A mini codec shootout: animation encoding

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Did someone forget the link?

Too much talking and typing, not enough sleeping ...

http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive...Public/Maikaze

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Too much talking and typing, not enough sleeping ...

http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive...Public/Maikaze

This is the first encoder I've seen other than the reference and x264 that uses sub-8x8 partitions

And even in B-frames; not even x264 bothers with that.

Edit: er... your encode has dropped frames, and thus gets out of sync, netting you an SSIM of 0.65303.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

This is the first encoder I've seen other than the reference and x264 that uses sub-8x8 partitions

And even in B-frames; not even x264 bothers with that.

Well, it's not on by default .

This is kind of an odd encoder, being basically the Win7 device transcoder plus some extra modes the developer added to try some other scenarios. The library included eve more esoteric stuff that didn't get into the interface, but 4x4 seemed interesting enough I advocated for keeping it in. Attaching a screen shot if you're curious about its parameters.

I haven't done enough production work with it myself to stack rank it against other H.264 implementations; I'm quite curious to find out where its score lands.

..and how my WMV ranks as well. Visually the I-frame DQuant helped quite a bit in places.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Edit: er... your encode has dropped frames, and thus gets out of sync, netting you an SSIM of 0.65303.

Well, that's not good.

Are the dropped frames additional instances of identical frames? This implementation may extend the duration of the prior frame when it gets a frame that doesn't otherwise get encoded, as opposed to inserting an explicit skip frame. That's how VC-1 used to do it (although we've changed the default behavior in Expression Encoder to use skip frames with VC-1 Advanced Profile).

Or is it actually dropping real unique frames(and thus has a quality bug)?

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Well, that's not good.

Are the dropped frames additional instances of identical frames? This implementation may extend the duration of the prior frame when it gets a frame that doesn't otherwise get encoded, as opposed to inserting an explicit skip frame. That's how VC-1 used to do it (although we've changed the default behavior in Expression Encoder to use skip frames with VC-1 Advanced Profile).

Or is it actually dropping real unique frames(and thus has a quality bug)?

Elecard Streameye says your output file has 4846 frames. When using FFVideoSource, the frames don't match up with the original decoded frames temporally.

DirectShowSource() with FPS forced to 23.976 works slightly better but still gets out of sync.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Elecard Streameye says your output file has 4846 frames. When using FFVideoSource, the frames don't match up with the original decoded frames temporally.

Do you see any dropped frames visually?

Hmmm. I did use an .avs to convert from your .mkv source to a Lagarith .avi before encoding. I suppose I could have messed something up there with frame rate, although I can't think of how. The WMV was encoded from the same .avi file, so if it also shows the same dropped frame pattern, it's probably operator error.

EEv3 can read the .mkv just fine via ffdshow, but I wanted to make scrubbing faster and make sure that I was getting YV12 source.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Do you see any dropped frames visually?

Hmmm. I did use an .avs to convert from your .mkv source to a Lagarith .avi before encoding. I suppose I could have messed something up there with frame rate, although I can't think of how. The WMV was encoded from the same .avi file, so if it also shows the same dropped frame pattern, it's probably operator error.

EEv3 can read the .mkv just fine via ffdshow, but I wanted to make scrubbing faster and make sure that I was getting YV12 source.

Remember, there's ~5000 frames in the input file; if you have any less, you've dropped some.

I suspect it could be that most of the tools available don't react very well to VFR MP4s like yours, especially when attempting to extract specific frames to compare with an original file.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Remember, there's ~5000 frames in the input file; if you have any less, you've dropped some.

Yeah, but I didn't see anything missing visually, which is why I'm guessing VFR.

Other than analysis tools and broadcast applications, is there a strong reason not to use VFR for web/device scenarios?

I suspect it could be that most of the tools available don't react very well to VFR MP4s like yours, especially when attempting to extract specific frames to compare with an original file.

Likely enough. There's no way in the UI to turn off VFR, so I'm not sure how to help here. Could you decode to lossess using a tool that would insert skip frames correctly?

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Yeah, but I didn't see anything missing visually, which is why I'm guessing VFR.

Other than analysis tools and broadcast applications, is there a strong reason not to use VFR for web/device scenarios?


Likely enough. There's no way in the UI to turn off VFR, so I'm not sure how to help here. Could you decode to lossess using a tool that would insert skip frames correctly?

ffmpeg doesn't do it, DirectShowSource doesn't do it, ffvideosource doesn't do it..

