x264 and Intel's Media Engine / Sandy Bridge

[ranpha]

Originally Posted by deadrats

this is an absurd question, if you could achieve the same quality at 10 mb/s using x264 as you can with something like cce-hd or blu-code at 30+ mb/s; do you really think that the professional movie studios would spend 40-70+ grand on a per seat license to acquire those encoders? don't you think they would try and save a butt load of dough and use the legally free open source alternative?

Blu-rays is not only where H.264 can be used. There is also this thing called digital broadcast where it also can be used.

And trust me, you can save BILLIONS of dollars if you can save bandwidth within that industry. Imagine the saving a company can get if it can get away with broadcasting a 8Mb/s H.264 stream if it has the same quality as a 40Mb/s stream.

[weasel_]

Originally Posted by deadrats

you are absolutely correct, i personally believe that there are only a few reasons to transcode something, like if the source is too dimly lit, the color saturation is off, the source is noisy and you are trying to fix said video or the aspect ratio is wrong and you can't fix it via manipulation of flags.

in these cases the output should equal the input, i.e. size and bit rate in = size and bit rate out.

in all other cases you are better off simply buying another hdd (at $90 for 1.5tb it's quite affordable).

What you presonaly belive is your thing.
Point of encoder is like shon3i said efficiency.And there is nothing else to belive.
It would be still same if 50TB =100$... that dont change nothing..

Originally Posted by kolak

BD was created to give best possible quality for mass consumer (DVD started being not good enough on massive new TVs) and its 40Mbits is good enough to deliver it. It's not overdone, even for x264.

40Mbit for blu ray its not overdone for x264 ?
Are you really Serious ?

Originally Posted by kolak

Saying that x264 can achieve the same at 10Mbit as BD at 30Mbit is not true at all.
If x264 can achieve the same transparency at 10Mbit than great- we can put whole series on 1 BD. It also means that other encoders can be improved.

Of course not by reeencoding bluray then must be some lose no mother what bitrate we use becouse it`s not lossless codec
with same stream x264 whoud achive SAME qualitu at MUCH SMALLER bitrate

Originally Posted by kolak

Whatever it's, x264 at 10Mbit is worse
Something like Island trailer at 28mbit was good enough.
Andrew

GREAT argument
Depend on movie...
A lot movies will look transparent with 10Mbit x264

Originally Posted by kolak

In terms of other usage x264 is great and has clear quality advantage, but even so, most of the paid web content is not encoded with x264, but with Carbon Coder, Ateme and other hardware solution mainly because of the workflow.

First u must understand what is transparensy and u DONT.
It`s not mean that BR and x264@10MB are metematical equal
transparensy is subjectiv and for most people there is no difference even on very large display.

" result is perceptually indistinguishable from the uncompressed input, then the compression can be declared to be transparent"

Originally Posted by deadrats

le weasel was "flabbergasted" because he seems to have spent to much time worshiping at the x264 alter and stopped thinking for himself. most people react with disbelief when you first pull the veil that has been blinding them away from their eyes.

Great. Rly. i can`t wait.
Start pulling with some arguments and comparisons

[mariush]

That's true.. in Romania for example we have here about 10-15 tv stations but i think there will be only 2 or 3 channels for DVB-T (over the air digital tv) .
A company that has 4 channels would rather mux all four in a 24 mbps (or whatever it is) ... one 1080i 10mbps for their generalist station, 3 x 4.5 mbps 720p for their news/ entertainment/women (recipes and fashion) stations.

But unfortunately I don't think x264 is there today... though all tv stations here drag their feet regarding dvb-t, it's unlikely we'll have anything all over the country by 2014-2015. We have just 2 or 3 tv stations in a few cities (2-3 emitters on some high hills doing tests)

[kieranrk]

Originally Posted by ranpha

And trust me, you can save BILLIONS of dollars if you can save bandwidth within that industry. Imagine the saving a company can get if it can get away with broadcasting a 8Mb/s H.264 stream if it has the same quality as a 40Mb/s stream.

Except many don't care much about quality and will happily broadcast 1080i @ 4mbit that looks worse than SD.

[Jarod Middelman]

With x264 they can run it at 2mbit!

