VP6.2 Release [Archive] - Doom9's Forum

On2Tech

18th February 2004, 14:59

We have just released an updated version of the VP6 encoder. This version addresses a few issues that were brought to us by some posters on this board. The main issue addressed -> Sharpness.

You can download the update at:

http://www.on2.com

This new version has been beta-tested by a number of guys who regularly post on this forum. They've helped us to make big improvements to the sharpness and to the usability of the codec. Thanks.

Here are the release notes for the new codec:

Version 6.2.0.10 02/17/2004
=======================================
- Support for VP6.2 which provides the ability to produce much sharper output files than vp6.1
- Uses bitrate inside vp6 config dialog windows
- Uses keyframe frequency control inside VP6 dialog only
- Added remove 2nd pass file after use check box
- Added sharpness slider.
- Fixed problem with 2 pass datarate control with high datarates > 10 megabits per second
- Improved frame quality consistency
- Fixed default for best PSNR to use deblocker and not deringer
- Added connection to control panel dialog for controling post processing
- Improved two-pass streaming

Sharktooth

18th February 2004, 18:29

Great! Really nice release.

Sirber

18th February 2004, 18:33

Great!

Is the bitrate in registry also? I might develop a soft which use VP6 as main video encoder. It's a webcam surveillance software with advanced features.

slavickas

18th February 2004, 19:06

So vp62 is new profile? Can nullsoft/aol licensed codec decode it, or there are some incompatibilities with prior profiles?

virus

18th February 2004, 20:26

oh my god! after a couple of clips, looks like the 1024 thingie has made it to the final release...! :(
well, ok, let's add a suggestion for everyone:

WARNING: this version of VP6 assumes 1 kilobit/sec = 1024 bit/sec! (and not 1000) Divide your bitrate accordingly or you'll end up with a 2.4% oversize bias in every video you encode.

hope this helps :)
virus

CruNcher

18th February 2004, 20:50

@ On2Tech
Nice but the comparsion on On2.com is not up2date anymore RV10 Elysian has the option to chose inloop filtering @ encode now so the results should be more detailed now not as blurry as those shown on On2.com funny that this update and Reals update where on the same Day hehe ;)

On2Tech

19th February 2004, 00:41

Originally posted by Sirber
Great!

Is the bitrate in registry also? I might develop a soft which use VP6 as main video encoder. It's a webcam surveillance software with advanced features.

All of the settings including bitrate are in the registry in a binary field called bsettings. I'll try and post the structure format tomorrow ( when I have the code in front of me)..

On2Tech

19th February 2004, 00:43

Originally posted by slavickas
So vp62 is new profile? Can nullsoft/aol licensed codec decode it, or there are some incompatibilities with prior profiles?

I believe the answer is not yet. We have yet to give them the updated source code. The changes were bitstream changes.

On2Tech

19th February 2004, 00:46

Originally posted by virus
oh my god! after a couple of clips, looks like the 1024 thingie has made it to the final release...! :(
well, ok, let's add a suggestion for everyone:

WARNING: this version of VP6 assumes 1 kilobit/sec = 1024 bit/sec! (and not 1000) Divide your bitrate accordingly or you'll end up with a 2.4% oversize bias in every video you encode.

hope this helps :)
virus

Still is 1024. Maybe the next version.. :) Thanks for all the beta testing.

On2Tech

19th February 2004, 00:48

Originally posted by CruNcher
@ On2Tech
Nice but the comparsion on On2.com is not up2date anymore RV10 Elysian has the option to chose inloop filtering @ encode now so the results should be more detailed now not as blurry as those shown on On2.com funny that this update and Reals update where on the same Day hehe ;)

Just a coincidence I'm afraid. As some of the guys on this board can attest we've been getting our codec ready for release for a couple of weeks now.

slavickas

19th February 2004, 14:30

If not secret how keyframes are marked in bitstream?
first frame seems to begin with 78460F14h other keyframes seems like EC400000h but what's actually correct?

virus

19th February 2004, 19:21

Originally posted by On2Tech
Just a coincidence I'm afraid. As some of the guys on this board can attest we've been getting our codec ready for release for a couple of weeks now.
Confirmed ;)
The amount of changes from 6.1.x to 6.2.x is big, you surely worked a lot on that. Plans for the future? You talked about a speedup for the 1st pass... will it have some impact on quality?

BTW: another suggestion to everyone from my tests... try Sharpness set to 7, it worked like a charm for me, even in clips where the old VP61 blurred things a lot.

cheers :)
virus

SeeMoreDigital

19th February 2004, 19:44

Originally posted by On2Tech
Still is 1024. Maybe the next version.. :) Thanks for all the beta testing. Why bother.... Just make the selection use 'kbps' instead ;)

Very nice build

Cheers

C0mPr355

20th February 2004, 16:27

is it possible to get a sticky of this post? So we can keep all the feedback within one post rather than branch it off to somewhere else?

SeeMoreDigital

20th February 2004, 17:11

Originally posted by C0mPr355
is it possible to get a sticky of this post? So we can keep all the feedback within one post rather than branch it off to somewhere else? Yep, I like this idea.

It might be useful to make an individual sticky for each new codec, as they come along (ie one for NeroDigital, WMV9 etc). In much the same way we have for Real Video!

