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Old 3rd September 2012, 12:19   #21  |  Link
zmejce
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hello_hello vivid color setting isn't an enhancment, its a color profile, it doesn't enhances the picture (besides setting colors).

I have all filters (such as deblocking) disabled, hardware decoding is enabled for both codecs, and it's a very clean image.

But it looks like the more options you enable to x264 the slower the encode and more damaged (processed) the image and using Normal profile wirh cRF:20 isn't enough.

Last edited by zmejce; 3rd September 2012 at 18:23.
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Old 3rd September 2012, 21:56   #22  |  Link
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Originally Posted by zmejce View Post
hello_hello vivid color setting isn't an enhancment, its a color profile, it doesn't enhances the picture (besides setting colors).
If it's changing the colors then it's changing the way the video displays on the TV, whether it be a color profile or an "enhancement". Chances are it also uses different brightness, contrast and/or gamma settings to make the color "vivid", not by simply adjusting the colors.
To my way of thinking a TV should be calibrated properly (generally the most boring factory preset is probably going to be fairly close) and display the video as it was intended to be displayed, but each to their own.....
My nephew has some vivid color setting enabled on his TV and he's probably played with various other settings too. He thinks it looks great. I can barely stand to be in the same room when his TV is on.

The bottom line is if the video looks good on your PC monitor but bad on your TV then they can't be displaying the video the same way. That doesn't mean the video must be perfect, but they both can't be displaying it "correctly" either.
Mind you it does seem odd that you're only having quality issues when encoding with x264 but not DivX. I don't have a good explanation for that one.

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Originally Posted by zmejce View Post
I have all filters (such as deblocking) disabled, hardware decoding is enabled for both codecs, and it's a very clean image.
Using what as your playback device? If it's a PC how is it connected to the TV? Which media player are you using? Probably the number one cause of complaints when playing video on a PC connected to a TV would be using the wrong levels and depending on the player it may correct the levels for some types of video by default, but not others.... the same can even apply to viewing video on a PC monitor. There's lots of variables.

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Originally Posted by zmejce View Post
But it looks like the more options you enable to x264 the slower the encode and more damaged (processed) the image and using Normal profile wirh cRF:20 isn't enough.
I don't know exactly what "options" you're referring to and I'm not a Handrake user. Generally the idea would be not to play with any x264 options unless you really know what you're doing. x264 has it's own built in "speed" presets which have been tuned by the x264 developers. Changing the speed preset automatically changes the appropriate advanced x264 options accordingly. For 99.9% of us, using the built in x264 speed presets is the best option.
Unfortunately though, for reasons I don't understand Handbrake is one of the few encoder GUIs which doesn't give you access to the x264 speed presets (at least as far as I remember). If you're fond of Handbrake, maybe try VidCoder as an alternative. It uses the Handbrake "engine" but it's a different GUI. It's very much like Handbrake, but it does also give you access to the x264 speed presets.

If I remember correctly, Handbrake's own "Normal" preset isn't "normal" for x264. It's more like using x264 and a faster x264 speed preset if memory serves me correctly (default is medium). Even most Handbrake devotees will probably tell you not to use it. Handbrake's "High Profile" preset is probably close to x264's default settings with maybe a couple of advanced options tweaked a little. It should give you decent quality. If not, try another encoder GUI. I'd be interested to know if your results then change.

All I can tell you is your "experience" seems contradictory to general opinion, so either you're correct and the rest of the world is wrong, or maybe it's the other way around......
I can tell you I've encoded plenty of video, both HD and SD, using a CRF value of 20 and the default "medium" x264 speed preset (although I tend to use CRF 18 these days) and the majority of the time the encoded version is pretty much indistinguishable from the original when displayed on my 51" plasma (unless I deliberately compare them frame by frame). My TV is literally sitting a couple of feet from my desk, so I've done lots of comparing using the TV when encoding.
Why your experience seems different to the "norm" I don't really know, all I can do is offer possible reasons, but maybe if you do post some screenshots it might help to clear things up.
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Old 3rd September 2012, 22:04   #23  |  Link
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I use mpc-hc latest x86 with latest coreavc and divx.

The TV is connected with PC via HDMI2HDMI 1.3b gold plated cable.

Chances are that I'll post screen shots of same rip as soon as possible, but atm I'm not able to make rips for comparison.

