do, sometimes use "stable untested" releases :-)

[mf]

As long as nobody releases files containing RRV, what's the problem with incompatibility ?

[Defiler]

Does anyone know why DIV3/SBC encodes (ignoring the obvious issues, summarized nicely by esby) look as good as they do? By this point, XviD's motion estimation engine is vastly more sophisticated than the one in DivX 3.11a, so that's not it.. is it just the quantizer matrix that DivX 3.11a uses yielding that characteristic "SBC look"?

[mf]

Originally posted by Defiler
Does anyone know why DIV3/SBC encodes (ignoring the obvious issues, summarized nicely by esby) look as good as they do? By this point, XviD's motion estimation engine is vastly more sophisticated than the one in DivX 3.11a, so that's not it.. is it just the quantizer matrix that DivX 3.11a uses yielding that characteristic "SBC look"?
If it is, it should be extractable. Matrices are stored in the files, right ?

[esby]

About 'sbc looking':
I think they are two factors:
- the first one, since divx 3.11 was used first, sbc or not, the way
you valuate any encode is influenced by the way divx 3.11 process the data...
It may be only 'psychological', but if a codec like xvid had come first in the time scale, we might think that xvid does a better job, since we tends to be less sensible to some aspect of the video and more to some others (etc.).
- that been said, xvid offers multiples ways of doing an encode, and i don't think there are really optimized as we could say for divx3.11, meaning xvid may be a better tool in theory, the way we use nandub to produce sbc clip is more well known and create what we can call 'a looking', meaning all encodes tends to looks the same, since they are based on the same encode settings mostly now (or the same approach).
Since xvid produces more different results due mostly to the different way we can use it, we cannot said it looks like xvid, unless if we found the typical error we know in xvid ( eg mosquito bites)...

Finally i think that divx sbc looking comes from a constant way of distributing bitrate & drf according to the first pass... Meaning you'll end with the same type of sequence, since there are only keyframes & deltaframes in divx3.11... But i can be wrong too.

esby

PS: mf, what do you call 'RRV' ;) ? ( This dont tell me anything, the only thing that come to my mind is real video, but i dont want to make mistakes :) )

[Edit] [ps2] about compatibility it's not really an issue, but when you end with leechers that got the fansub release you just done (you as 'group'), and that about a quarter of them are asking, "how can i play the video, xvid not playing it..." it's just quite heavy to redirect them to a working xvid build or a working ffdshow build, (Both had versions causing problems for the release i'm talking...) The pain being that problem got solved for ffdshow by using not the most recent alpha release... -- :confused:

[sungey]

Originally posted by esby
...
I ventured in this thread thinking to find some interresting
discussion about xvid & sbc...
If i understood well, aside from fansub wars,
the main disavantage of xvid is the 'mosquito bites' (or any terms you call them... not really the matter), which can be compensated by the use of Bframes & qpel...
I'm hoping i'm not wrong -not very versed in xvid...


"Bframe reduces ringing" is true, ... another way to combat ringing is by using h263 quant and boost the bitrate. Make sure the source is cleaned though ...

As far as i know .... Nandub uses h263 quant ... not very sure though. I wonder waht is RRV too ... :)

[mf]

RRV == Reduced Resolution VOPs. It's a highly experimental feature that's super-incompatible, and will most probably never show up in any public XviD builds. Files containing RRV should never be distributed in public.

[Defiler]

Originally posted by esby
I think they are two factors:
- the first one, since divx 3.11 was used first, sbc or not, the way
you valuate any encode is influenced by the way divx 3.11 process the data...
It may be only 'psychological', but if a codec like xvid had come first in the time scale, we might think that xvid does a better job, since we tends to be less sensible to some aspect of the video and more to some others (etc.).Personally, I don't think SBC looks better.. but it seems to be a very very common perception. There must be something behind it. It would be interesting to hear a technical explanation of why this is so. I'd start a thread for it (because clearly the big players have stopped reading this one..), but I know it would turn into another flamewar.

[sungey]

personally i think xvid looks better ... especially in high motion..
i dont have severe ringing artifact with xvid either, in my observation i have seen some divx3 that has very bad ringing artifacts too. In terms of sharpness (even using using h263) i also think xvid is as good as divx3. To conclude, in the end, encoding quality depends on encoding method. Users just need correct settings and filters.

P/S : That's my experience with anime encoding ... i only do anime :). I do direct YV12 -> YV12 encoding with xvid ... while in ND , ND will convert the YV12-> RGB32 in order to work. Color conversion is no good :( .. just my opinion.

[Defiler]

Originally posted by sungey
To conclude, in the end, encoding quality depends on encoding method.I'm not sure that this is a stunning revelation. :D

[sungey]

eheheh :)

[DeathWolf]

After reading this thread...seeing such horrible things... i was kinda shocked. All of what i say is my little opinion of an old anime encoder who doesnt claim anything...

