Sample HD MPEG-1 Clip...

[digigami]

yes ... there are very good source because 8-10 Mbps is high bitrate for 1080p H264 AVC.

Yes, I think if you consider that Apple's audience is broadcast professionals, they have chosen to use a higher bitrate for those reasons.

BTW, can you encode the Ice 1080p trailer with your favorite MPEG-2 encoder (5 mbits/s is what you said) and post it along with the settings/config used?

Thanks.

[digigami]

last thing...
i was forgetting to post the encode :)
http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/temp/mako.mp4
it was already of poor quality (noise, banding, blocks and other artifacts) but i applied no filters... encoded at 1200kbps without any special settings.

I just looked at the sample you are referring to on my Dell XPS with VideoLAN 7.2 and Windows Media Player. In WiMP, there are blocks. In VideoLAN it looks exactly like it does on my Mac, which looks great to my eyes. I think your MPEG-1/2 decoding chain could be improved.

Gen

[digigami]

Harry potter IV (http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/x264HP_HPIV_720p_1250.mp4)
1280*720*25
1250 Kbps


Harry Potter is nice, but there are some blocks, but they are well hidden in darker areas and not in the region of interest, which is exactly what MPEG encoders are supposed to do.

I auditioned the file with VLC 0.8.4 on the Mac.

You tell me where the blocks are and we'll compare notes.

[CruNcher]

yeah i can understand that the MacTel stuff make you problems now, must be hard times for you @ the moment :) but you can't hide from the fact that the only future Mpeg-2 has for now is Blue-Ray HD-DVD decided for compression Sony didn't and we aren't have the problems in terms of SOCs that we had with Mpeg-4 SP/ASP it won't give different Generations of Chips all Chips that come out support High Profile (Frext). http://www.pacemicro.com/Corporate/documents/specs/DS810_spec.pdf
see this it's the same Level that also HD-DVD supports, everything will be interoperable not the mess we had/have with Mpeg-4 SP/ASP at the time.

And if we test stuff i would say lets test uncompressed stuff im no fan of testing stuff that was allready compressed

ftp://ftp.ldv.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de/pub/test_sequences/1080p/tractor.yuv

im for this sample 1080p @ 25 fps sequence :)

[digigami]

but you can't hide from the fact that the only future Mpeg-2 has for now is Blue-Ray

Terrestrial HDTV in the US is based on MPEG-2. I'm not worried. Alot of what we are doing is not specific to MPEG. BTW, there are more MPEG-2 oriented devices hitting the market now than ever.

Also, what does your PSNR Lab software do?

Gen

[digigami]

HD-DVD decided for compression

Actually HD-DVD does support MPEG-2 VBR and just as wide a range of frame sizes as standard DVD. Believe it or not, it also supports QCIF encoding.

[digigami]

... you definatly need a PC ...
install a h.264 directshow decoder (ffdshow, nero, etc...), install avisynth, create a script to load the .mp4, load the .avs into virtual dub and save uncompressed frames into avi.
or use some other opensource software to do the job as well on Mac or Linux.

Thanks sharktooth.

[JohnV]

Windows Media Player has horrible IDCT.

VideoLAN on the Mac seems to be doing a good job. I'll have to look at it on my PC.I can confirm this regarding your Least_Likely_PSA.mpeg clip.
VideoLan and Nero ShowTime play this ok. With Windows Media Player it looks much more blocky and there's like noise pumping.

But I'm still waiting your MPEG-2 HD clips with comparable bitrates to the AVC clips provided in this thread. ;)

[digigami]

I can confirm this regarding your Least_Likely_PSA.mpeg clip.
VideoLan and Nero ShowTime play this ok. With Windows Media Player it looks much more blocky and there's like noise pumping.

But I'm still waiting your MPEG-2 HD clips with comparable bitrates to the AVC clips provided in this thread. ;)

Hi John,

I think we're going to discover that our HD clips are higher bitrate but in the range of the bitrate for standard DVD, which was the point of our press release. A viable alternative for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is what we were describing.

I'm looking at an MPEG-1 VBR of the Ice Age trailer right now and it is around 5mbits/s and looks great, but I've just started.

I'm interested in learning more about H.264 and this seems like the place to do it.