In meanwhile here are the screenshots of different videos for comparison. And intentionally I had took screenshots of the places where I can see dirty artifacts at peak.

x264 High Profile (@~13.3Mbps, I haven't touched the settings except mkv instead mp4) encoded with Handbrake 0.9.5 from Blu-Ray 40GB disc:
http://1.0.1.img98.net/out.php/i4511...-snap6.17-.jpg
http://1.0.1.img98.net/out.php/i4511...-snap6.54-.jpg


DivX @ 7500Kbps 1080p 2pass insane quality, encoded from H264 10.2Mbps source:
http://1.0.1.img98.net/out.php/i4511...080i.4.10-.jpg

*notice for the DivX screenshot: The screenshot of the original H264 source looks identical or almost identical (It's already dirty a bit).

And as I wrote previously, You'll probably need around 40" or bigger TV/Monitor to notice the dirty artifacs especially for the DivX screenshot. They are very hard to be noticed on my 24" 1080p monitor (especially the DivX ones). Probably you won't be able to notice the dirty artifacts at around 30" monitor or TV too.

Last edited by zmejce; 4th September 2012 at 03:10.
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Old 4th September 2012, 03:08   #24  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hello_hello View Post
If it's changing the colors then it's changing the way the video displays on the TV, whether it be a color profile or an "enhancement". Chances are it also uses different brightness, contrast and/or gamma settings to make the color "vivid", not by simply adjusting the colors.
To my way of thinking a TV should be calibrated properly (generally the most boring factory preset is probably going to be fairly close) and display the video as it was intended to be displayed, but each to their own.....
If I play the Blu-Ray disc on the TV with vivid color profile, definitely it looks better than if I play it with Normal color profile.

Shouldn't the rips do the same?
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Old 4th September 2012, 09:27   #25  |  Link
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Rule #1: compare the screenshots of different codecs with the same scene/frame and make sure you encode with each codec from the same source material - be it Bluray disc or HDTV recording, otherwise it's totally useless.
Your "dirty artifacts" are in fact the grain & noise that is present in the original BD source. x264 has done excellent job in keeping it there in the encoded H264 stream. I can understand that DivX encode is more pleasing to your eyes, because it's been heavily denoised so everything looks so clean, smooth... simply too unnatural. If you want to achieve the same look also for x264 encodes then (over)denoise your source too, you can use MCTemporalDenoise or just --nr 100 noise reduction built-in filter.
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Old 4th September 2012, 09:48   #26  |  Link
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1. Post the same frame from source, Handbrake encode and Divx encode. You/we can not compare different images.
2. Do not use JPEG to take screenshots as JPEG is lossy compression with its own artifacts. Use PNG.

About images you posted. Frames from H.264 encode have a lot of film grain which is very hard to encode. Divx image is very smooth, blured. You don't have any fine details. Just compare hair and eyebrows from first H.264 image and Divx image. So, for me, H.264 images look much better.

Too slow.

Last edited by detmek; 4th September 2012 at 09:50. Reason: Too slow
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Old 4th September 2012, 11:19   #27  |  Link
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I had wrote that at the moment I'm not able to make DivX rip of the same movie, I'll probably make it as soon as possible.

Here's another DivX@ 13.3Mbps 2pass, from 35Mbps mpeg2 source
Divx@13.3Mbps

On my screen it looks dirty only from few inches away from the screen, unlike the x264 screenshots that look dirty from 2m away from the screen. Also nothing can be seen at 24" monitor.
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Old 4th September 2012, 12:09   #28  |  Link
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On my screen it looks dirty only from few inches away from the screen, unlike the x264 screenshots that look dirty from 2m away from the screen. Also nothing can be seen at 24" monitor.
The first x264 screen you posted is actually pretty good and has proper grain retention. The divx screen you just posted has atrocious artifacts.
You call them both "dirty". It makes no sense.

You were told to post lossless screen shots since we have no idea if the artefacts are from extreme jpg compression or really, really bad encoding or a really, really bad source.

Posting a screenshot is useless when there is no point of reference.
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Last edited by Groucho2004; 4th September 2012 at 13:38. Reason: spelling
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Old 4th September 2012, 12:38   #29  |  Link
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No, they look acctually the same as their video source.

A screen shot from original source is same as those screen shots, just 100% clean.
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Old 4th September 2012, 14:28   #30  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Groucho2004 View Post
The first x264 screen you posted is actually pretty good and has proper grain retention. The divx screen you just posted has atrocious artifacts.
The bottom line is that for both codecs I'll have to raise the birate to get the result I want.

I'll go with DivX.
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Old 5th September 2012, 11:56   #31  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zmejce View Post
The bottom line is that for both codecs I'll have to raise the birate to get the result I want.

