H.264 status and definition

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by ToiletDuck
Any idea how long it will be till we see a usefull codec?

I hope quite soon. :B The encoding speed is already getting to be acceptable, if the motion issues will be fixed i will permanently switch from xvid to x264.

[bond]

i still hope that the idea of using vfw will get dropped soon again, it simply doesnt handle the full feature set of what h.264 offers (for example non-adjacent references aso, not to speak of "basic" things which dont even work with mpeg-4 asp)

atm it may be an usefull solution but in the long run using vfw will mean that we cant use the full potential of what h.264 could be able to do
i still hope that we will see a nice commandline encoder with a nice gui!

[chilledoutuk]

I have been playing around with the h.264 encoder in the ffdshow for a few weeks getting good results with the latest version. One thing keeps bugging me when I analyse the encoded video in vdub keyframes only seem to be inserted when the predefined maximum distance is reached even when on 500. most codecs are very good at dedciding when to insert key frames but this seems to not be making any decisions at all.

has anyone else noticed this?

cheers

[Tommy Carrot]

Frametype-decision is not implemented yet.

[ToiletDuck]

well i'm not worried about encoding speeds. I've got a dual opteron setup and a media PC at 1.8ghz that can just go day and night. If the output is that good then the second they fix the jittering of the frames I'm sold.
Duck

[chilledoutuk]

I have found that if you uncheck all of the analyzer flags the dancing blocks on backgrounds is improved substantially.
give it a try

[ToiletDuck]

how does this adjust the quality of the output and also what equals substantially? As in normal smooth motion or still jittery?
Duck

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by chilledoutuk
I have found that if you uncheck all of the analyzer flags the dancing blocks on backgrounds is improved substantially.
give it a try
Imo it improves that problem only slightly, the motions are still far from the smoothness of xvid, and the detail-level suffers a bit.

[bond]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
I don't know if anyone cares, but here comes my opinions about the x264 in the latest ffdshow.

Well, the encoding speed improved a lot, more than 2x faster than the previous version, i can get about 8-12 fps on 720xXXX material, even using CABAC coder doesn't really slowing it down. The quality is improved as well, the motions are less annoying (though still not perfect), and the detail-preservation is also improved (in this regard it's already _much_ better than Xvid or any other mpeg4 codec).thats my opinion too
i tried the ffdshow version myself now and i have to say x264 is
- fast, i got ~4fps (with the best xvid settings i get 7fps or so) - only this to "h.264 is slow"
- fucking damn great details, as TC said "_much_ better than xvid" (at least at 400kbps :D )

i tested the default settings (no cabac, no loop) with quant 13

considering current x264 as "preview" what h.264 could be able to do, i have to say it will clearly wipe away mpeg-4 asp or wmv9, rv9 aso...


btw: vfw has to die ;)

[ToiletDuck]

so what is it actually that makes it choppy? I don't understand. If there are 30 frames in a second and it takes each frame one by one and encodes them to the new .264 format then you should still have 30 frames for each second. So is it basically just the playback abilites that need to be played with? Would a supercomputer (Just tossing it out there) Play the files any smoother?
Duck

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by ToiletDuck
so what is it actually that makes it choppy? I don't understand. If there are 30 frames in a second and it takes each frame one by one and encodes them to the new .264 format then you should still have 30 frames for each second. So is it basically just the playback abilites that need to be played with? Would a supercomputer (Just tossing it out there) Play the files any smoother?
Duck

Are you talking about the jumpy motions (sorry i could not decipher your post :))? I don't think the reason is the lack of computing power, instead it's the rawness of the codec. It's simply not tuned for quality yet. Remember opendivx? It had exactly the same behavior, it had jumpy blocks etc. Since then the quality of mpeg4 codecs improved much, and i believe this will happen with h.264 as well.

[ToiletDuck]

Is there anyway that you could send me a small test clip of something you have done? Like 20 seconds maybe? I have never seen .264 except for the Moonlight ones and they don't look the best.
Duck

[ToiletDuck]

edit

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by ToiletDuck
Is there anyway that you could send me a small test clip of something you have done? Like 20 seconds maybe? I have never seen .264 except for the Moonlight ones and they don't look the best.
Duck Yes, I would not mind seeing a small clip too!