Gen

[JohnV]

Well.. what I wonder in your press releases are sentences like "In our tests here at Digigami, we find that our MPEG-2 encoder is actually outperforming H.264 by a wide margin on 720p/1080p film content. Typically, our HD MPEG-2 encoder can produce VBR files two thirds to one half the bitrate produced by current H.264 encoders."

But turned out you have only used one of the worst AVC encoder QT AVC, and you have no real experience on AVC encoding and good AVC encoders.
This is where your press release goes imo more to the marketing side..

[CruNcher]

Actually HD-DVD does support MPEG-2 VBR and just as wide a range of frame sizes as standard DVD. Believe it or not, it also supports QCIF encoding.

Sure it does for Backward compatibility reasons, but do you really think Hollywood gonna use Mpeg-2 for HD-DVDs ? i doub't it they gonna use VC-1 and H.264

Terrestrial HDTV in the US is based on MPEG-2. I'm not worried. Alot of what we are doing is not specific to MPEG. BTW, there are more MPEG-2 oriented devices hitting the market now than ever.

Yes for the US thats still right but as we started in Europe later with HDTV we decided for H.264 and all HD Broadcasters gonna use it in the future here and im sure some US and Japanese Broadcasters will also jump onto it because of the bandwith save they can achive with it (Bandwith = Money).


Also, what does your PSNR Lab software do?


PSNR Lab was used by me in the XviD Development process to find problems with different tools it's a simple batch file that does automatic psnr testing of many tools and tool combinations in XviD but it's outdated now as many more tools became available that are not anymore covered.

and i have to agree with JohnV your press release sounds to harsh

[bobololo]

This is how I compare things:
http://www.digigami.com/mpressionist/screen.php?screen=comparesplit

I wrote this tool specifically so I can have these kinds of discussions without the dialogue descending into mud-slinging and religious fervour.

Also, can compare pixel residue (actual per-pixel frame differences) which is useful for picking up differences too fine for the eyes to see.

How do you compare?

A very rough outlook can be drawn using psnr. If the rate-distorsion curves show 2 dB of difference for two codecs based on the same process scheme (dct or dct-like), then we can reliably deduce which is the best. For finer analysis, visual assessments is imho the way to go.

Anyway, the 6 pages posted within the latest few hours gave me a better understanding of your approach and I would re-formulate it as follow (please correct me if I'm wrong):

For a specific class of HD contents (mostly films) and when operating at the higher bound of HD-DVD/BR bitrate specifications, MPEG-2 can achieve comparable results to H.264.

Basically, even I don't fully agree with this claim, I think it's quite defensible when expressed in that form. However, as JohnV pointed out, your release rather tends to emphasize the superiority of your MPEG-2 over H.264 and this is the point where people strongly disagree. Here is the first sentence of your PR:

Long Beach, CA - December 22, 2005 · Digigami today announced its new MegaPEG HDTV VBR MPEG-2 encoder is capable of matching and, in some cases, exceeding the picture quality while at the same time offering reduced bitrates compared to current H.264 encoders.

Anyway, if we put aside the lower coding efficiency of MPEG-2 vs H.264 that many people are trying to demonstrate to you, and if we get back to your actual concept, I still find a major weakness. As you may know, the HD-DVD/BR specifications set a maximum bitrate for two main purposes. First it insures enough bitrate so that any kind of contents and specificaly the hardest ones (interlaced, noisy, etc) could be reproduced with a good quality. And secondly, it defines the performance requirements on the decoder side.

That specification doesn't imply that all contents is tied to be encoded using the higher bitrate bound. And practically, there are many chances that most contents will be encoded at a lower bitrate. This has been demonstrated for long with DVDs. Even if the max allowable bitrate is set to 9 mb/s, I guess you will agree that most of DVDs don't exploit such bitrate and are rather usually encoded at 5-6 mb/s.

To me the priviledged policy is to squeeze the video as much as possible and I don't see why this would change for HD-DVD/BR. And on that game, I don't see how MPEG-2 could win against H.264 and I'm not doing some H.264 marketing ;)

Finally, I do agree with you when you say that MPEG-1/2 requires less resources than H.264. So do SD against HD. This basically applies to any technology evolutions (faster CPU, wider screen, etc.). Technology improvement has a cost, it needs you to keep going forward with it. You can always decide not to follow it, but in such case don't expect to benefit from its advance.

[digigami]

Long Beach, CA - December 22, 2005 · Digigami today announced its new MegaPEG HDTV VBR MPEG-2 encoder....[/b].