Cheers

Sirber

20th February 2004, 23:26

RealVideo and VP6 would be enough. Microsoft should pay doom9 to get his codec sticky :D

bond

21st February 2004, 12:42

everyone who knows me, knows that i am not really a friend of discussion stickies
stickies should be faq-like style, it doesnt make any sense to sticky a thread where people have to search for info in some post on page 5 or so anyways
stickies should be a point offering and summarizing answers to the most important issues, you can look at if you want to know something, without needing to use search

well and i dont see the problem that there are too many feedback threads about vp6 around anyways...
in fact if some should open a new one it will be no hassle to merge it in this thread

doom9 is a petty good example where discussions about 1 tool/codec or whatever are kept together in one thread, without a mess and without needing a sticky (simply look at the ffdshow thread as an example)

SeeMoreDigital

21st February 2004, 12:59

I must admit I don't like stickies either - you only have to look at the DivX section for an example of 'sticky abuse'!

That said, they do have there place and I think it would be a good idea for each new codec in this section of the forum to have it's own sticky.

Obviously, such a sticky should not be allowed to become bogged down/filled with general discussions and comments about the codec.

In my opinion such a sticky should be used for general announcements (ie new releases) about the codec, FAQ's and the like.

Anybody else have any ideas?

Cheers

veryhappyjk

24th February 2004, 09:10

I'm a one-pass VP6 fan :) though I see On2 is really making a mess with it. :(

Yesterday I tried the last version, and found that Bitrate option influences bitrate one-pass VBR encoding. :confused:

What does it mean? Shouldn't quantizer and sharpness the only compression-factors?

I think On2 is making a great work but...

please

fix one-pass VBR!!

Byebye Saverio M.

bond

24th February 2004, 15:35

as promised i merged veryhappyjk's post to the main thread

On2Tech

24th February 2004, 18:03

Originally posted by veryhappyjk
I'm a one-pass VP6 fan :) though I see On2 is really making a mess with it. :(

Yesterday I tried the last version, and found that Bitrate option influences bitrate one-pass VBR encoding. :confused:

What does it mean? Shouldn't quantizer and sharpness the only compression-factors?

I think On2 is making a great work but...

please

fix one-pass VBR!!

Byebye Saverio M.

I'm sorry its confusing. To us VBR didn't necessarily mean fixed quantizer but if that's what you want you can get the codec to do use a fixed quantizer by going to the advanced tab and unchecking adjust quantizer. Then the codec should use the max quantizer as its " fixed " quantizer. Please let me know if that's what you wanted.

Incidentally, to us VBR meant produce a file that over the entire length of the movie averages the bitrate specified. That means we don't have to worry about local streaming constraints like does a hard section empty a theoretical playback buffer ( since we should be able to account for this later), just that by the time we get to the end of the file we've hit the overall average datarate requested.

dimzon

24th February 2004, 18:52

@On2Tech

does On2 plan to make VP6.2 DECODER open-source?

On2Tech

24th February 2004, 19:02

We don't have any plans for making the VP6 decoder open source at this time. We do offer source code licensing for our partner companies though.

kilg0r3

25th February 2004, 09:03

Is it possible to create mpeg4 compliant streams with on2 that can be played back by standalones?

stevenxu

25th February 2004, 09:15

Originally posted by kilg0r3
Is it possible to create mpeg4 compliant streams with on2 that can be played back by standalones?

No! VP6 is not an MPEG4 codec. Chinese EVD standalone player will use VP6 for video encoding, but I don't know if it can play VP6-encoded AVI file.

dimzon

25th February 2004, 10:35

Originally posted by On2Tech
We don't have any plans for making the VP6 decoder open source at this time.
It's not good. Since new HW/SW platforms coming only open-source decoder can give a measure of hope that my DVD-Rip's may be playable in the future...

Sirber

25th February 2004, 13:08

IIRC WMV9WMA is not opensource and it's supported by some HW player...

Sigmatador

25th February 2004, 17:55

@On2Tech

Is there any plan about a decoder lib for UNIX system?

On2Tech

25th February 2004, 19:06

re: Linux

We're kicking around a number of PC/non-Windows decoder ideas, but haven't made any commitments yet. Please stay tuned.

Sirber

25th February 2004, 19:07

Staying tuned while waiting ;)

On2Tech

25th February 2004, 19:13

Originally posted by dimzon
It's not good. Since new HW/SW platforms coming only open-source decoder can give a measure of hope that my DVD-Rip's may be playable in the future...

Literally going "Open Source" is a rather specific issue which to us usually implies a free license grant of intellectual property (think GPL). We have done that with VP3, which is completely open and unencumbered. Regarding our newer codecs, we offer source code and IP licensing, and we try to be as supportive as we can be of companies wishing to utilize VP6 in their own hardware/software.

momentum

26th February 2004, 07:41

I tried VP6 on VDM encoding Harrypoter HD movie clip. I wanted to select two pass best quality option, but couldnt as it asks me to put the first and second pass profile. Where is it? What is it? Where can I get it? So I had to choose one pass best quality mode. The result, disappointing. Poor and blured image. WMV is much much better than VP6, at least with one pass mode. Could you let me know how to set the pass setting, and where I can get the pass profile?

Thanks

h9903209

26th February 2004, 08:25

oh, that's the same case with me, I originally thought it's only my computer problem again: I see Sagittaire's test and then try vp6, I only use 1-pass, and assuming that 1-pass would be similar result as Sagittaire's 2-pass test, but I always get poor results after trying many settings, much worse comparing to rv10 1-pass, exactly as you describe: blurry, so I give up using vp6... seems 2-pass good result does not necessarily mean 1-pass good result...

On2Tech

26th February 2004, 16:00

Everything necessary for 2 pass encoding is included in the regular install of the VP6 codec. I'm afraid I don't know what might be causing your install to lose that information, but we'll look into it.

