Proposed Hi-Def encoding 'Codec Shoot-Out' discussion

[SeeMoreDigital]

Wilbert,

Hey thanks very much for sending the disc's, I received them this morning.

There's some interesting files on disc #2 which I think will encode very well.

The little TSdemux tool is great fun and very quick. Shame there is'nt a tool that will half the frame rate of a TS stream!

Okay then.... I suppose it's testing time.

Thanks again

[Wilbert]

Hey thanks very much for sending the disc's, I received them this morning.
Finally :)

There's some interesting files on disc #2 which I think will encode very well.
I forgot exactly which clips I send you. But one is ts+aac (Bikini clip) and there is also one with two video streams (Faith Hill). I use TSdemux to demux the aac stream.

[Kon]

SeeMore - IMHO part of your test should include a transmission and reception test of the codecs you're testing with HD encoding. The easiest way to do this is to datacast them in MPEG sections. This is a good way to test if the CBR codecs really are CBR, how well they fare in reception, and what the playback error correction capabilities are. It is also a big eye opener for people used to seeing a single HD stream and maybe one SD stream in (for example) a single ATSC broadcast channel. When you show people you can do one HD and almost a dozen SD channels using WMV as a comparison (in the same channel space), it is a big eye-opener. Testing image quality, encoding aspect, and so on is just one aspect of such a comparison.

Just my 2c...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Time to re-ignite this thread me thinks!

> Wilbert and Tom
Since discovering the wonders of XviD's (and 3viX's) ability to add an anamorphic switching signal to the Mpeg4 data stream I decided to see what would happen to an 1080high (or 1088high) source when it's resized to 720high.

Also, because I have an Xcard (sorry Doom9 to mention it again) which is able to detect anamorphic signalling automatically I elected to place the XviD encode an an MP4 container.

The only trouble with this is, the Xcard, like any other hardware player, does not decode streams that have an image pixel frame size larger than 720wide x 576high (or 414'720 total) pixels.

So, I decided to see what would happen if I generated 3000kbps 2pass XviD encodes at 567wide x 720high!

And.... to my surprise the images are very watchable. Even when viewed via an 1366x768 plasma screen. And of course not only can my Xcard 'easily' play them but so can most PC's.

All is not perfect however, because as yet I can't manage to encode 60fps sources properly only 30fps.

And because I've been unable to strip out the AC3 audio stream from the .ts source I've been unable to re-encode it. That said the AAC audio stream that was in the 'JapanBikini_aac.ts file' that Wilbert sent me was no problem!

Anyways, I just thought I'd let you know I was actually doing something!

Cheers

[bond]

anyone tried mainconcepts h.264 codec for hd aready?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
anyone tried mainconcepts h.264 codec for hd aready? Not yet!

I hear reports that it's a little slow to encode - a bit like VP6. But I will test it soon!

But you know me and Mpeg4. I just can't resist testing new versions of Mpeg4 codecs and containers. And the new XviD build was too much of a temptation!

Cheers

[Wilbert]

... about AC3 demuxing. Did you try the stuff Sh0dan mentioned here (DVD2AVIT3 v1.83):

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=427717#post427717

If so, which clip do you have problems with?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Wilbert
... about AC3 demuxing. Did you try the stuff Sh0dan mentioned here (DVD2AVIT3 v1.83):

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=427717#post427717

If so, which clip do you have problems with? I'll check out this link. But it's a shame TSDemux (v0.18) is only able to strip out .aac audio streams and not AC3 audio (or what ever he audio stream is) from .TS sources!

I really can't believe how good the Bikini Girls, Faith Hill, Matrix, Michelle Branch and the Wild Things clips look. Even the wife commented how good the image was!

That said, if you guys had used the PAL colour system instead of NTSC, I cant help feeling they would look enev better ;)

Cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

OK, for all those interested I've provided a link to an anamorphic 576wide x 720high 2pass XviD .mp4 encode (http://82.2.167.24/Uploaded_Files/Doom9_Forum_files/Bikini_Girls.zip) @ 2775kbps (11.9MB). The source was an 16:9 1440x1080 Mpeg2 .ts stream (67.3MB).

Please note that this encode has been generated to suit the Sigma card and should ideally be viewed on a TV screen, not a PC screen!

If however you are viewing the encode via a PC screen, Nero's ShowTime Player should automatically display the encode at the correct AR.