I'll go with DivX.
No, the true bottom line is that you don't follow the advices of many experienced users though you've been told them several times already:
  • Post screenshots in lossless format PNG, not JPG which is lossy itself!
  • Always use the same sources for direct encoder comparisons, not different scenes for every screenshot you want to point out!
  • Post your exact settings you encoded your video with, input sample files & output log files are more than welcome!
I've personally switched from xvid to x264 more than 2 years ago and I would never go back, the visual quality of x264 beats xvid with much better compression for all my sources, especially cartoons that were somewhat denoised as well.
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Old 5th September 2012, 14:14   #32  |  Link
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OP just likes blurry images so he prefers Divx.
x264/H.264-AVC is more efficient encoder/standard compared to Divx/MPEG4-ASP so it requires lower bitrate to produce video of the same quality. Here is a link to MSU Video Codec Comparisson page that shows efficiency of Xvid, x264 and Divx H.264.
Note, it's Divx H.264, not Divx ASP. And Divx H.264 gives better quality compared to Divx ASP.
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Old 5th September 2012, 15:58   #33  |  Link
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Handbrake doesnt deinterlaces 1080i correctly, at least some videos have to be encoded in vdub.

Also Im quite sure that the manual way of encoding with vdub is better than auto-way of encoding (ex. handbrake).

I have troubles to encode to x264 with vdub, otherwise I would probably give it a shot. DivX with vdub has no problems.

I had found that DivX is faster & better than XviD at any birate Ive tried.

Also in MPC-HC Ive set shaders: denoise & shapren.

The video that is encoded with DivX 17Mbps (theres a screenshot without filters above in reply) looks almost like a lossless Blu-ray rip with them, its even better than the original mpeg2 36Mbps source which looks pretty good.
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Old 5th September 2012, 16:37   #34  |  Link
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If you do not apply filters encoded video can't look better then original. And VirtualDub 1.10 has a support for external encoders so you can use any CLI encoder you want: x264, ffmpeg, neroaac, qaac, lame and merge streams with mkvmerge, ffmpeg, mp4box...
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Old 5th September 2012, 17:11   #35  |  Link
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I know how to merge streams, just Im not familiar with setting vdub to use commandline, neither to set x264 commands.
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Old 5th September 2012, 19:45   #36  |  Link
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x264 Is definitely better than DivX/XviD.

Here you go, x264 vs. XviD on a quite tough source.

Unlike with x264, I couldn't tweak the settings to all hell to make them look good for this one source with XviD. But the speeds are 15 fps for x264, and 23 for XviD. (So it's not like I used "fast" settings for it.)
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Old 6th September 2012, 14:08   #37  |  Link
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Yep, x264 is better than DivX even with lower birate.

x264 @ 13.3Mbps with the MPC-HC filters it looks almost like the Blu-Ray.

Which commands I should use for the command-line x264 and vdub?

I saw this from Handbrake 0.9.5 High Profile:
ref=2:bframes=2:subq=6:mixed-refs=0:weightb=0:8x8dct=0:trellis=0

I don't want to use Psychovisual or such effects, and I want the file to be at about 15Mbps.

Also when I set command-line encoder in vdub, is the procedure the same (File->Save as->avi)?

If not, then how?
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Old 6th September 2012, 14:31   #38  |  Link
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Bloax can you share your x264 command-line settings?
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Old 6th September 2012, 17:18   #39  |  Link
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I unfortunately have no idea how to use the external encoders in VDub, I find that using JEEB's builds (which include audio encoding, yay) in a command line is much easier.

My commandline is quite biased for the game I'm playing there (which is just a bit noisy as you might've noted).

But in a nutshell;
Code:
--preset Slow --tune Grain --bframes 16 --aq-strength x --nr y
--aq-strength Kind of determines what kind of content to focus the quality on. Values lower than 1 focus on noise (I actually used 0.4 on my clip there), higher focus more on flat areas. (Not so surprisingly all but the StillImage tuning tweak it downwards.)

And --nr is for the in-loop denoiser, which usually actually speeds up the encoding while reducing the final size. (The value you should use kind of depends on the noisiness of the source. Just mess around with values around 100-500 I guess.)

Of course I also did some rather pointless other things, but that's mostly because it's what it is.
Don't forget to use tunings though, they're good stuff. (--tune Grain is a great tuning, though it also increases the size rather dramatically.)

Disabling the psychovisual stuff going on isn't really a good idea.

I can't really say how you'd hit 15 Mbps, other than taking some time to mess with the --crf values.
You'll learn it eventually anyways.
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Old 6th September 2012, 17:42   #40  |  Link
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Well cRF:20 high preset produces ~13.3Mbps.

I don't know what would be for around 15Mbps?
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