It sounds like your efforts are really paying off. Please remind me, what container format(s) are you using?


Cheers

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
Are you talking about the jumpy motions (sorry i could not decipher your post :))? I don't think the reason is the lack of computing power, instead it's the rawness of the codec.
Seems a dshow problem that ATM only processing power can overcome; it looks good in VDub. The same clip that stutters on an XP-1800 plays smoothly on my A64. Same ffdshow versions, of course.

[springl]

Is overlay mixer "ticked" in configuration-->overlay-->output-->use overlay mixer?

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by Teegedeck
Seems a dshow problem that ATM only processing power can overcome; it looks good in VDub. The same clip that stutters on an XP-1800 plays smoothly on my A64. Same ffdshow versions, of course.

That's strange, playing back a 720x288 video on my athlon 1700+ consumes less than 40% cpu-power, even with CABAC entropy coder.

Edit: With disabled loop filter obviously, but i don't imagine using it would make a huge performance hit.

[ToiletDuck]

@Teegedek your A64 can play any encoded .264 media smoothly like it normally should? I'm on dual opterons here. I wonder if I could :rolleyes: would be nice if there was a multithreaded player. Anywho if you can play the encoded media smoothly on your system and it looks much better than any other codec right now then I think I'm sold. I'm gonna have to start encoding everything over again in that format. Still, does anyone have test clips? The only downloadable ones I've seen aren't near as good as you guys make sound.

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
That's strange, playing back a 720x288 video on my athlon 1700+ consumes less than 40% cpu-power, even with CABAC entropy coder.

Edit: With disabled loop filter obviously, but i don't imagine using it would make a huge performance hit.
Well, my clip was more like 688x560. If I find some time today I'm gonna test a lower res.

@ToiletDuck; no codec should make the result look better than the original - so as long as you encode at a reasonable bitrate you won't have to encode anything again. And I doubt that ATM h.264 can look better than XviD at 2-Mbit/s with the SixOfNine matrix.

[P0l1m0rph1c]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Originally posted by ToiletDuck
Is there anyway that you could send me a small test clip of something you have done? Like 20 seconds maybe? I have never seen .264 except for the Moonlight ones and they don't look the best.
Duck

JM reference coder can also create .264...

EDIT: put wrong quote.. :eek:

[Tommy Carrot]

@ToiletDuck: the output format of x264 is .AVI, not .264. It's a VFW codec, just like xvid, you can use it the same way.

[Tommy Carrot]

Here (http://www.fw.hu/carrotland/x264.avi) is a short clip for those who are too lazy to try this codec themselves. :D

Considering that the bitrate is ridiculously low (253 kbps), i think it's pretty damn impressive, i would say that at low bitrates x264 might already be better than any other codec.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
Here (http://www.fw.hu/carrotland/x264.avi) is a short clip for those who are too lazy to try this codec themselves. :D Shit!

I've downloaded the file but I can't decode it. Can you direct me to the required DSdec filter please?

Sorry to be such an pain Tommy.


Cheers

[springl]

@SeeMoreDigital
ffdshow-->configuration-->codecs-->H.264-->libavcodec-->apply
enjoy :)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by springl
@SeeMoreDigital
ffdshow-->configuration-->codecs-->H.264-->libavcodec-->apply
enjoy :) Is there a non ffdshow method?


Cheers

[springl]

If you have VSofts H.264 Video Codec installed you can try to change
4CC from h264 to vssh,it should work.

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Is there a non ffdshow method?


Cheers

What's wrong with ffdshow?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
What's wrong with ffdshow? Well, I'm using my old P3 800MHz machine to experiment with, and it would seem it does not like ffdshow all that much!

That might well be because I'm not using the correct type/version. What type/version are people using these days and I'll try again.


