Nero/Ateme HP AVC Encoder Beta : Call For Testers

[bobololo]

Dear video enthusiast community,

After months of hard work, we've again reached a major stage in our video codec development and therefore Ateme is now very happy to announce a new beta test of its High Profile AVC video encoder. With the big success of the previous beta program, we're pleased to repeat the experience and share with you 'compressionists' the results of our latest progressions in technology.


So what is it about ?

We offer you the exclusive chance to try our latest full featured encoder. As a tester you will receive a package with the encoder and useful tools (parser / decoder filters, muxer, extractor, etc). In exchange we're asking you to test it, stress it and provide some feedback to us so we can fix bugs and improve the encoder performance following your comments and suggestions. This encoder will then be polished and integrated into Nero Digital products used by millions of users worldwide. The objective is to make it the best and your favorite encoder !


What are the new features to be tested ?

- CBR rate control mode (HRD compliant)
- psychovisual improvement
- full interlaced support (field only, paff, mbaff)
- 8x8 transform
- 4x4 and 8x8 custom scale matrix
- monochrome encoding
- lossless encoding
- multi-threaded encoding support
- sse2 and sse3 instructions support
- quality and performance improvement
- source denoiser / film grain preservation

The beta package will be very similar to the previous one. It will include a CLI encoder and everything needed for playback. The provided programs run under win 2k/xp and we don't guarantee them to work on other platforms.


How to become a tester ?

With a deep regret, we won't be able to accept all volunteers for the beta this time. As you may already know, during the last beta we learned of a leak and as such we feel we have to be very cautious throughout the tester selection process. As a result of an open discussion about trustworthy testers we've concluded that the following scheme is the best compromise:

- Any volunteer registers by sending me a PM with his/her email.
- The registration will end around a week later and we'll proceed to select a subset of trustworthy testers from those volunteers. The subset will consist mainly of active testers from the previous beta. A list of those trustworthy testers will be publicly disclosed.
- Those testers will then have around a week to recommend up to 5 volunteers. This means that they won't be responsible for the actions of their recommended volunteers.
- A volunteer requires 2 votes to become a tester.
- After the testers recruitment is over, we send to all testers the terms and conditions of the beta.
- Testers then respond (by email) with their approval of the terms and provide their personal data (name and postal address, P.O. box forbidden).
- A letter will be sent to all testers by postal mail containing their personal login and password to access to the beta program.


What is the schedule ?

A rough idea of the beta schedule would be:

- 05/18 Call for testers, volunteer registration begins.
- 05/27 Registration closes, disclose trustworthy testers, start of volunteer recommendation.
- 06/03 Tester recruitment over, terms & conditions approval, login & password sending.
- 06/08 Official start of beta test.

I hope you'll enjoy this new beta and I'm waiting for your registration ! :)

you can join #mpeg on irc.freenode.org for any questions.


UPDATES

25/05: You can find here (http://pub.ateme.net/~tsouthiv/beta2.txt) the current list of trustworthy testers and the registered testers so you can vote for your candidates ;) This will be updated as often as possible.

23/05: I posted here (http://pub.ateme.net/~tsouthiv/volunteers.txt), the registered volunteers list as of now. If I forgot someone, please PM me again and don't forget to provide your email address. Thanks.


-- bobo [ ateme R&D ]

[JohnV]

I can see that Ateme has been working hard. :) New features look really great! And the initial SSIM results (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=656281#post656281) also look more than promising! :)
It's great to have Ateme as our partner for Nero Digital to make the already best quality video codec even better, also with the help of Doom9 community and testers' feedback.. :)

[bobololo]

When applying, please don't forget to provide your email address, thanks :)

EDIT: and don't worry if I don't reply to your PM, all applications are registered.

[bill_baroud]

first to apply ?


i'm looking forward this new test :)

[Sharktooth]

no:p

[Selur]

Ready for testing if there's still some room. :)

Cu Selur

[Teegedeck]

Promising feature list. Alas, no time to take part in this one. Have fun, testers! Guess that another round of congrats (for first implementing MPEG4v10 to this extent) to Ateme is due when this is over.

[Ghim]

It's too bad I don't have the time, otherwise I would have applied...
But anyway the progress you've done in terms of quality and features seems really impressive !!

I'll just wait for it to be integrated into Nero in order to try it !

[dvd_maniac]

new beta test of its High Profile AVC video encoder

This is great news... I hope the beta is short and a great success.

I use Recode to encode my dvd collection now. I use the Standard AVC profile at around 350kbps. This gives me great results with a relitively small file and on my system I can encode a 2 hour movie in around 5 hours.

My questions are:
Will this new High Profile encoder be just an add-on to the next Recode revision like the PSP was or is the other Profiles going to get an update as well? Specifically. is the encoder that Doom9 used for the codec comparison, which is 20% faster, going to be released?

Will I benefit from any of this with what I use Recode for?