And last but not least. Generating encodes with an horizontal quantity of just 576 pixels is not advisable, as 1280 pixels should really be the norm.

Comments please. Remember it's just a test!


Cheers

EDIT: Source details corrected

[bond]

looks nice :D

tough i get choppy playback, i guess its my 866mhz pentium3 :(

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
If however you are viewing the encode via a PC screen, Nero's ShowTime Player should automatically display the encode at the correct AR.the 3ivx decoder also handles this

it doesnt really belong here, but how did you create the .mp4? i ask because it doesnt have a bifs and od stream, which are mandatory in .mp4 afaik!?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
...it doesnt really belong here, but how did you create the .mp4? i ask because it doesnt have a bifs and od stream, which are mandatory in .mp4 afaik!? I thought this would interest you!

After creating the anamorphic encode with MPEGmediator. I created a copy of an old 'audio only' aac.mp4 file. I opened the file with MP4UI, imported the XviD video stream. Deleted the audio stream, the bifs and the OD. And optimised the file!

Shame you have not got an Xcard... It looks really quite good on a big screen.

Cheers

EDIT: Yes I thought the bifs and the OD files were mandatory. But I keep deleting them and the files keep working.... weird in it!

[bond]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Yes I thought the bifs and the OD files were mandatory. But I keep deleting them and the files keep working.... weird in it!yep, cause dshow doesnt need it, but to be spec compliant you have to keep it

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
yep, cause dshow doesnt need it, but to be spec compliant you have to keep it Makes me wonder if the encodes will work in standalone hardware player... if they ever build/upgrade one that can spin/stream .MP4 encodes!

These manufacturers don't know what they are missing!

Cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hello again

Here's another link to an anamorphic 576wide x 720high 2pass XviD .mp4 encode (http://82.2.167.24/Uploaded_Files/Doom9_Forum_files/Wild_Things.zip) @ 2980kbps (14.5MB). The source was an 2.35:1 1920x1088 Mpeg2 .ts stream (video element @ 47.6MB).

Wilbert, can you confirm that the source is in slow motion?

Cheers

[Wilbert]

Wilbert, can you confirm that the source is in slow motion?
It plays fine on my Athlon 3000+.

[bond]

nice :)

may i ask where the source is from?

[Wilbert]

Sure, I got them from http://206.159.116.24/public.htm The site is not accesible atm.

He uploads new clips (about) every week. Most of them with AC3 2.0 ch, some of them with AAC 2.0 ch.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
nice :)

may i ask where the source is from? Wilbert mailed them to me on CD!

As you can see I've had no trouble converting the 30fps 1080i source material to 720 anamorphic XviD.

However, try as I might, I can't successfully convert 60fps 720p source material to 720 anamorphic XviD.

It would be nice to get hold of some PAL HiDef source material from the Euro1080 satellite... can anyone oblige, as I have'nt had chance to replace my equipment yet, after it was struck by lightning...

Bummer!

[Wilbert]

However, try as I might, I can't successfully convert 60fps 720p source material to 720 anamorphic XviD.
Are you talking about the spaceshuttle launch? What's the problem here, the framerate or the width?

[SeeMoreDigital]

The frame rate is the biggest problem. It would seem my Xcard (along with most other hardware players) does not like 60fps encodes

Admittedly I guess I could use a script to convert 60fps to 30fps but I thought I would try encoding without them!

Bye the way, have you come across any other wonderful tools like TSDemux that can demux AC3 streams from .ts files. Or convert 60fps to 30fps?

Cheers

[bond]

Originally posted by Wilbert
Sure, I got them from http://206.159.116.24/public.htm The site is not accesible atm.

He uploads new clips (about) every week. Most of them with AC3 2.0 ch, some of them with AAC 2.0 ch.hm ic :)
are you sure that these are not some self made upsized movies?

[Wilbert]

are you sure that these are not some self made upsized movies?
No. I'm quite sure they are captures from satellite though. I will mail him about the upsizing ...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi

Here's another link to a Faith Hill (http://82.2.167.24/Uploaded_Files/Doom9_Forum_files/Faith_Hill.zip) anamorphic .mp4 encode: -

Encode - 576wide x 720high 2pass XviD @ 2800kbps (12.3MB).