In my humble opinion, xvid is better than SBC in most of the case
What are the case where SBC can compete with xvid? well on very clean sources SBC tends to give oustanding results despite it being old.
But SBC hates noise... SBC hates high motion.... and SBC
performs very badly at low compressibility
So in my case, which is anime encoding, i like xvid much better for 2 reasons:

1.it gives me less work(no inverted luma block hunt)
2.it tends to give a more "constant quality", ie it acts good on high and low motion, on noisy and non noisy
3.at low compressibility(less than 60% is low for me in anime)

now some people will tell me to use ffvw to get rid of point1... well... ffvw is indeed very nice BUT it doesnt have a 2 pass mode as good as nandub... and that lack often makes SBC look better


about xvid's moving background i agree on the fact VHQ gives very good results and nails quite well the background

about general anime episodes size i'll say three things
1.it depends on the source: depends on the kind of anime of course(high motion, low motion, digital animation etc)
2.it depends on the source: how did the raw get ripped, we are nowadays getting such high quality tvrips, due to a.very clean digital animation b.very good capture of the vids
for example on witch hunter robin....
*almost all witch hunter robin i saw were great at 140 meg or less
*almost all raw(read unsubbed tvrips) of witch hunter robin were nice at less than 140 meg
so there is no miracle... (sorry no hikari no kiseki(j/k))
filtering can help a lot sometimes but... u cant turn an ugly raw into a good sub... and it's hard to mess up a nice raw into an ugly sub
3.it depends on the filtering as said before

we are getting more and more 175 meg and 140 meg rips recently thanks to the nice raws and encodes, not thanx to the filtering

about hdtv raws... i dont believe hdtv is that much over japan... the only real hdtv raw i could see were mahoro's


finally, i think teams should just do non Bframes, non GMC, non exp features encodes and put DIVX fourcc in order for everybody to read them without prob


Btw, thanx to all great developpers of these great video tools we are all using(ie thanx to the xvid team, vdubmod team, avs team, filters developpers, and many other)

Special salutations to some friends like anrp, sung and Alltimestoned;)


PS: i agree on the fact fansub has turned badly.... too many ego fansubbers.... too many high ass encoders.... but there are still many good guys left:)

PS2: AJ is the most evil thing

@mf
i agree on most of what you say exept on the part about size:)
keep on doing good job;)
btw, wolf rain's raws are particularly good, you choose a good pick;)

@DJ-Bobo
i dont know about your high quantization noise but try just some small filtering like a 2dcleaneryuv at low level... either you messed up really badly a setting, or try another xvid release?
(btw what anime are you trying to encode so hardly?)

@Angrychair
/me has many friends in ishin
i'm sure you do good work, dont worry about people critizing you;)

@emmdeeell & Defiler
they are far from being the worse

@all
stop flamming, love the world:)

[esby]

Just a word about Whr,

I don't think the very low size is really coming from the raw quality itself...
It's just coming from the 'high compressibility' of the anime.

esby

Of course heavy filtering will tends to give high compressibility too,
but for Whr, we used various multiples sources,
and that just means the filtering was not to blame for the low size of the raws.
On another humorous note, it's very '*easy*' to turn a good raw into an ugly subbed, it just means bad color choice for the subs :)

[DeathWolf]

yeah esby i agree on that one, that's what i meant, it is a very compressible anime:)

[Kamui-Dash]

Originally posted by Defiler
Personally, I don't think SBC looks better.. but it seems to be a very very common perception. There must be something behind it. It would be interesting to hear a technical explanation of why this is so. I'd start a thread for it (because clearly the big players have stopped reading this one..), but I know it would turn into another flamewar.

SBC looks better than xvid on series which got alot of low motion scenes, since its alil sharper which makes it really nice for Shoujo series.

XviD has better motion compensation which makes it better for action series imo. For alil sharpness sacrifice and u'll get better overall encode.

Libav is really nice, I prefer this instead of those two just mentioned. But thats just me :D

[Defiler]

Originally posted by Kamui-Dash
SBC looks better than xvid on series which got alot of low motion scenes, since its alil sharper which makes it really nice for Shoujo series.If this was all there was to it, you could get the same results by changing the quantizer matrix in XviD.. I think something else is going on.

[Kurosu]

@Defiler

Originally posted by -h
I can't say with certainty but I believe the only potential obstacle to a MSMPEG4v2/MSMPEG4v3/WMV1 -> MPEG4 convertor is the storage of the DC component for intra blocks (MS may be more precise than MPEG4 allows - 9 bits versus 8).

Originally posted by temporance
I looked into this sort of conversion a while back and decided it wasn't possible to do for all DivX 3.11 content. From memory there are some issues with edge padding that would cause prediction drift. There's also an issue with filesize due to different VLC tables and prediction algos.

I *think* it means the DC and low frequencies coefficents are encoded differently, maybe with more precision, than in a regular MPEG-4 encoder as XviD. The quantization matrix has a very little role in this therefore, as those DCT coefficients go through a different processing (both in encoding and decoding).