Yes, well, if you don't write something good in the first line, everybody will ignore your PR ;)

Other than that, I agree with you. Although, in my experience having a high bitrate ceiling allows you to code the most difficult passages without loss, and in the easier sections the bitrate can fall quite low.

BTW, setting aside MPEG-4 Part 10 for the moment, what is the best MPEG-4 simple profile encoder out there?

[digigami]

But turned out you have only used one of the worst AVC encoder QT AVC, and you have no real experience on AVC encoding and good AVC encoders. This is where your press release goes imo more to the marketing side..

True, it has some marketing in it, but as I read more of the posts on this forum it is clear that some of the more important aspects of H.264 _standards_ work like, for instance, interoperability, conformance and so forth, are still in progress. Like having to go get a new build of VLC just to play a movie. So one could argue that the files given to me by Sagattaire are part of a work in progress, and that x264 is an emerging encoder.

H.264 is not a standard unless everyone's files play on every one else's decoders (assuming the profile is supported by the decoder). That's the hard part of being a part of a standards community. You can complain about Apple all you want, but if you're not diplomatic about interoperating with QuickTime and clear about what their limitations are, then you're not part of a standards effort.

Would you agree?

[digigami]

But turned out you have only used one of the worst AVC encoder QT AVC, and you have no real experience on AVC encoding and good AVC encoders.

x264 - a free h264/avc encoder
x264 is a free library for encoding H264/AVC video streams. The code is written from scratch by Laurent Aimar, Loren Merritt, Eric Petit (OS X), Min Chen (vfw/asm), Justin Clay (vfw), Måns Rullgård, Christian Heine (asm), Alex Izvorski (asm), and Alex Wright. It is released under the terms of the GPL license.
Development status: BIG FAT WARNING: x264 is still in early development stage

OK, so if QT is the worst AVC and x264 is very early development stage, can you make me a Nero-encoded H.264 AVC of the Ice Age trailer? I am curious to know what the shipping, robust H.264 encoders that are not made by Apple can do.

Also, what methods do you H.264 developers employ to make sure your streams are compliant and interoperable with other H.264 vendors? Is there matrix/table/chart somewhere of the available H.264 decoder implementations and what profiles they support?

[Sagittaire]

OK, so if QT is the worst AVC and x264 is very early development stage, can you make me a Nero-encoded H.264 AVC of the Ice Age trailer? I am curious to know what the shipping, robust H.264 encoders that are not made by Apple can do.

As I say I make HD test and Ateme High Profil encoder (Nero use only Ateme Main Profil encoder) done comparable visual result (IMO little better). It's very difficult to make test with QT7 because it's not friendly encoder (too slow for example)

In fact difference between H264 and MPEG2 is exponential : If you use less bitrate the difference is more important.

[digigami]

Ok AVC pros, I have updated my non-volatile ROM with what you have shown me today:
http://www.digigami.com/megapeg/blog/

And I hope you don't mind if I hang out here trying to learn what is really going on in H.264 AVC.

[digigami]

IMO digigami encoder isn't better than for libavcodec for MPEG2 ... lol

Sagittaire - which version of our codec did you test, or are you reflecting on the samples on our web site:
http://www.digigami.com/megapeg/samples.php

If you would like to do more tests, I would like to assist.

[digigami]

As I say I make HD test and Ateme High Profil encoder (Nero use only Ateme Main Profil encoder) done comparable visual result (IMO little better). It's very difficult to make test with QT7 because it's not friendly encoder (too slow for example)

In fact difference between H264 and MPEG2 is exponential : If you use less bitrate the difference is more important.

OK, so currently, the only shipping, robust encoder that doesn't come with a warning that is much better than MPEG-2 VBR is Ateme using High Profile?

What is the best that Main Profile can do? Can you re-do your tests (movie trailers) with Ateme Main Profil?

[digigami]

But turned out you have only used one of the worst AVC encoder QT AVC, and you have no real experience on AVC encoding and good AVC encoders. This is where your press release goes imo more to the marketing side..

Ok, JohnV, with your help and Sagittaire I have narrowed my search down to H.264 Main Profile. Can you re-encode Ice Age trailer with Nero/Ateme Main Profil encoder 1280x720p for comparison? I want to know the difference between H.264 High-Profile and Main Profile, and also want to know the limitations of current QuickTime H.264 encoder.