Regarding 1 pass vs 2 pass, 1 pass can certainly be tricky because it is a balancing act of quality vs bitrate vs smoothness of transmission, etc. Unless you are using the min-max Quantizers to set a fixed quality, the encoder is going to do its best, varying the quantizers to keep the bitrate generally smooth. Rather than adjusting frame quality over a qider range, some other encoders default to allowing dropped frames, so that the results may appear sharper, so you may want to allow that in your encodings if you feel the video is too soft, and don't mind some compromise in frame rate.

To make a long story short, one pass encoding is more suited to streaming at a fixed bitrate, but offers a lot of "tweakability" to get good results for other applications as well. 2 pass is far more "set it and forget it" when you want to get the best results in a fixed amount of space.

SeeMoreDigital

26th February 2004, 16:23

Originally posted by On2Tech
Everything necessary for 2 pass encoding is included in the regular install of the VP6 codec. I'm afraid I don't know what might be causing your install to lose that information, but we'll look into it.

Regarding 1 pass vs 2 pass, 1 pass can certainly be tricky because it is a balancing act of quality vs bitrate vs smoothness of transmission, etc. Unless you are using the min-max Quantizers to set a fixed quality, the encoder is going to do its best, varying the quantizers to keep the bitrate generally smooth. Rather than adjusting frame quality over a qider range, some other encoders default to allowing dropped frames, so that the results may appear sharper, so you may want to allow that in your encodings if you feel the video is too soft, and don't mind some compromise in frame rate.

To make a long story short, one pass encoding is more suited to streaming at a fixed bitrate, but offers a lot of "tweakability" to get good results for other applications as well. 2 pass is far more "set it and forget it" when you want to get the best results in a fixed amount of space.

In my humble opinion, the above information is a perfect example of why we need a VP6 sticky - along with 3viX, WMV9 and NeroDigital stickies :)

I realise such a sticky would not guarantee that every forum users would read it before posting. But at least there would be a 'one set-place' for their queries to be redirected to!

Cheers

bond

26th February 2004, 17:09

SMD, as "mpeg-4 addict #2" you should already know how 1pass and 2pass work ;)
its not really different with any implementation offering these modes (ie xvid)

SeeMoreDigital

26th February 2004, 17:42

Originally posted by bond
SMD, as "mpeg-4 addict #2" you should already know how 1pass and 2pass work ;)
its not really different with any implementation offering these modes (ie xvid) True :D

I'm just thinking about all those other 'non 2pass souls' And poor old On2Tech who might have to keep answering the same questions over and over again!

That said, VP6 does indeed generate incredible looking 1pass 720x576 anamorphic encodes at say 500kbps. Which would be great for streaming.

Would be nice to see some anamorphic signalling at some time too!

Cheers

C0mPr355

26th February 2004, 19:58

momentum and h99 can you both post an exact replica of the steps you used to create these pass files? And If possible list what your system specs are.

Thanks

Chez_Wimpy

27th February 2004, 15:10

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital

That said, VP6 does indeed generate incredible looking 1pass 720x576 anamorphic encodes at say 500kbps. Which would be great for streaming.

Would be nice to see some anamorphic signalling at some time too!

Cheers

Somewhat curious about doing this myself, but it seems at the present that ffdshow does not decode the stream (no open-source decoder?), hence my inability to use anamorphic in matroska with playback in MPC. Thus my question; for anamorphic VP6, what playback options are currently available?

slavickas

27th February 2004, 15:14

Jaques

27th February 2004, 15:49

Originally posted by Chez_Wimpy
Somewhat curious about doing this myself, but it seems at the present that ffdshow does not decode the stream (no open-source decoder?), hence my inability to use anamorphic in matroska with playback in MPC. Thus my question; for anamorphic VP6, what playback options are currently available?

You could hit Numpad 6 in MPC to change the AR for the file, too probably around 2.35, but it would be nice if mkvmerge would allow you to set the playback resolution for VP6 as it would for xvid.

vinouz

27th February 2004, 17:56

or you could choose to set a new "wide" panscan profile, with y zoom set at 0.7500. Usually with pal anamorphic encodes it leads to a little "glitch", which is that 720x576 on a 4/3 screen resolution means the width isn't stretched to the whole screen when the 576 height is set to the whole screen. But when zoomed to .75, Media player classic keeps that same adjustment while the height is not the biggest limiting factor anymore, so after choosing your new "wide" panscan profile, you can press numpad-9 once to set the zoom to the entire screen.

btw : @gabest, it would be great if that was corrected, meaning if the panscan zoom would be set prior to adjusting the frame for being maximized for screen size.

As I read that ffdshow's overlay set the AR accordingly, I tried selecting its use on raw video in the codec settings (for having it after VP6 decoder on the filter graph) and with matroskaprop to set the new anamorphic resolution by hand on the mkv file, but while the ffdshow filter consuming a lot of extra CPU, it doesn't do the job.

So I'd really like too to have AR either correctly handled by MPC for the mkv container or handled natively by ffdshow on raw source or VP6....

to whoever it may concern (Compress, On2Tech, gabest, milan, christianHJW)...

Chez_Wimpy

1st March 2004, 00:20

Accepting that anamorphic isn't yet as smooth as with Xvid, I created a mkv using vp6.2 and a vobsub subtitle stream, but with my setup (ffshow and MPC), directvobsubs failed to render. Is this something to do with the overlays since vp6.2 has its own decoder? More importantly, is it possible to get vobsubs working with vp6.2 content?

Jaques

1st March 2004, 02:18

try using bsplayer, I had to do this to get the resolution I specified in MMG.exe to display correctly, I guess I should contact gabest about this.

vinouz

1st March 2004, 09:16

bsplayer hangs with VP6 mkv on my system. Does it correctly handle AR with mkv and VP6 ?