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

ffmpeg doesn't do it, DirectShowSource doesn't do it, ffvideosource doesn't do it..

AVISynth to VirtualDub to Lagarith?

Since AVI has a fixed frame rate, tools may know how to deal with its "VFR" better than formats where you really can have arbitrary durations for each frame.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

AVISynth to VirtualDub to Lagarith?

As I said, I can't get it working in Avisynth, so there's no point in trying to move it from there.

[Dark Shikari]

Using "-vf nailfps" from this hacky patch by Xiphmont, I was able to get the frames synced up.

And...

...

...

...

Microsoft H.264 ties Ateme (per the original graph). Of course, per the original comparison, this isn't the latest Ateme encoder.

But x264 still trashes it, even in veryfast mode, of course

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Using "-vf nailfps" from this hacky patch by Xiphmont, I was able to get the frames synced up.

Cool, thanks for sticking with it.

Microsoft H.264 ties Ateme (per the original graph). Of course, per the original comparison, this isn't the latest Ateme encoder.

But x264 still trashes it, even in veryfast mode, of course

That's actually a pretty good result! Ateme's a nice encoder, and certainly has seen a whole lot more refinement than the EEv3 implementation. Plus my sample was Main Profile only.

Get a chance to check my newer WMV?

[roozhou]

@DS
Why do you always encode your samples without correct aspect ratio?

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by roozhou

@DS
Why do you always encode your samples without correct aspect ratio?

Because SAR doesn't affect encoding quality and I'm lazy.

[juGGaKNot]

how about a counter-strike test ?

720p60

[Boolsheet]

Originally Posted by juGGaKNot

how about a counter-strike test ?

720p60

Is this some kind of test where you look for a source that gives the complete opposite of the last result? ... Oh, you mean the game.

Is there a specific part you had in mind or just computer graphics in general? I'm sure x264 dominates the field here too, but there's just so much motion and flashes in a first person shooter, I don't think the encoders can handle that and give meaningful results. It gets even worse with newer games, now they start using "film grain". *sigh* The good old days were better (or not, that game is hard).


Thanks for the comparison Dark Shikari, hope you do something like that again with new features of x264.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by Boolsheet

Is this some kind of test where you look for a source that gives the complete opposite of the last result? ... Oh, you mean the game.

Is there a specific part you had in mind or just computer graphics in general? I'm sure x264 dominates the field here too, but there's just so much motion and flashes in a first person shooter, I don't think the encoders can handle that and give meaningful results. It gets even worse with newer games, now they start using "film grain". *sigh* The good old days were better (or not, that game is hard).

The good old days are still here

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Boolsheet

Is there a specific part you had in mind or just computer graphics in general? I'm sure x264 dominates the field here too, but there's just so much motion and flashes in a first person shooter, I don't think the encoders can handle that and give meaningful results.

Not at 250 Kbps maybe, but with multiple reference frames or BI frames, flashes are a solved problem with H.264 and VC-1. And a good adaptive motion search range helps with rapid motion. I did some CounterStrike tests with the current VC-1 a few months ago, and it was able to do 1024x576 (IIRC) reasonably nicely well below 1 Mbps.

It gets even worse with newer games, now they start using "film grain". *sigh*

Mass Effect was much more pleasureable for me once I turned off a all the "film look" stuff. Watching all that noise and lack of contrast reminded me way too much of my day job .

[juGGaKNot]

I can't get qp under 22 for less than 6mb at 720p and with mbtree the killtext + dark maps look really bad

not to mention the fades, really really bad.

http://www.sourceradio.com/modules.p...=watch&id=1775

800p35 at 4 mb, the best i have seen so far

Format profile : High@L3.2
Duration : 4mn 8s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 4 000 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 12.5 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels

Writing library : x264 core 67 r1153M 7b6ce6a
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=7 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / rc=2pass / bitrate=4000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=45 / qpstep=5 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.60 / pb_ratio=1.20 / aq=1:1.00

the movie is free to view/download, no warez.

What i'm working on now :

http://www.filefront.com/14275521/Movie_X264_2D.mp4/

Format profile : High@L4.0
Duration : 1mn 11s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 3 973 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 4 000 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 7 227 Kbps
Width : 1 184 pixels
Height : 656 pixels
Writing library : x264 core 71 r1210 42d6b17
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:-3:-3 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=32 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=0 / bitrate=4000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=20000 / vbv_bufsize=20000 / ip_ratio=1.10 / pb_ratio=1.10 / aq=1:1.00