[Xayd]

If you go and look at the H.264 chipsets that they are considering for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, I'd be surprised if they were using H.264 features that aggressively.


i dunno, per a comment from a Microsoft rep about the situation when the techs for HD-DVD and BluRay were being discussed they tried to impress upon Hollywood that new MPEG-4 codecs would require quite a bit of new (and expensive) hardware, but they didn't seem to care about that and declared the codec specs without any regard for the hardware required.

then consider the poor implementation of, say, the HDMI interface as an example, and put two and two together.

never underestimate the potential of people to do stupid things, imo.

[Sagittaire]

Ateme Main Profil (Nero)
http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/NDAVCMP_IceAge_720p_1250.mp4

Ateme High Profil
http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/NDAVCHP_IceAge_720p_1250.mp4

x264 High Profil
http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/x264MP_IceAge_720p_1250.mp4

x264 Main Profil
http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/x264MP_IceAge_720p_1250.mp4

XviD MPEG4 ASP
http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/XviD_IceAge_720p_1250.avi


XivD is MPEG4 ASP codec and is better and by far than all MPEG2 codec. XviD is here like 8*8 DCT codec reference. As you can see DCT isn't the only advantage for H264 ...

[JohnV]

OK, so currently, the only shipping, robust encoder that doesn't come with a warning that is much better than MPEG-2 VBR is Ateme using High Profile?

No, Sagittaire above already posted streams. And even though I don't represent x264, I'd say it's not in early development stage quality wise. It is a quite mature h264 encoder. Of course since there becomes constantly new development builds of x264 available, there can be sometimes bugs in it (you should follow Doom9 forum), but quality wise it's a mature encoder competing with Ateme/NeroDigital.

The integration of the latest Ateme AVC codec version with High Profile support to NeroDigital has had delays. I was expecting we put it in this year, but it goes to 2006. More info in January.

[digigami]

No, Sagittaire above already posted streams.

So Nero is only currently shipping Main Profile, you have complaints with Apple, and you won't post streams created by your own encoder?

I think we maybe disagree slightly on what it means to conform to an ISO standard and be interoperable, but I am new here so I will watch and see what is happening. It would be quite useful to know the difference between high profile and main profile.

[JohnV]

So Nero is only currently shipping Main Profile, you have complaints with Apple, and you won't post streams created by your own encoder?
Umm, Sagittaire already posted that stream few messages above this. Nero Digital is a co-operation between Nero and Ateme. Ateme provides the video encoders (ASP and AVC) to Nero Digital. Nero provides audio codecs and video decoders for Nero Digital.

[Sagittaire]

Moreover quality differencies between Main and High profil are not considerable (hard to see with medium/high bitrate). If you want make very good encoding with H264 MP try Nero Recode ... it's a very friendly and simple gui. In fact HP advantages are not IMO quality but fonctionality:

Main vs High Profil

- full 8*8 dct for HP
- custom matrix for HP
- lossless mode for HP
- full YUV space mode for HP

[Sharktooth]

Hi John,

I think we're going to discover that our HD clips are higher bitrate but in the range of the bitrate for standard DVD, which was the point of our press release. A viable alternative for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is what we were describing.

I'm looking at an MPEG-1 VBR of the Ice Age trailer right now and it is around 5mbits/s and looks great, but I've just started.

I'm interested in learning more about H.264 and this seems like the place to do it.

Gen
If you're interested in h.264, head over the h.264/AVC board: http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=77

However, your statements on your website are false.
You cant fit a 4 hours movie in HD res with a good quality in a standard DVD, while h.264 can... also mpeg-2 cant in any case "beat" h.264 in efficiency and compression and consequently in quality...

[diogen]

Since Ben Waggoneer was already quoted once in this thread,
I'll post another of his quotes (taken from AVSforum)
********************************************
I've checked out the Digigami package, and I cover it in a forthcoming DV magazine article.

Basically, I don't think their results are real-world applicable. Their encoder is about 60x slower than the next slowest Mac encoder, and lacks a true bitrate limited 2-pass VBR mode (you can pick peak and min data rate, but have to tune in average data rate via). And even with those caveats, in double-blind evaluation, for SD DVD MPEG-2, it came out as one of the lower-rated MPEG-2 encoders for quality at a given bitrate.