Jaques

1st March 2004, 12:21

Yep. Try the latest version.

bond

1st March 2004, 16:07

did everyone try the new sharpnes option? its a nice feature!

m0rtal

1st March 2004, 16:10

bond
could you (or maybe, someone else) explain this option?

bond

1st March 2004, 16:22

well its a tradeoff between sharpness and blocks

the stronger sharpness option is used the sharper is the picture but the more blocks appear and the other way round
if wisely used (there shouldnt be disturbing blocks) for me it introduces some sort of effect comparable to the hvs_good mpeg-4 matrix

NuPogodi

1st March 2004, 16:31

To begin with... The following question was already sent to another forum (Unofficial VDub Forum), but there were no replies. So, please, do not consider my attempt to know what is wrong as an attempt to spam Doom9. Well...

The question is related to a conflict between VP61 and DirectVobSub Filter 2.23 by Gabest (actually, I've tested both VP62 and DVS version 2.32) included in the Matroska Playback Pack.

Once upon a time... I've compressed VP61 video (Advanced Profile), OGG-audio and 3 subtitle streams and mux (by mkvmerge 0.83) all to MKV-container. When I've tried to play this MKV back, I've seen no subtitles. I looked among the filters: DVS was not autoloaded at all (although it loads itself and works properly with any other videostreams such as DivX3-5, XviD, WMV9). Then, I've tested whether DVS works with VP61 and subtitles which are not embedded in MKV (just XXX.AVI and XXX.SRT in the same folder) -- no success. It looks like VP decompressor forcibly blocks DVS...

My questions are:

1. Did anybody observe observe this conflict? (I'm not absolutely sure that it's reproducible).

2. Does anybody know how to fix this problem?

Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated.

Aleks

PS I almost forget to say another confusing behavior. After all, I've installed another subtitler DivXG400... Well, it works and, moreover, let DVS to autoload and to work. Where is a problem? Unfortunately, DivXG400 can not recognize and can, therefore, not show subtitles embedded in MKV...

echo

1st March 2004, 20:09

Hi everyone. I've found that you can play back matroska's with VP6 and subtitles using mplayer. You can get a copy for windows from a link at their site: http://mplayerhq.hu
You just have to copy vp6vfw.dll to your codecs folder and add something like this to your codecs.conf file:

videocodec vp6
info "On2 VP6"
status working
fourcc VP62,VP61,VP60
driver vfwex
dll "vp6vfw.dll"
out YUY2
out BGR32,BGR24

I just modified the vp5 settings to apply to vp6 :) It works just fine from what I've seen so far and even matroska aspect ratio support works OK. ;) I guess it can be used under *nix as well but I have only tried it under windows.

regards
echo

SeeMoreDigital

1st March 2004, 20:26

Well I have to say I like this new version.

My 1pass CBR encodes look very good when using the new VP62 profile. But I still don't think that 2pass VBR is working as well as it could.

I apologise if this has already been mentioned, as I must confess, I have not read 'all' the posts.

Cheers

kilg0r3

2nd March 2004, 10:23

Yes Il ike it too, but I start to hate my slow computer (Athlon 1800+), which makes 4-7 fps max on a 688*312 clip.

@On2Tech

Q1: Is there any headroom for speed improvements?

Q2: How much does the hq mode (39MB) differ from the considerably faster 'good quality fast encoding' (40MB) mode? The file difference indicates that they differ no too much. But I cannot say whether the file size of two otherwise identical one-pass encodes is a good indicator?

thx, kilg0r3

On2Tech

2nd March 2004, 15:11

@kilg0r3

A1: There's always room for more optimization, but I can't make any forecasts or promises at the moment.

A2: best quality gives a pretty sizable jump in quality. File size alone isn't really a good indicator, you have to look at the results to judge. When quality really matters, the investment in time is worth it.

Rest assured we'll keep you all posted on any improvements!

wata

3rd March 2004, 13:00

have a vp62 encode foreign movie with subs, subs fail to display
anyone manage to display subtitles with media player classic

kilg0r3

5th March 2004, 09:18

I am an VP6 novice. However the few 'tests' I have done so far confirm sagitaire's much more sofisticated ones.

I am mostly interested in high-bitrate encodes around 2000kbits. So I encoded the Harry Potter 2 trailer with various one-pass settings. The hardest was fixed quant 6 with a sharpness value of 10. It might be for my bad eyes, but even at these settings I couldn't spot too many artifacts, that had not already been in the source. And, you could still see the grain. And if I say grain, I dont mean the in famous flickering or wavering of the background.

Furthermore the image produced by VP6 is the most visually pleasing/natural. There seem to be no color problems or any visible (at least for me ;)) loss of detail. Of course, the crispness increses at lower quants. It is just that the compression works in a way which seems to be very in line with the (/my) human visual system.

After all the preaise I'd like to reformulate my question from above. My problem is that my machine encodes resized but unfiltered letter box content with only about 7 fps. So I consider using the 'good quality fast encoding' mode. I'd be perfectly willing to sacrifice some disc space in order to compensate for the lesser quality of the compression algo. However I would also be very happy if somebody could provide me with a rule of thumb how much this would be.

@ On2tech
If I encode at fixed quant but diferent quality modes, will I get the same quality but only different filesizes, or, will it be a mixture of these?

Cheers, kilg0r3

bond

5th March 2004, 11:37

guys, lets stop this discussion now!
or transfer it to the another thread...you wish, we play ;)

plz continue the kilobit discussion here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72116)

On2Tech

5th March 2004, 12:39

Originally posted by kilg0r3
And now to something completely different ...