Source - 1920x1088 Mpeg2 .ts stream (video element @ 83.9MB).


I'm sorry the download speed is so slow. I hav'nt yet worked out how to upload files to NTL's server!

Cheers

[bond]

great stuff SMD :)

what settings and .avs script did you use for the encodings?

Originally posted by Wilbert
I will mail him about the upsizing ..would be great,
its not that important if all codecs use the same source, but surely its good to know if a non upsized source gets used :)

[Wilbert]

Bye the way, have you come across any other wonderful tools like TSDemux that can demux AC3 streams from .ts files.
Like I said in a previous post: DVD2AVIT3 v1.83: http://www.trbarry.com/DVD2AVIT3.zip

Don't forget to specify the video and audio pid's in the DVD2AVI.ini file.

convert 60fps to 30fps?
tbarry said he used just SelectEven for that. I don't think you have other options besides Decimate(cycle=2).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks Wilbert,

DVD2AVIT3 (v1.83) works well at demuxing AC3 streams from .ts files.

The problem I now have is that all the demuxed AC3 streams (and aac streams for that matter) incorporate an slight ms delay - all different!

Is nothing easy these days?

Cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi Wilbert,

I've been experimenting again with the clips you gave me!

This time I've been trying to convert and fix the delay in the AC3 streams prior to generating AAC streams.

I've been using DVD2AVI (v1.83) to demux the AC3 stream from the (Mpeg2/AC3) .TS file. And then a new tool called DelayCut (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71545) to reduce the delay in the AC3 stream.

I then used foobar2000 to convert the AC3 file to an AAC file. And then MP4UI to mux the AAC stream with the previously made anamorphic XviD 576x720 video stream, into an MP4 container!

It all worked very well.... it's just a damned shame there's not an easier way to do it all!

Cheers

[crahak]

For what it's worth...

I'm taking 720p material and I take it down to 24fps (sometimes 30 when it looks too choppy).

Choppyness wise, in avisynth, I use

Decimate(5)
SelectEven()

reversing them leads to choppy video.

Other than that, I crop it in avisynth as well, then compress it to fit on a single DVD-R with xvid (using virtualdubmod). divx looks ok but has slightly less detail. WM9 might be good (and supposedly the video cards should help at some point with the decoding???) but it never turns out right. RVx and VPx are out of the question as far as I'm concerned.

It looks great. One could sometimes (esp if the titles are short) fit 2 per disc but I'd rather keep better pic quality.

I also tried reencoding the source into mpeg2 @ 24fps (curiosity I guess) also because it seems to be decodable on lower end computers (most video cards I've tried did work well using the decoding assist)... Anyways, lower CPU usage of course, but the picture didn't look quite as good as the xvid encodes.

[Selur]

just as a little side note:
I normally use Project X (aka. ds.jar) to demux hdtv clips, after this they also seem to work fine in DVD2AVIdg ;)

Cu Selur

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi Selur,

I gave ProjectX a go last week, the only thing is, it's a massive application, that can obviously do way more than demux .TS files.

That said, it could not demux all the Mpeg2/AC3/AAC .TS clips Wilbert gave me to test. With some it would only demux the video. The audio was left somewhere in cyberspace!

By contrast, DVD2AVI (v1.83) was able to demux the audio from all of Wilberts Mpeg2/AC3 .TS files.

So I'm left with a bit of a .TS file quandary....

TSdemux (v0.18): can demux both the video and audio streams, from an Mpeg2/AAC file. But the video stream only, from an Mpeg2/AC3 file.

DVD2AVI (v1.83): can demux the audio stream only from an Mpeg2/AC3 file. But doesn't like Mpeg2/AAC files at all.

PVAStrumento (v2.1.0 RC4): has it's own peculiarities and was unable to demux some of the files.

ProjectX: is overly complicated.

In conclusion, if there was a tool based on TSdemux that could demux both AAC and AC3 audio streams, I for one would be in 'demux heaven' - But as yet, I havn't found such a tool!


Hi crahak,

My experiments with 720p files, using non script applications, have not been very successful at all. I can demux the audio and video streams okay. But re-encoding 60fps video to 30fps (or even 24fps) has not worked!

I'll just have to keep on looking... I guess!