Gen's a smart guy, but I think his passion for his product has outstripped its real-world strengths.
*********************************************
Taken from here
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=411600&page=600&pp=30

On the same thread a couple hundred pages earlier Stacy Spears stated that
any encoder with 1/10th real time encoding speed (and slower) is of no interest to studios. I think Apple's encoder is around that speed; that will make Digigami some 1/500th real time or so.

Diogen.

[digigami]

mpeg-2 cant in any case "beat" h.264 in efficiency and compression and consequently in quality...

Which of the current H.264 AVC encoders support coding interlaced video?
According to x264.nl, it does not. So what do you do when you come to breaks in the telecine and you have 3 or 4 interlaced frames?

Anyone got a sample?

[digigami]

Since Ben Waggoneer was already quoted once in this thread,
I'll post another of his quotes (taken from AVSforum)
********************************************
I've checked out the Digigami package, and I cover it in a forthcoming DV magazine article.

Basically, I don't think their results are real-world applicable. Their encoder is about 60x slower than the next slowest Mac encoder, and lacks a true bitrate limited 2-pass VBR mode (you can pick peak and min data rate, but have to tune in average data rate via). And even with those caveats, in double-blind evaluation, for SD DVD MPEG-2, it came out as one of the lower-rated MPEG-2 encoders for quality at a given bitrate.

Gen's a smart guy, but I think his passion for his product has outstripped its real-world strengths.
*********************************************
Taken from here
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=411600&page=600&pp=30

On the same thread a couple hundred pages earlier Stacy Spears stated that any encoder with 1/10th real time encoding speed (and slower) is of no interest to studios. I think Apple's encoder is around that speed; that will make Digigami some 1/500th real time or so.

Diogen.

You can read that here if you want.
http://www.digigami.com/megapeg/blog/

[IgorC]

Please , don't start to mix items. first quality, then interlace stuff, other ...

There were clear samples of H.264 and Xvid. And we don't see anysample of MPEG2.

I've seen some MPEG2 HDTV samples from digigami . They look HORRIBLE.
Croma offset. All colors are washed out. It's slow. some samples has 20 fps framerate :sly: . Please. MPEG-2 will never NEVER be on par with H.264.
Oh dear, QT7 AVC is the shame on H.264 family codecs.

[JohnV]

Which of the current H.264 AVC encoders support coding interlaced video?At least Ateme does.

[Sharktooth]

Yeah ateme does.
but interlacing was made for the analog worls... it's truly unnecessary with HD TVs.
The only reason 1080 res is interlaced is because the DVI interface bandwidth is limited (and 1080p requires 2 interfaces) but the new standards (HDMI) arent affected by that problems and 1080p is possible.
So, in any case, if you get interlaced sources, just deinterlace them (the right way) and encode to h.264.

[digigami]

Yeah ateme does.
but interlacing was made for the analog worls... it's truly unnecessary with HD TVs.
The only reason 1080 res is interlaced is because the DVI interface bandwidth is limited (and 1080p requires 2 interfaces) but the new standards (HDMI) arent affected by that problems and 1080p is possible.
So, in any case, if you get interlaced sources, just deinterlace them (the right way) and encode to h.264.

Tell that to all the people buying HDV and DVCPROHD cameras!

The reason for interlacing is increased resolution in the time domain at the expense of vertical spatial resolution. Always was, always will be. Which is why we have 1280x720x59.94p and 1280x720x50p. The latter trade even less spatial resolution for more temporal resolution.

[digigami]

They look HORRIBLE. Croma offset. All colors are washed out. It's slow. some samples has 20 fps framerate :sly: . Please. MPEG-2 will never NEVER be on par with H.264.

Hope you read the thread. What playback system are you auditioning these files on? Use VideoLAN.

20fps. This is quite funny. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 start at 23.976 and go up.

[digigami]

At least Ateme does.

OK, so it is starting to sound as if Ateme is the only robust H.264 AVC encoder in town.

Are there any other H.264 AVC encoders that support interlacing?

[bobololo]

I finally managed to download your commandN_spotLIGHT clip (what a pain to retrieve 550 MB at a transfert rate of 3.5 kB/s) and made an encode using ateme mp encoder. I uploaded the result here:

ftp://mood.ateme.com/digigami/commandN_spotLIGHT_HD_720p-ateme_avc_mp_1500k.mp4

To me the source is quite irrevelant for such kind of test. The content is very static (an interview with 2 persons speaking in front of the cam with nearly no motion). The source quality is rather poor: I can see smearing on the man's clothes and it's very noisy.