After all the preaise I'd like to reformulate my question from above. My problem is that my machine encodes resized but unfiltered letter box content with only about 7 fps. So I consider using the 'good quality fast encoding' mode. I'd be perfectly willing to sacrifice some disc space in order to compensate for the lesser quality of the compression algo. However I would also be very happy if somebody could provide me with a rule of thumb how much this would be.

@ On2tech
If I encode at fixed quant but diferent quality modes, will I get the same quality but only different filesizes, or, will it be a mixture of these?

Cheers, kilg0r3

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately I don't think there is a general rule of thumb for how much best quality helps over good quality. It is very material dependent. Sometimes best quality is only a little better than good quality, other times its a lot better. That being said I would say its rare for best quality to make more than a 10% file size difference. For an entire movies I doubt you'd see even a 5% difference.

For reference: the main difference between good quality and best quality comes in the way motion vectors are found and then whether or not they are used. Best Quality spends more time looking for motion vectors, and then does a better job of deciding whether or not the use of that motion vector is worth the cost of transmitting that motion vector.

kilg0r3

5th March 2004, 13:51

Hi On2Tech,
Sorry for being unclear in my questions and/or slow in grasping what you mean. I will retry a last time and then shut up. Promise.

The scenario: I start from one source of which I will create two encodes (a) and (b). The only difference between the encodes will be that (a) will use 'Good Quality Fast Encoding' while (b) uses 'Best Quality'. Else, (a) and (b) will be done using the following settings.

General: Number of Passes: 1 - End Usage: Local - Noise Red.: Off - Sharpness: 5 - Auto Keyframe: Yes - May Frames between Keys: 120

Advanced: Undershoot: 100 - Adjust Quant: No - Temp. Resamp.: Off - Spat. Resamp - Off

My assumptions: (1) The file produced by (a) will be larger than the one produced by (b). (2) The image quality of the two clips (a) and (b) will be next to identical.

My question: Are these assumptions correct?

Your answer: Yes_[ ] No_[ ] :)

On2Tech

5th March 2004, 15:03

Originally posted by kilg0r3
Hi On2Tech,
Sorry for being unclear in my questions and/or slow in grasping what you mean. I will retry a last time and then shut up. Promise.

The scenario: I start from one source of which I will create two encodes (a) and (b). The only difference between the encodes will be that (a) will use 'Good Quality Fast Encoding' while (b) uses 'Best Quality'. Else, (a) and (b) will be done using the following settings.

General: Number of Passes: 1 - End Usage: Local - Noise Red.: Off - Sharpness: 5 - Auto Keyframe: Yes - May Frames between Keys: 120

Advanced: Undershoot: 100 - Adjust Quant: No - Temp. Resamp.: Off - Spat. Resamp - Off

My assumptions: (1) The file produced by (a) will be larger than the one produced by (b). (2) The image quality of the two clips (a) and (b) will be next to identical.

My question: Are these assumptions correct?

Your answer: Yes_[ ] No_[x] :)

My answer: Yes_[x] No_[x]

but I feel I need to qualify this answer. Even in the ideal case constant quantizer doesn't equal constant quality unless the quantizer is effectively lossless. Instead constant quantizer is merely a cap on the worst the quality can be.

There is another thing in vp6 which messes up the works. That is in effect when you specify fixed quantizer every type of frame is given exactly a fixed quantizer. But there are 3 types of frames. The choice of frame type is automatically determined by the compressor based on statistics gained in part from the quality of the motion vectors found. As such Best Quality can ( and frequently does ) produce more of one type of frame then good quality. The quality can then vary in a way not intended by your choice of a fixed quantizer.

The result is that it is possible that when using best compression you can see any of these situations:

1. b is bigger and a good amount better than a
2. b is smaller and better than a
3. b is a good amount smaller and about the same quality as a
4. b and a are about the same size and quality

I answered your question yes however because I think 2 and 3 are the most frequent results.

kilg0r3

5th March 2004, 18:56

Thank you very much for you immense patience.

Cheers. kilg0r3

virus

6th March 2004, 18:39

@On2Tech

I'd like to draw your attention (you may already know of that) on that link posted by thegeby in the "H.264 status and definition" thread:

http://www.ebu.ch/tech_texts/tech_text_d96-2003.pdf

looks like European broadcasters are not happy with current AVC licensing. Don't you think that VP6 may successfully enter the competition for a place in the DVB standard for HDTV content? You offer source code licensing and have a codec with low decoding requirements (=cheap hardware)... have you ever take any step in this direction?
From a technically standpoint, what can prevent VP6 from being the next-gen solution for HD (lack of bidirectional coding, low efficiency with "near" keyframes, too high saturation bitrate...)?

Mug Funky

8th March 2004, 15:42

hmm. sorry to put a dampner on things, but i can't seem to be able to download this...

says "cannot write to the database" after i fill in the fields and stuff.

if it's a 50% compression improvement over VP6.1 like it says, then i'd luurrve to try it out!

garbel

8th March 2004, 20:48

Try this :)

http://www.on2.com/software/vp6_vfw_codec.exe

garbel

C0mPr355

8th March 2004, 21:34

for those of you having trouble displaying subtitles with your VP62 encoded content:

1)Please make sure to use the newest media player classic, as it has its own subtitle loading abilities.
2)Your subtitle files are in srt format or at least saved into that format. If you need help saving subtitles from VOBs get subrip.
3)Make sure that your player is in direct show format and it is using VMR9 or VMR7 format (under the options>output screen).