[Chikuzen]

Originally Posted by deadrats

i realize in this forum DS is unto God, that he can do no wrong, but you guys need to look at things objectively and see if the facts support the myth.

oh, Dark Shikari is unto God

if so, what should we call akupenguin

[ckmox]

Originally Posted by Chikuzen

oh, Dark Shikari is unto God

if so, what should we call akupenguin

lol

anyway when you think of h264 what comes to mind is better compression so that means saving more bitrate so this kind of statement

Originally Posted by deadrats

what is this bizarre fascination that people have with bit rate starving their encodes?

is fail

x264 is just being true to the notion of better compression among all the h264 encoders out there

[casio7131]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

I know that in the final spec three formats are allowed (H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2). Still MPEG-2 is by far the least efficient of those three supported video formats. And in the design of BluRay disc the bitrate (space) requirement was necessarily defined by the least efficient format that was going to be supported, i.e. by MPEG-2.

i don't believe that bluray was designed "from the get go" with all 3 codecs - i think that it was originally designed only for mpeg2 (hence the reason for 25-50gb discs) and the other 2 codecs, vc1 and h264, were added later on (after hddvd decided to use 3 codecs).

note: this comes from my memory and based on info given by amirm on avsforum (who was a hddvd guy from microsoft), so take this post how you like.

[ajp_anton]

Originally Posted by deadrats

the screen shots in the anandtech review are practically indistinguishable from the software encoded screenshots.

Maybe because the software used sucks?

Originally Posted by deadrats

as i said, just want to give you the perspective of an end user, i would much rather use the quick sync encoder, raise the bit rate and encode 1080p video at 15 mb/s at almost 100 fps than use x264, use half the bit rate and only encode at 15-20 fps (depending on source) using the ultra fast preset on my x4 620.

You don't have Quick Sync on your x4 620. If you have QS, you also have a fast CPU. My i7 920 does 70% of the speed of QS on x264 ultrafast (tried to replicate Anandtech's tests). Sandy Bridge will improve this a little. I don't know which looks better, but you just said you don't care.

Originally Posted by deadrats

most will probably realize that a 1.5tb hdd costs less than $100 and that blu-rays can hold 25-50 gigs of data and say "f" it, i'll just crank up the bit rate a bit and be done with my transcode in a fraction of the time.

You are more likely to transcode into a portable device with a small, expensive and non-upgradable flash memory.

Originally Posted by deadrats

this is an absurd question, if you could achieve the same quality at 10 mb/s using x264 as you can with something like cce-hd or blu-code at 30+ mb/s; do you really think that the professional movie studios would spend 40-70+ grand on a per seat license to acquire those encoders?

Yes.

[wlee15]

Originally Posted by deadrats

furthermore, a blu-ray disk holds up to 25-50 gigs of data and as i said a 1.5tb hdd costs under $100 (i currently have 3 of them), you feel like saving the space for a rainy day?

And do you know whats much faster than Intel QuickSync, not encoding at all.

[kolak]

Originally Posted by weasel_

What you presonaly belive is your thing.
Point of encoder is like shon3i said efficiency.And there is nothing else to belive.
It would be still same if 50TB =100$... that dont change nothing..


40Mbit for blu ray its not overdone for x264 ?
Are you really Serious ?

How many uncompressed film sources have you seen? (so you can have idea how it does look before any compression)

Passing 25Mbit x264 is not obviously any better than pro encoders and there is still lots compressed in this videos. Many sources have obvious compression artefacts even at 35Mbits. 40mbits is not overdone for BD at all. You can use 20Mbit as average and 40 as max and it will be "used" almost on every source.

BD was not designed to match BD rips quality

I've done 200 BDs disc and seen many masters and no one will convince me that x264 at 10Mbit achieves transparency- definately not, who has "x264 lover" in his nick description

I use x264 a lot also and know what it can do. If people are happy with 10Mbits we can do 3 movies on one BD- will save lots of money for studios and consumers

Andrew

[kolak]

Originally Posted by kieranrk

Except many don't care much about quality and will happily broadcast 1080i @ 4mbit that looks worse than SD.

Yep- as I said- even if x264 is free and so great almost no one uses it, because it's a business and there is more political decision made than logical

Andrew

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by deadrats

and just like that software based x264 encoding is dead:

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/ja/do...mw5.html#trial

the english version will be available soon, in addition to licensing x264, pegasys will feature the cuda h264 encoder and support for quick sync.

stick a fork in x264, it's done.

I think the hardware encoding isn't for x264 but instead of the other h264 codec that they use, mainconcept or something.

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tvmw5.html

it looks like if you have nvidia card it uses cuda and if you have a new intel cpu it uses the intel sdk. Neither of which support x264 as far as i'm aware. We need intel, nvidia or amd to add support for hardware decoding, 3rd party vendors like tmpgenc can't do that as far as i'm aware.