The resulting avc stream features:

main profile
bitrate of 1500 kb/s. So it's less than half of your mpeg-1 which is 3200 kb/s.
2pass rcmode
2 references
extra quality mode
psycholevel enhancement enabled


So you can easily reproduce a similar result with Nero Recode 2 using the above settings.

According to my visual feeling, I prefer the avc version since it's sharper and more stable. Your opinion is welcome of course.

ps: I can host the source QT7 H.264 file and your mpeg-1 encode on our server if it can help since yours are totally overloaded.

[JohnV]

OK, so it is starting to sound as if Ateme is the only robust H.264 AVC encoder in town.

Are there any other H.264 AVC encoders that support interlacing?
Well, at least Elecard AVC encoder seems to have also, though according to Doom9 test, it's not quite up to Ateme and x264 quality, but not bad like QT.

[Sharktooth]

OK, so it is starting to sound as if Ateme is the only robust H.264 AVC encoder in town.

Are there any other H.264 AVC encoders that support interlacing?
Here's a list of AVC encoders... commercial and free solutions:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=95939
get them and try them...
there you can find also Hardware solutions...

[digigami]

It's just a little challenge only for MPEG2 encoder (libavcodec, TMPGEnc, CCE, Procoder, HCEnc, QEnc).
First I think That you must prove that your MPEG2 encoder is better and by far than the other encoder.
My source is an HPII DVD trailler at 5 Mbps.

Sagittaire. Hi, I am down to around 2.2 mbits/s with a semi-constant Q. I would like to see your top two winning .m2v files if I could. The links are there, but there are no files.

[JohnV]

I finally managed to download your commandN_spotLIGHT clip (what a pain to retrieve 550 MB at a transfert rate of 3.5 kB/s) and made an encode using ateme mp encoder. I uploaded the result here:

ftp://mood.ateme.com/digigami/commandN_spotLIGHT_HD_720p-ateme_avc_mp_1500k.mp4
According to my visual feeling, I prefer the avc version since it's sharper and more stable. Your opinion is welcome of course.
Yes, it's definitely sharper and better quality than Digigami's over twice the bitrate MPEG-1. This AVC encode looks like a HD encode, Digigami's over twice the bitrate MPEG1 encode is blurry (yes with VideoLan) and doesn't really even look like High Def in my opinion.

Interesting to hear Digigami's comments about this..

[Sharktooth]

some "artifact-noise" on the wall behind the guy but that's why bobololo used psy3 and the source is of poor quality... without psy3 i guess it will be almost perfect.
as noted in the ateme quality feedback thread psy2 is much better than psy3.

[digigami]

Yes, it's definitely sharper and better quality than Digigami's over twice the bitrate MPEG-1. This AVC encode looks like a HD encode, Digigami's over twice the bitrate MPEG1 encode is blurry (yes with VideoLan) and doesn't really even look like High Def in my opinion.
Interesting to hear Digigami's comments about this..

Yes, it would have been nice to start with uncompressed source. BTW, so you are 2x better than a 1990 codec? Very nice.

BTW, I think our motion estimator was broken in that build. I fixed a bug last night which I think was causing a lot of bad mv's.

Right now, on the Ice Age (Kung Fu), my MPEG-1 is around 3.3 mbits/s. The picture is sharp and, of course, the source is much better.

It would be nice to see a H.264 AVC version of Ice Age (Kung Fu) 1280x720x25p which _does_not_ have blocking artifacts in the darker background regions. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't bother, but if you can see them, I'd like to see at what bitrate it hits the quality expectation for commercial concerns, rather than ripping and archiving.

[Sharktooth]

Yes, it would have been nice to start with uncompressed source. BTW, so you are 2x better than a 1990 codec? Very nice.

BTW, I think our motion estimator was broken in that build. I fixed a bug last night which I think was causing a lot of bad mv's.

Right now, on the Ice Age (Kung Fu), my MPEG-1 is around 3.3 mbits/s. The picture is sharp and, of course, the source is much better.