Cheers

[Sagittaire]

For best result with metric (PSNR & SSIM)

H264 encoding: ffdshow-20040508-p3.exe + 1 pass quant + Cabac + inloop + Hexagones ME + All Inter analyser flacs + All Intra analyser flacs + 10 refs frames

H264 decoding: H264 VSS

For H264 encoding with high bitrate and fast decoding/encoding

H264 encoding: ffdshow-20040508-p3.exe + 1 pass quant + Diamond ME + All Inter analyser flacs + All Intra analyser flacs + 2 refs frames

H264 decoding: H264 VSS

[Tommy Carrot]

@SeeMoreDigital: There is a specific P3 build from ffdshow on athos' page, you should try it, there is a slim chance it works. If not, try springl's advice.

@Sagittaire: In my experience the quality of latest version improved quite a lot, not to mention it's much faster compared to the version you used in you test.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks Sagittaire, welcome back to the forum.

Of course, all the major builds are over at athos' site (http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/) now!

Well Tommy, I have to say I'm amazed that you can see anything like an moving image at these low bitrates. OK, it's not perfect on this slow PC but it's certainly watchable.

When you can get full moving 'video' at these bitrates, it makes you wonder how low the 'audio' will eventually go (which reminds me - I wonder what's happening with Nero's 'Parametric' audio?). I mean, we can't have the audio streams ending up bigger than the video... that would be absurd!


Cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

Well here's a bloody weird one!

I fired up Tommy's x264.avi again in MPC, and got my usual slow motion playback. The phone rang, so I paused the encode. After about 10 mins I forgot about the paused encode and fired it up again in another MPC player (so I now have 2No MPC players running) and... would you believe it... the encode plays at the correct speed!

In fact as long as MPC is just 'open' ie: with no encode running in it. I can input Tommy's x264.avi encode, into any other media player and it plays perfectly!

What's happening here then?


Cheers

[bond]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
@ToiletDuck: the output format of x264 is .AVI, not .264. It's a VFW codec, just like xvid, you can use it the same way.not absolutely correct, the original codec from fenrir is a commandline encoder, which outputs .264 streams

someone else, not fenrir, added a vfw version for x264, which makes it possible to use it in virtualdub, which outputs avi

[Sagittaire]

@ Tommy Carrot

Latest version:
- Without hexagonal ME
- Without all inter and inter analyser flacs

[Nibor]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
What's happening here then?
Hi, SeeMoreDigital!

I think this is because MPC ouptuts in Overlay ( anybody correct me if I'm wrong please ) per default.
And because there can be only 1 overlay output at the same time, another player will ouptut another playing file in software mode ( don't know how this is called correctly )!

When you do this, the video which plays in software mode is sometimes like if you would see that a new frame gets painted over an old one.
So e.g. at a moment the top half of the video is another frame than the bottom half, which makes the picture look 'shifted' !
You will notice that too when you watch QuickTime movies in MPC, because it can't output in Overlay so it outputs in software mode.

And now, that the x264 clip only plays fluently in software mode it means that it has difficulties to ouput in Overlay!
I don't know how this applies to ffdshow but it could be that there's a bug which is causing this.

Can anybody confirm what I wrote and maybe point to the correct expressions for Overlay / software mode? :)

- nibor -

[avih]

Tommy, this is an amazing encode :) wow

[gino25]

It' better the ffdshow-20040520-p3.exe instead of ffdshow-20040508-p3.exe ?

Because in the changelog I can read

2004-05-12 09:52 milan_cutka

* updated x264


Thank you.

P.s. Are there someone of the ffdshow/ffvfw developers that partecipate in doom9 forum?


Sorry for my english

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by gino25
Are there someone of the ffdshow/ffvfw developers that partecipate in doom9 forum? Well Athos is here. As you can see from his posts he's still very active: -

http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=483637


Cheers

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by gino25
It' better the ffdshow-20040520-p3.exe instead of ffdshow-20040508-p3.exe ?


As i said a few times: yes, the quality (not to mention the speed) of the new version is improved a lot, the image is sharper and has more details. I don't know the reason why Sagittaire uses the older build in his tests, it's inferior in every aspect.

@Avih: Yes, H.264 is very impressive at low bitrates. :) There are issues with the high quality performance yet, with disabled in-loop filter - which is a must for high quality encodes - there are artifacts and blocks. I hope that will be fixed soon, then h.264 can begin the world domination. :D

[gino25]

thank you

[SeeMoreDigital]

I've been able to play the file now, with my Xcard and view the results on my big screen.