[Wilbert]

There exists a dvd2avi_aac by timecop:

http://pbx.mine.nu/dvd2avi/

Maybe you can try it out?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Wilbert
There exists a dvd2avi_aac by timecop:

http://pbx.mine.nu/dvd2avi/

Maybe you can try it out? Just tried it.

But for some reason it will only demux Mpeg2/AAC files. It can't demux any of the Mpeg2/AC3 files you gave me!

So still no 'holy grail' yet!

Can you try it please, just in case I've missed something?

Cheers

[Xleon]

Owners of the T2 Extreme DVD will get an insight of how 'film to digital' transfer techniques have changed after reading the sleeve notes. In fact the newly created digitised master (which at 24fps equals film speed) contains so much detail and resolution that only a very small percentage is carried over to the Mpeg2 DVD... To underline what I'm talking about, here's a direct quote from the sleeve notes.. "Because the video compression for DVD strips away nearly 98% of the original bits used on the uncompressed DVD master, THX reviews every shot to verify that the compression matches the source as closely as posible..."


I know this is a few pages ago, but to add to this, a lot of film work is now digitized to 2K format 4K. All of the professional movie effects systems can now operate in these two formats.



Here is some official details on it:



2k

Short for the image size of 2048 x 1556. This is almost the same as the QXGA computer image resolution, has 3.19 Mpixels and a 1.316:1 aspect ratio – the same as full frame 35 mm film. This image size is increasingly used for digitising full frame 35 mm motion
picture film sampled in RGB colour space – making each image 12 MB. Sampling is usually at 10-bit resolution and may be linear or log, depending on the application.

Note that the sampling includes 20 lines of black between
frames because of the use of a full-frame camera aperture. Thus the actual ‘active’ picture area is 2048 x 1536 and has a 4:3 aspect ratio. Removing the aperture creates an ‘open gate’ format which may have no black bar between frames – so all 1556 lines carry picture information.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks Xleon and welcome to the Doom9 forum

Yes, it would appear that things have moved on quite considerably in the world of film to digital image transferring.

Anyways, for those who are interested. Here's a link to the T2 Extreme sleeve notes (http://82.2.167.24/Uploaded_Files/Doom9_Forum_files/T2_Sleeve_Notes.zip)!

How times change eh!

[Xleon]

Cheers SeeMore, I seem to be following you around on these forums :D

Typed that a bit quick with a few typos. I left out that the 2K material means a storage requirement of 287Mbytes/Sec at 24fps !!
(Though I'm sure you already worked that out)

The (not so popular) 4K size (4096 x 3112), equates to 1.1Gbytes/Sec but the film industry has settled on 2K which was what the latest StarWars films were shot on.

[virus]

hi!

to all you HD content lovers... I did a search on this forum but found no thread matching, so I'd like to outline this link:

http://www.ist-metavision.com

the Metavision project is an European effort to design a new hi-def camera with embedded lossless compression.
AFAIK the prototype captures at 1920x1080 @ 72fps :cool:
This way you can do 3:1 slow-motion keeping the smoothness of a 24 fps video. This should be fantastic for sport-related and, generally, all high-motion material.
Obviously they need in-place compression to reduce the outstanding bandwidth: a few gigabits per second... :eek:

cheers
virus

[SeeMoreDigital]

For all those who would like to see some more HD XviD encodes (from an 1080i HiDef source), please look here: -

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=467527#post467527

Cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

For all those who may be interested how the film to HD digital transfer of Terminator 2 was made, I finally got round to converting the DVD's sleeve notes into an web page.

For more info please look here (http://www.SeeMoreDigital.net/03_Video_Only_Info/T2_HD_Restoration.html).


Cheers

[Soulhunter]

Thanks, nice info... :)


Bye

[minolta]

@SeeMoreDigital

I failed when conducting my own HD shootout, but think you might learn from results anyway:

http://hdtvshootout.tripod.com (better have popup-blocker...I'd host myself but 11MB too big)

This might be a "how not to conduct an HD shootout" page. I archive my favorite HD shows to DVD regurally (just Smallville actually). I liked my sources, sizes, and codecs at first, but tests took too long and results were not very exciting (wrote 80% of homepage during first encode job). Then I lost my stats, and called it quits. Well, any experience is good experience, so take what you will.
-Minolta

[SeeMoreDigital]

Nice one :D, thanks Minolta,

I will give it a read. But why all these pop-ups!

... I hate pop-ups :devil:


Cheers