This is the easiest way to play back subtitles with a VP62 encoded file.

let me know if you guys have any trouble with this.

Blight

9th March 2004, 05:26

On2Tech:
As seen on this thread and also been notified by some of my users, The VP6 DirectShow decoder does not play "nice" with the DirectVobSub filter. This is very unfortunate as it cripples the format to some effect.

Currently, the fix would be to block/unregister the VP6 decoder and fall back to the VCM -> DirectShow bridge filter, but this has a CPU hit and is far from optimal.

Any plans on fixing this issue in a later release?

C0mPr355

9th March 2004, 18:02

yes I agree on the cpu hit.

ATM we have VP62 directshow filter which seems to be having some problems displaying subtitles (I am still looking into solving this) which hits the cpu for about 48-67%.

With the VP62 blocked and the VM filter enabled subs can be displayed but the cpu hit is much larger ~50-75%.

We will look into this and see what can be done.

Thanks for the point out.

C0mPr355

10th March 2004, 17:55

ok for some bizaar reason media player classic likes it when I apply the filters in a specific way.

I have my overrides listed as so:

VP6 Decompressor (defaults with highest quality)
DirectVobSub (auto-loading version) *everything pretty much default as well.

when using this combination I seem to be able to lower the cpu hit by about 5%...now obviously this isnt something that is the greatest but it can help when using the vp6 decoder along with subtitles.

VSFilter 2.32 was used for DirectVobSub

test this out and let me know what you think. I also used the specify directory with the auto loading of vobsub to get the subtitles to auto display without having to load them with the "Load subtitle" option.

rom1v

13th March 2004, 12:34

Originally posted by C0mPr355
yes I agree on the cpu hit.

ATM we have VP62 directshow filter which seems to be having some problems displaying subtitles (I am still looking into solving this) which hits the cpu for about 48-67%.

With the VP62 blocked and the VM filter enabled subs can be displayed but the cpu hit is much larger ~50-75%.

We will look into this and see what can be done.

Thanks for the point out.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72531
I don't understand how to fix it...

rom1v

14th March 2004, 13:16

Originally posted by C0mPr355
for those of you having trouble displaying subtitles with your VP62 encoded content:

1)Please make sure to use the newest media player classic, as it has its own subtitle loading abilities.
2)Your subtitle files are in srt format or at least saved into that format. If you need help saving subtitles from VOBs get subrip.
3)Make sure that your player is in direct show format and it is using VMR9 or VMR7 format (under the options>output screen).

This is the easiest way to play back subtitles with a VP62 encoded file.

let me know if you guys have any trouble with this.
Yes it works, but VMR7~9 is not the best way to view movies...
It would be great if vobsub would read subtitles...

rom1v

14th March 2004, 14:18

Just install FFDShow and active "RAW: all suported", and subtitles are loaded with vobsub when video is VP6 :D

sayneboody

15th March 2004, 02:18

I have a clip where the camera is panning down a large tree and it looks really blurry, the color isn't right, and the leafs leave a blurry smudge as the camera is panning down. I tried encoding it at a high bitrate 3000 kbs and still get blurry leafs that smudges downward (although quit less). I use the HQ settings from your user mannual and I left sharpness at 0, since my source video is DVD quality.

Any way to fix my problem?

Sirber

15th March 2004, 04:07

can you post a screenshot?

kilg0r3

15th March 2004, 09:37

Originally posted by sayneboody
I left sharpness at 0, since my source video is DVD quality.Any way to fix my problem? Probabely using sharpness 5-7 would do some good :)

sayneboody

15th March 2004, 20:16

Here are some screenshots

http://cwebb.greatnow.com/index.htm

I tried setting the sharpness at 7 and it did help somewhat, but the clip still had some smudges even at 6000 kbps (sorry I don't have the screenshots). Is this normal even at 6000kbps? Please excuse me, I am a newbie.

Tommy Carrot

15th March 2004, 23:42

@Sayneboody: My guess it's a rate-control problem. That scene seems to be very complex, so i think the codec overcompresses it to avoid the huge bitrate-boost.

Sirber

16th March 2004, 03:36

is the scene rapid or slow?

C0mPr355

16th March 2004, 17:56

sayne if you could pm me and let me know all your settings I could help you out much better.

rom1v I have not done much with matroska filters and the like...so I guess I shall take up that flag now :)

Manao

13th April 2004, 22:32

Hi,

I tried recently this codec, on low bitrate scenario ( 300 kbits, 352x288, DV shootage ), in order to make 1-pass encoding ( 1-pass best quality, no noise reduction except my avisynth's script, sharpness 5, progressive, no automatic keyframes, and defaults for the rest ), and I got a problem : the video ( which lasted 2h38 ) had only one keyframe ( the first frame ), which makes random search quite difficult :sly:

I guess it's due to the combination low bitrate / no automatic ketframes, but I think at least keyframes should be inserted at scenechanges, to be on the safe side.

Sirber

13th April 2004, 22:41

Originally posted by Manao
I guess it's due to the combination low bitrate / no automatic ketframes, but I think at least keyframes should be inserted at scenechanges, to be on the safe side. That is automatic keyframe :p

CiNcH

8th May 2004, 15:35

Hi,
sorry for bringing this topic up again but I have a question on VP6.2's Heightened Sharpness Profile. What does this Sharpness slider actually do? Does it apply a sharpness filter (like the Noise Reduction filter) or different motion estimation or DCT criteria?

Buck746

14th May 2004, 02:36

It seems to determine how much priority goes to the sharper freq's. It seems to work by commpressing lower freq's more. Is that at all helpfull?