The overall results are very impressive indeed considering the bitrate.

I notice from the encode that your're in a 25fps land. I would really like to see what this encode would look like with more pixels.

Could you by any chance generate and post an 1:1 anamorphicly cropped encode using 720x432 pixels?


Sorry to be so cheeky Tommy

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Could you by any chance generate and post an 1:1 anamorphicly cropped encode using 720x432 pixels?


If you would tell me how to do it, i may consider it. :)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
If you would tell me how to do it, i may consider it. :) Well I suppose it depends on your 'front end' encoding application (which Gspot says is VirtualDub).

So I guess as long as you keep your output setting the same as your input (ie: 1:1) and just crop away the mattes, you should arrive at 432 pixels for the height (around 4 image lines of pixels will also disappear). The width should be unaffected.


Cheers

[avih]

Tommy, i just downloaded every possible h264 implementation (x.264, ffdshow which i already have, skal's code, etc).

if i want to be able to play it, i can only encode with x.264 (/justin) without cabac. i had no luck with ffdshow with/out cabac/loop. the x.264 loop filter is good imho (at least when played in ffdshow). i'm using 20040518 iirc (i'm at work now). but overall, definately something to look forward to.

which encoder did u use? what version, and what options?

thx
avih

[Tommy Carrot]

@SeeMoreDigital: Ok, i finished it, the resolution is 720x416. I made 2 encodings.
The first (http://www.fw.hu/carrotland/x264_am2.avi) is a medium bitrate encoding, the bitrate is 505 kbps. It's slightly lesser compressed than my first clip, because with the same settings the result was very ugly.

The second (http://www.fw.hu/carrotland/x264_hiq.avi) is an attempt to make a higher quality encoding with x264 (although it's still not perfect, the image is littered with small blocks). The bitrate is 995 kbps, and the loopfilter is disabled (otherwise it would look too smooth).

@Avih: i'm using ffdshow 20040514 build for both encoding and decoding (i didn't try the latest build, but it should behave identical, because the h.264 code is unchanged). Every option works, the only restriction is that you cannot have CABAC and inter analizer flag PSUB8x8 enabled at the same time, because the result is garbled then.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
@SeeMoreDigital: Ok, i finished it, the resolution is 720x416. I made 2 encodings.
The first (http://www.fw.hu/carrotland/x264_am2.avi) is a medium bitrate encoding, the bitrate is 505 kbps. It's slightly lesser compressed than my first clip, because with the same settings the result was very ugly. First, please forgive me, as I'm not going to talk about the 995kbps encode!

However, given that the image pixel size is 'the size that it is' the 505kbps encode actually looks very good on my HiDef 768h 42" plasma display.

Can you confirm how you went about encoding it?
Is the source just 88 seconds long?
Is your encode a 1pass or 2pass file?
Did you just encode and upload this short clip, or has this clip been cut from a larger encode?

I have to ask because I have tried generating the same 2,019 frames, with XviD's new build (using 2 passes). And can't get anywhere close!


Cheers

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital

Is the source just 88 seconds long?
Yes, it's a fragment of a VOB-file which i keeped on my HDD long ago for codec-testing purposes.

Is your encode a 1pass or 2pass file?
x264 has only fixed quantizer mode.

Did you just encode and upload this short clip, or has this clip been cut from a larger encode?
As i said, these are just short clips, only for quality-evaluations. Using this codec for full movie encodings doesn't makes too much sense yet, because it doesn't have rate-control, and still has some issues.

[ToiletDuck]

call be newb but what must I install to make this play? I have the moonlight player but doesnt work.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
Yes, it's a fragment of a VOB-file which i keeped on my HDD long ago for codec-testing purposes....x264 has only fixed quantizer mode. Well then, these encodes really do go to show how good H.264 will be when it's officially released!

I have to admit I've been somewhat impressed with VP6 in 1pass mode but your H.264 encodes paint another picture! Thanks very much for satisfying my curiosity.


Cheers Tommy

[Latexxx]

Originally posted by ToiletDuck
call be newb but what must I install to make this play? I have the moonlight player but doesnt work.
Ffdshow. You need to enable h264 playback from its settings to make it play h264.