[bobololo]

Here are a few clips (high profile) while waiting for the beta start:

batman-ateme-3500k-hp.mp4 (ftp://mood.ateme.com/beta/batman-ateme-3500k-hp.mp4)
hp2-ateme-450k-hp.mp4 (ftp://mood.ateme.com/beta/hp2-ateme-450k-hp.mp4)

They can be played by latest version of Nero Showtime !

[Sharktooth]

harharhar

[acidsex]

Do testers from the last beta test have to sign up or are we automatically cleared for this new test? I went ahead and applied just to be safe.

Ateme has been working awfully hard and the world of digital video just got even better. Kudos guys!!

[subliminal]

I am very glad to see that ATEME is work hard to provide us the best codec, my congratiolations!!! I almost encoded about 370 movies since the AVC came out! and now that i have more time it would be a very good time to test this new beta!! (i haved finish my work in the xbox 360 [motherboard] you will love it :) ) i just want to know the e-mail to send my information!!





Thank You and keep the good worK
SubliminaL

[baer999]

Wow what a great surprise, I'am looking forward to see the Final, because there has been a long time with no new versions. Are there any percentage improvement number ?

[peteag]

my dear. the clips are that amazing. wow. i don't find any words. avc rules! ateme rules! my dear, i knew, i wouldn't find any words to explain this feelings ... boh ...

excellent work ... for beta ;-)))))))

hopefully the dvd-forum will change their minds in order to make avc the only supported videocodec on hd-dvd/blue-ray/anything different. this codec is the future!

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bobololo
Here are a few clips (high profile) while waiting for the beta start... Hi bobololo,

May I ask, how come the your high-def Batman clip runs at 29.970fps and not 24.000fps or 23.976fps.... What was the source?


Cheers

[bobololo]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Hi bobololo,

May I ask, how come the your high-def Batman clip runs at 29.970fps and not 24.000fps or 23.976fps.... What was the source?

The batman trailer comes from apple hd gallery. The original clip was encoded using QT7/AVC at 8 mb/s.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bobololo
The batman trailer comes from apple hd gallery. The original clip was encoded using QT7/AVC at 8 mb/s. What a very odd thing for Apple to do!


Cheers

[Sagittaire]

Originally posted by bobololo
Here are a few clips (high profile) while waiting for the beta start:

batman-ateme-3500k-hp.mp4 (ftp://mood.ateme.net/beta/batman-ateme-3500k-hp.mp4)
hp2-ateme-450k-hp.mp4 (ftp://mood.ateme.net/beta/hp2-ateme-450k-hp.mp4)

They can be played by latest version of Nero Showtime !

b****l de m***e

very impressive for HPII trailer: no blocking, no ringing, very sharp, high detail level. You are sure that beta test for quality control is necessary ... lol

OPSNR: 40.9672 dB
SSIM: 71.68368020

OPSNR is "only" at 40.9672 dB with SSIM at 71.68 ... your psy optimisation are very impressive too.

[IgorC]

I couldn´t download it.
It requires ftp login for download a video samples.

[Sirber]

Seems fair, sending PM :)

[edit]

Etat : Connecté à mood.ateme.net. Attente du message d'accueil...
Réponse : 220 ProFTPD 1.2.10 Server (mood.ateme.com) [213.251.132.112]
Commande : USER anonymous
Erreur : Déconnecté du serveur
Erreur : Impossible de se connecter !

FTP doesn't like me :(

[G-Slide]

impossible for me too ! i can't dl... :(

[bobololo]

Originally posted by G-Slide
impossible for me too ! i can't dl... :(

I updated the links in my initial post.

[kaabob]

Originally posted by bobololo
I updated the links in my initial post.

Yeap, works for me now

[Selur]

nice clips :D
(download worked fine; right-click->save as ...)

Cu Selur

[yaz]

clips dl'd but no way of playing back even not w/nmp :confused: nmp says : 'audio source plugin error: invalid file' :confused: :confused: what else do i need ? should i install the whole nero bunch or what ? (there's only nmp installed at the moment)

thx
y
outer players crash on the clips (as usual w/nero :mad: )

[peteag]

what's the improvement over the actually h.264-codec included in nero at the time?

[bobololo]

Originally posted by yaz
clips dl'd but no way of playing back even not w/nmp :confused: nmp says : 'audio source plugin error: invalid file' :confused: :confused: what else do i need ? should i install the whole nero bunch or what ? (there's only nmp installed at the moment)

outer players crash on the clips (as usual w/nero :mad: )

As I already said, you need latest Nero ShowTime (available in NVE package #2).

[eugene17]

Hi,
I'd like to be your tester and to try this new Encoder.
I'm a novice here...
I have several HD streams and try to convert them into AVC.
I wonder, do you prefer only tough guys?
Can I have a chance?
My e-mail egenin@hotmail.com

[yaz]

Originally posted by bobololo
As I already said, you need latest Nero ShowTime (available in NVE package #2). aha ... i tried nero media player. thx for the correction
y

[G-Slide]

edit : it works now :)

[Latexxx]

(removed. it appears that here were two pages full of posts)

[TEB]

Bobolo, could u discribe the lossless mode in more detail? @ work we are looking for lossless archiving codecs in a modern container to use for educational state driven projects.. this seems to be very intressting..

best regards teb

[G-Slide]

bobolo> is AVC HP encoding time longer than AVC MP ?