On2Tech

14th May 2004, 14:03

Originally posted by CiNcH
Hi,
sorry for bringing this topic up again but I have a question on VP6.2's Heightened Sharpness Profile. What does this Sharpness slider actually do? Does it apply a sharpness filter (like the Noise Reduction filter) or different motion estimation or DCT criteria?

It basically alters the filters used for sub pixel motion compensation. The higher the sharpness value the sharper the filters.

virus

14th May 2004, 14:16

hi On2Tech, glad to see you're back ;)

Any updates planned for the 3-months-old version 6.2.0.10?

cheers :)
virus

the Mad Duke

3rd July 2004, 17:40

Originally posted by virus
hi On2Tech, glad to see you're back ;)

Any updates planned for the 3-months-old version 6.2.0.10?

cheers :)
virus

I just listend to an interview with the CEO of On2 and he said that VP7 will be released in the not too distant future. The engineers at On2 have done a really great job on each upgrade of their codec from VP3 through VP6 so this should something to watch out for. He didn't say if it would be free for personal use or not. Also an upgraded java player will be released next week.

virus

3rd July 2004, 18:15

Originally posted by the Mad Duke
I just listend to an interview with the CEO of On2 and he said that VP7 will be released in the not too distant future.well, thx for the info - and welcome to the forum, too :)

<rant>
It's good to have someone posting infos, since the devs simply don't want to answer to anything. Yeah, I know they cannot tell too much, but revealing a "secret" (about how the sharpness mode works, see On2Tech's post above) and then refusing to comment a bit on the development of their own codec looks somewhat silly to me. Almost 5 months of silence. Not that I pretend anything, but they should definitely look at how the various devs here (for XviD, RV, Nero etc) talk with the userbase and bring attention to their codecs. I don't see the same level of interest from the VP6 devs. Needless to say, I'm no longer motivated in doing beta-testing for them, that's for sure ;)
</rant>

ah, and of course, a non-"free for personal use" VP7 does not interest me, at all.

cheers
virus (in bad mood today... ;))

bond

3rd July 2004, 18:30

Originally posted by the Mad Duke
I just listend to an interview with the CEO of On2 and he said that VP7 will be released in the not too distant future.will it be h.264 compliant? or yet another not compliant h.264 clone?

/rant :D

stephanV

3rd July 2004, 18:42

im sorry, but that was almost an insult... what do you mean with clone?

theres a world beyond MPEG4 and "compliancy"... maybe you should try it once.

bond

3rd July 2004, 18:48

weee :D

you shouldnt take things too serious

stephanV

3rd July 2004, 18:56

uhm... yeah right...

Sirber

4th July 2004, 01:09

For sure VP7 will be 30% better then VP6 at 50% less bitrate. They have a pretty strong marketing department :D Just kidding :D

Any specs yet?

On2Tech

7th July 2004, 12:58

Originally posted by virus

<rant>
It's good to have someone posting infos, since the devs simply don't want to answer to anything. Yeah, I know they cannot tell too much, but revealing a "secret" (about how the sharpness mode works, see On2Tech's post above) and then refusing to comment a bit on the development of their own codec looks somewhat silly to me. Almost 5 months of silence. Not that I pretend anything, but they should definitely look at how the various devs here (for XviD, RV, Nero etc) talk with the userbase and bring attention to their codecs. I don't see the same level of interest from the VP6 devs. Needless to say, I'm no longer motivated in doing beta-testing for them, that's for sure ;)
</rant>

ah, and of course, a non-"free for personal use" VP7 does not interest me, at all.

cheers
virus (in bad mood today... ;))

I'm sorry you are frustrated with us. Your assistance has proven extremely valuable to us and I hope that you'll help us test drive our new products when they are ready.

I continue to watch this forum closely and comment when I can. I assure you that it is our intention to help our user-base achieve the best results that they can with our codecs and that when I see questions I can answer I do so.

Unfortunately, I can't talk about future products/releases or what we plan to do with them.

Sagittaire

7th July 2004, 16:52

Perhabs inloop filtering for next VP7 ... for me it's the most powerfull function in H264 codec ... but VP6 is allready a very good codec ... better than all codec (H264 too) in metric test for the large majority of the sources ...

Sirber

7th July 2004, 19:27

Is VP6 using a rate control like the one in xvid and rv? (curve)

Tommy Carrot

7th July 2004, 19:37

Originally posted by Sirber
Is VP6 using a rate control like the one in xvid and rv? (curve)

Apparently no, it's highly biased towards the low motion scenes.

Sirber

7th July 2004, 20:34

Would be great to have one curved, or the possibility to use it. Would get more constant quality :)

On2Tech

7th July 2004, 22:21

Originally posted by Sirber
Would be great to have one curved, or the possibility to use it. Would get more constant quality :)

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at it.

On2Tech

8th July 2004, 01:24

Originally posted by Sagittaire
Perhabs inloop filtering for next VP7 ... for me it's the most powerfull function in H264 codec ... but VP6 is allready a very good codec ... better than all codec (H264 too) in metric test for the large majority of the sources ...

Thanks for the suggestion and for the kind words about our codec.

Asmodeus

8th July 2004, 16:56

@ON2tech

Do you plan to add custom matrix feature ?

On2Tech

8th July 2004, 17:45

Originally posted by Asmodeus
@ON2tech

Do you plan to add custom matrix feature ?

By Matrix do you mean quantization matrix? If so it wasn't our intention to do so, but if there is a strong enough desire for it we could look into doing so.