[weasel_]

^^ Of course isn`t for x264

Originally Posted by kolak

How many uncompressed film sources have you seen? (so you can have idea how it does look before any compression)

Dont know 300-400, 200 150 dont count...
I can have better idea then you.

Originally Posted by kolak

Passing 25Mbit x264 is not obviously any better than pro encoders

Ferrari going dowinhiill is not obviusly faster then tractor going downhill.
U cant compare encoders at big bitrate, just like u cant compare speed of vehicle when they falling from clif or going downhill

Originally Posted by kolak

40mbits is not overdone for BD at all

its not for mpeg-2 only

Originally Posted by kolak

Ive done 200 BDs disc and seen many masters and no one will convince me that x264 at 10Mbit achieves transparency

LIKE I alrady said ( u can read on page beofre this)
Depend on movie.
Some heavy grain movie need a lot more then 10 , some cgi movie need less then 10.
If u done 200Bd disc u shoud know that.
dont worry
I dont even want to convince sombody who think only one bitrate is identicly good for all movie.

[aegisofrime]

I think that all deadrats is trying to say is to consider things from the perspective of the end-user. Your average Joe probably cares a lot more about speed than quality, or rather, encoding efficiency. I do all my encodes at preset="slower". My brother will probably kill himself waiting for the same encode to finish.

I took a look at the Quick Sync review, and it's really not too shabby. I think that deadrats' points are these:

1. Quick Sync will probably be a standard feature on both Intel and AMD CPUs from now on.
2. Since it's there, why not use it?
3. Bring what DS and Team has learned from x264, and apply that to make use of Quick Sync, bringing extra speed and the quality we have all grown to love from x264.

[poisondeathray]

Originally Posted by aegisofrime

1. Quick Sync will probably be a standard feature on both Intel and AMD CPUs from now on.

AMD ? You sure about that?




I'm waiting for properly done review on quality, speed. (or speed at certain quality, or top quality... there are so many holes in that "video encoding part" of the review)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by aegisofrime

I think that all deadrats is trying to say is to consider things from the perspective of the end-user. Your average Joe probably cares a lot more about speed than quality, or rather, encoding efficiency.

If you have an encoder with good compression efficiency you can always choose "faster" settings in order to sacrifice quality for speed, so you can find yourself the best compromise between quality and speed. But if you have one of those "created for fancy fps numbers" hardware-encoders you get bad quality encodes in relatively short time, but you can't go anywhere from there...

(The problem with Average Joe is that he probably will never compare the output form different encoders and thus never knows how much better his encodes could have looked ^^)

[kolak]

Originally Posted by weasel_

LIKE I alrady said ( u can read on page beofre this)
Depend on movie.
Some heavy grain movie need a lot more then 10 , some cgi movie need less then 10.
If u done 200Bd disc u shoud know that.
dont worry
I dont even want to convince sombody who think only one bitrate is identicly good for all movie.

That's exactly why 40Mbit is not overkill for BD. It gives you possibility to achive very high transparency for every movie or every scene in particular movie.

Please stop saying that x264 at 10Mbit achives the same quality as found on BD disc because it's simply not true at all.

If you say that x264 at 10Mbits give good enough quality for average user than fine- your opinion, but it's not BD quality.

Encode Island trailer at 10Mbit and 30mbit and check if they look the same. This is quite easy source compared to others, even if it has lots of fast motion.

I remeber when some people wehere showing Big Bunny saying- look good HD at 2Mbit


Andrew

[weasel_]

Rly u asking me that ? u dont know basic stuff that much ?

x264 ITS NOT LOSLESS encoder. I cant get same quality by reencidng something with lossy encoder at 1/3 bitrate no mother of how good encoder is.
U asking imposible and something that even noob in video world shouldnt ask.
Give me master that studio have.
And i will encode with x264 in 10Mb with same quality as studio encode with h264 @ 30Mbit...

What i can with bluray source is to get transparanet encode with much less bitrate. pls read what i wrote.... transpart is not same quality , it perceptually indistinguishablesame from source , and that is all imporant.

[kolak]

It's about preceptual quality for home user and BD offers very high, but even so there are still users, who complain

There is no problem to do 10Mbit encodes for BD- if it will be accepted than everything will get cheaper.

I bet you if you did study with typical film source, watched on eg. 42inch TV, BD would be voted better quality than 10Mbit x264 encode.

Island trailer raw source is available- good luck with 10Mbit
I think I still have it- can encode for you with x264 at 10Mbit.

Andrew