[bobololo]

Originally posted by TEB
Bobolo, could u discribe the lossless mode in more detail? @ work we are looking for lossless archiving codecs in a modern container to use for educational state driven projects.. this seems to be very intressting..

The lossless mode is very similar to standard encoding mode except in this case the lossy quantization isn't performed. As such it takes advantage of all AVC high profile encoding tools (intra/inter(bi) prediction, cabac, inloop deblocking filter, 8x8 adaptive transform, etc.).

[bobololo]

Originally posted by G-Slide
bobolo> is AVC HP encoding time longer than AVC MP ?

Do you really think that a better coding efficiency can be achieved while being faster, less complex, and aso ? ;)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Mpeg4/AVC lossless!

I wouldn't mind seeing how well this implementation stacks up against other lossless codecs, in both quality and bit-rate :)


Cheers

[Latexxx]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Mpeg4/AVC lossless!

I wouldn't mind seeing how well this implementation stacks up against other lossless codecs, in both quality and bit-rate :)

But not in speed. ;)

[kaabob]

Alright go Nero/Ateme!

Seems like this is the only team attempting to develop H.264, but woooooot!

[Sirber]

:readfaq: :search:

Never heard of x264? One name in many.

[iwod]

sorry but does the trail version of showtime suppose to work for playing these clips? It keep asking me to buy the full retail version.

[bond]

my 2 cents on the harry potter trailer:

- i cant help myself but somehow all encodes i see of this trailer seem to have blurred faces (especially the low detailed ones from the kids)!? am i the only one seeing this? seems its time to get the source, propably its in there already :D
- in the ateme encode the first scene where harry's face is shown is blocky (in the face) and easily spotable ugly (moving pixels aso), maybe thats because the ratecontrol hasnt kicked in correctly on the clip at the beginning (because the clip is too short or whatever!?). as libav & co dont decode the clip i dunno how to check the used quants, anyone having an idea how to do it?
- high motion gets blurred strongly. look at the scene where the girls are yanking out the plants. funnily one frame tough shows good details, but the others show no details at all (well in a short-scened trailer you wont mention this anyways, but in a movie with long high motion action scenes?)
- fog looks great (train). the ghost is still somehow funny, one frame is more detailed, the next frame less detailed aso... difference between b- and p-frames?
- as good as no blocks. great stuff for 450kbps, still blurred on some parts as mentioned already (not that bad tough), what loop settings have been used on this clip?

ok these are my findings after a quick look, all in all: oh my god! this is fucking great for 450kbps!!!
i mean compare the ateme hp encode with apples encoder, your eyes will fall off your head :D

[kaabob]

Hrm i tried viewing the clips with Nero ShowTime2 (the one in NVE package #2) but it looks like im missing the h.264 codec in general! Ugh gotta get another version of nero...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by kaabob
Hrm i tried viewing the clips with Nero ShowTime2 (the one in NVE package #2) but it looks like im missing the h.264 codec in general! Ugh gotta get another version of nero... Everything you need Mpeg4/AVC "codec-wise" is in NeroVision Express 3... There's no need for you to upgrade Nero Burning ROM 6 as well ;)


Cheers

[peteag]

yes youre right, trhe harry potter clip was blurry. my first yuhhhhs were for the batman-sequence which looks so grrrrr to me. the harry potter sequence takes 450kbps for a size at almost dvd-resolution. i think the quality is quite good, something blurry - yes - but better than anby other actual codec i know.

but i know what you mean. here a quality like an apple-trailer with sorenson (very sharp picture, almost no blocks, but high data rate) at just a half to third a space. this could be just cool.

[subliminal]

excelent quality the batman and hp, a litle blurry but with 450k what could we espect!!!


my e-mail is:
metalfuzion@gmail.com

[iwod]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Everything you need Mpeg4/AVC "codec-wise" is in NeroVision Express 3... There's no need for you to upgrade Nero Burning ROM 6 as well ;)


Cheers

That is the problem... i don't understand why i am getting the same error........

[Sharktooth]

Ensure you have the latest version.
Download the latest package and try again.

[iwod]

Originally posted by Sharktooth
Ensure you have the latest version.
Download the latest package and try again.

I did....... try it 3 times....The first time i downloaded a Update package. ( Which is essentialy the same as the demo )
Then i download the demo and reinstall it... still wouldn't work.......

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by iwod
I did....... try it 3 times....The first time i downloaded a Update package. ( Which is essentialy the same as the demo )
Then i download the demo and reinstall it... still wouldn't work....... Sounds like you might have some other filters getting in the way of NeroDigital's filters!