Asmodeus

8th July 2004, 19:39

Yes quantization matrix. As you can see in the XVID part of the forum, custom matrixes can do miracles with quality :) I like present quality of VP6, but if we can improwe it more ... ;)

Sharktooth

9th July 2004, 17:27

A custom matrix capability coped with a good rate control would definatly open a whole lot of quality improvements... :)

Sirber

22nd August 2004, 16:00

Hi

In the registry, settings are stored in binary format in the bSettings field. How can I use that field manually to set the encoder? With current registry, I cannot implement VP6 into RealAnime.

[edit]

Fix I could do is:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe vp6vfw.dll,Configure

But "Configure" don't work, so I can't call the config externaly :(

[edit2]

I decompiled vp6vfw.dll to check Export Function list, and there is none to start the GUI to configure the codec unlike XviD. Would it be possible to add a function (or 3, for each FOURCC) to the DLL?

Sirber

24th August 2004, 01:52

What's the right DriverProc params to call the GUI?

(0, 0, 20490, 0, 0) crash the DLL :)

On2Tech

24th August 2004, 15:55

Originally posted by Sirber
What's the right DriverProc params to call the GUI?

(0, 0, 20490, 0, 0) crash the DLL :)

I don't know what language you are using but hopefully you can translate: something like this might work.

unsigned char ico[512];
unsigned int x;
unsigned int hwnd =0;

// create an instance of a vp62 compressor
x=DriverProc(0,0,3,0,&ico);

// call the configure
// note: if you want your app to be the parent of the
// configure window pass in the hwnd of your main window.
DriverProc(x,0,20490,hwnd,0)

//close the vp62 compressor
DriverProc(x,0,4,0,0);

Sirber

24th August 2004, 15:59

Thanks for the answer, DaveEL showed me how to use VFW calls. it works now :D. I will be able to encode in few days (since I'm at work).

Sirber

6th September 2004, 00:21

@On2tech

Hi

I'd like to know if I can bundle VP6.2 codec with RealAnime?

Thanks!

8th September 2004, 00:04

A test I recently did with my eyes, and then with Feng Xiao's VQM revealed that this codec was better than XVID (for the sources I used).

Would get more constant qualityIn my test, the averaged deviation of VQM was lower for VP6.2 than for XVID. Maybe VP6's encoding quality is not only better, but more constant than XVID's.

What I hate about VP6 is how it handles interlaced material. On decompression, either it is not deinterlaced, either the fields are blended. If I want to blend the fields, I'll do it before encoding. I would like an implementation of the Bob technique (not sure of the name. Basically you get 60 frames per second output from a 60 fields per second video clip). Minolta already made a DirectShow filter for XVID which uses some Mickey$oft thingy that is related to that technique. It would be even better if deinterlacing was automatically desactivated for parts of the image where motion is below a certain threshold, but I think that would require too much CPU time.

Also, as already mentioned on this thread, there are conflicts between DirectVobSub and this codec. I know I could use MPC's subtitles handling, but I prefer using Overlay rendering.

pieter1976

14th September 2004, 17:26

I like to know some more details about on2Tech vp7 codec.
Look a this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82298)

CPU usage
Compression improvements
new features

slavickas

17th September 2004, 18:18

btw on2 guys: write "proper" nsv plugin, it won't mark keyframes now

MeDj

22nd September 2004, 12:14

Hi!
Just noticed that distributive of VP6 is slightly updated on the site. I've downloaded it at June,2004 and it has size 1702723 bytes (it was version 6.2.0.10).
Today I've discovered that it has size 1753279 bytes and "Last Modified: 30,August".
Does anyone know what was changed? Is it still 6.2.0.10 version?
Any comments?

On2Tech

22nd September 2004, 13:02

Originally posted by slavickas
btw on2 guys: write "proper" nsv plugin, it won't mark keyframes now

Thanks for the info. We just fixed the problem. Please give it a shot and let us know.

On2Tech

22nd September 2004, 13:04

Originally posted by MeDj
Hi!
Just noticed that distributive of VP6 is slightly updated on the site. I've downloaded it at June,2004 and it has size 1702723 bytes (it was version 6.2.0.10).
Today I've discovered that it has size 1753279 bytes and "Last Modified: 30,August".
Does anyone know what was changed? Is it still 6.2.0.10 version?
Any comments?

Yesterday we put up a new version that fixes a couple of problems that occurred when running our codec from within direct show. The version number should be 6.2.6.0.

slavickas

22nd September 2004, 13:36

Originally posted by On2Tech
Thanks for the info. We just fixed the problem. Please give it a shot and let us know.

i have my own plugin (sdk not so difficult :) ),but installed anyway - seems ok now.

and on2 probably should support vp61 in nsv too, because nullpeople(aka nullsoft) haven't yet released active-x player with vp62 support, and some broadcasters like embedded player on their sites

NuPogodi

11th October 2004, 12:44

Originally posted by On2Tech
Yesterday we put up a new version that fixes a couple of problems that occurred when running our codec from within direct show. The version number should be 6.2.6.0.
A conflict with the Gabest's VSFilter was the most-known bug of VP62 (v.6.2.0.10) decoder. And "... fixes a couple of problems" sounded so promising . I've downloaded v.6.2.6.0 to test whether this conflict has been removed (i've found no info about the corrections - neither at www.on2.com nor in this thread). Well, i must confess that the corrections are unfortunately related to "something absolutely different" /(C) Monty Python's Flying Circus/.

1. Any plans to correct this problem?
2. Is it possible to accompany next releases by brief (not too laborious) description of bugfixes?
3. And one more question... Any plans to release the VP6 decoder only?

Thanks, Alex