It would be nice to see a H.264 AVC version of Ice Age (Kung Fu) 1280x720x25p which _does_not_ have blocking artifacts in the darker background regions. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't bother, but if you can see them, I'd like to see at what bitrate it hits the quality expectation for commercial concerns, rather than ripping and archiving.
a bit more than 2x... as you saw that with the sagittaire's encodes... (let's say almost 3x) and however it looks better. so for a real comparison you should produce an encode that looks almost the same as h.264 and then we can compare the bitrates. Use metric tests (PSNR / OPSNR / SSIM) to estabilish level of quality...
However h.264 is AT LEAST 3x better for now...

[JohnV]

Yes, it would have been nice to start with uncompressed source. BTW, so you are 2x better than a 1990 codec? Very nice. Lol, what ever here is provided or said, it sounds like you downplay it somehow..
Anyway, if you want to go to this x-times better, I'd say it's definitely more than 2x better, cause it's less than half the size and much better quality..

And lets remind what you have said earlier: "According to H.264 marketing you will be able to get it down to 1/2 the size of my MPEG-1/MPEG-2 file. So around 85MB. Complete the test and I will post the results and write about it in my blog."
Interesting to see what you will write. :p

[digigami]

I finally managed to download your commandN_spotLIGHT clip (what a pain to retrieve 550 MB at a transfert rate of 3.5 kB/s) and made an encode using ateme mp encoder. I uploaded the result here:ftp://mood.ateme.com/digigami/commandN_spotLIGHT_HD_720p-ateme_avc_mp_1500k.mp4

Thanks. Judging by the server you are Ateme employee? How much $ is your HP encoder, BTW?


To me the source is quite irrevelant for such kind of test. The content is very static (an interview with 2 persons speaking in front of the cam with nearly no motion). The source quality is rather poor: I can see smearing on the man's clothes and it's very noisy.

The resulting avc stream features:

main profile
bitrate of 1500 kb/s. So it's less than half of your mpeg-1 which is 3200 kb/s.
2pass rcmode
2 references
extra quality mode
psycholevel enhancement enabled


So you can easily reproduce a similar result with Nero Recode 2 using the above settings.

According to my visual feeling, I prefer the avc version since it's sharper and more stable. Your opinion is welcome of course.

ps: I can host the source QT7 H.264 file and your mpeg-1 encode on our server if it can help since yours are totally overloaded.

Actually the commandN file is from the CommandN blog. Just goog it, or look in the links on my screenshots page.

[JohnV]

How much $ is your HP encoder, BTW?.If you wait a bit you can get the High Profile encoder from Nero Digital when it's put in. Currently the Nero Digital which includes the AVC Main Profile (which was used in bobololo's clip) is 29,99 Euro (so about $35). Plus you will also get AAC-HE v2 audio in the same package.

http://www.nerodigital.com

Hmm.. now I sound like a marketing guy!! :)

[digigami]

Lol, what ever here is provided or said, it sounds like you downplay it somehow..
Anyway, if you want to go to this x-times better, I'd say it's definitely more than 2x better, cause it's less than half the size and much better quality..

And lets remind what you have said earlier: "According to H.264 marketing you will be able to get it down to 1/2 the size of my MPEG-1/MPEG-2 file. So around 85MB. Complete the test and I will post the results and write about it in my blog."
Interesting to see what you will write. :p

For someone who won't use your own encoder to compress the Apple trailers, you seem quite chirpy. I'm going to write exactly what I find out. You don't seem to understand that for me to fail here is still a huge success in my books. My main point is about being HD at under 10 mbits/s, and there is no question that we are doing that.

I'm growing to respect a number of the posters here - the ones who think before they act, the ones who are oriented towards metrics and testing and the ones who understand there are 2 points of view. But it seems to me that H.264 is still bleeding edge, except where it comes to Ateme, which I understand (still waiting for an answer) is $9K.

Speaking of bleeding edge, can anyone list the H.264 decoders that "don't suck" and are in a stable release form?

[digigami]

Hmm.. now I sound like a marketing guy!! :)

That's fine with me. Everybody's marketing something, whether they believe it or not.

[JohnV]

For someone who won't use your own encoder to compress the Apple trailers, you seem quite chirpy. Eh, Sagittaire and bobololo have been faster than me (it happens to be a Christmas eve and I'm suppose not to spend my time in front of the computer which is not the fastest laptop anyway). They have provided Ateme streams which are used in the Nero encoder.
Point me one Apple trailer you want me to encode, and I'll encode it for you.