Any 2021 lossless video comparison?

[PCU]

Originally Posted by poisondeathray

For x265 --lossless enables lossless mode. Anything else is not lossless .

Slower settings do not always reduce filesze, it depends on content. eg. You can demonstrate cases where "very slow" produces larger file than "very fast". There is no "max compression" setting for everything

But x265 always produces worse compression ratio than x264 for 8bit 4:2:0 content - there is not a single test in thousands that show otherwise. There is no reason to use x265 lossless - slower to encode/decode, larger filesizes

Your PSNR/SSIM tests look not done correctly (likely timestamp issue, or container timebase differences if it doesn't show "inf")

Thank you, very strange.
But for HDR files, the only option is x265 or AV1.
I'm using Adobe Media Encoder + Voukoder + Autokroma Influx plugins, first for encoding and second for decoding. the Voukoder plugin has all x265 command line option in a GUI. what commands do you use?

[poisondeathray]

HDR is usually going to be at least 10bit 4:2:0 . Not as many comparison tests for lossless compression HDR scenario

--lossless is the only required switch for x265. The other options can make it slightly better or worse in terms of compression ratio (it varies) . In general a longer GOP has diminishing returns, just don't use --keyint 1 if the goal is compression. HDR settings would be the same as the input file if you want to retain the metadata

[PCU]

Originally Posted by poisondeathray

HDR is usually going to be at least 10bit 4:2:0 . Not as many comparison tests for lossless compression HDR scenario

--lossless is the only required switch for x265. The other options can make it slightly better or worse in terms of compression ratio (it varies) . In general a longer GOP has diminishing returns, just don't use --keyint 1 if the goal is compression. HDR settings would be the same as the input file if you want to retain the metadata

--lossless preset=placebo is it ok?

[poisondeathray]

Originally Posted by PCU

--lossless preset=placebo is it ok?

You can try it , but slower presets are sometimes worse for lossless encoding. Don't ask me why, they just are sometimes. There is no way to predict it's source dependent . +/- 0.1% filesize is not going give you a bad day

[excellentswordfight]

Did a quick test a year or two ago with a 1min sample from an 1080p24 bluray:

Original: 179 MiB
x264 (preset veryslow, crf 0): 733 MiB
x264 (preset fast, crf 0): 765 MiB
x265 (preset veryslow, lossless): 808 MiB
FFV1: 831 MiB
JPEG2000: 932 MiB
x265 (preset fast, lossless): 934 MiB
Ut Video: 1.30 GiB
HUFFYUV: 1.87 GiB
Uncompressed: 4.17GiB

[PCU]

Originally Posted by excellentswordfight

Did a quick test a year or two ago with a 1min sample from an 1080p24 bluray:

Original: 179 MiB
x264 (preset veryslow, crf 0): 733 MiB
x264 (preset fast, crf 0): 765 MiB
x265 (preset veryslow, lossless): 808 MiB
FFV1: 831 MiB
JPEG2000: 932 MiB
x265 (preset fast, lossless): 934 MiB
Ut Video: 1.30 GiB
HUFFYUV: 1.87 GiB
Uncompressed: 4.17GiB

What about YULS and Lagarith?

[Zarxrax]

Originally Posted by PCU

What about YULS and Lagarith?

The website for YULS states that it has a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. If this is true, I can't see that codec being very useful these days, as most people are going to have footage larger than that.

Lagarith ought to fall somewhere between UTvideo and FFV1.

[PCU]

Originally Posted by Zarxrax

The website for YULS states that it has a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. If this is true, I can't see that codec being very useful these days, as most people are going to have footage larger than that.

Lagarith ought to fall somewhere between UTvideo and FFV1.

Thanks.
What about AV1?
For HDR, the only option is x265 for now.

[excellentswordfight]

Originally Posted by PCU

What about YULS and Lagarith?

Dunno about YULS, I only tested ffmpeg bundled codecs thats why lagarith wasnt inlcuded, as Zarxrax mentioned, it should be somewere between UT Video and FFV1.

Originally Posted by PCU

Thanks.
What about AV1?
For HDR, the only option is x265 for now.

I tried AV1 lossless, but its so slow that I didnt even bother letting it finish. Someone that has a faster CPU/has more interested in tuning it for some speed maybe can give an comparison on how good the compression is in lossless mode. But I'm pretty sure that it will keep being to slow offer any real life value when in comes to lossless compression for quite some time.

Why is x265 the only option for HDR? As long as the codec supports the pixel format it should be fine for HDR content, no? Are we discussing real world applications here? Is there a specific workflow need that you have for these lossless questions or are we just talking compression in general?

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by poisondeathray

HDR is usually going to be at least 10bit 4:2:0 . Not as many comparison tests for lossless compression HDR scenario

--lossless is the only required switch for x265. The other options can make it slightly better or worse in terms of compression ratio (it varies) . In general a longer GOP has diminishing returns, just don't use --keyint 1 if the goal is compression. HDR settings would be the same as the input file if you want to retain the metadata

I've done some lossless HDR encoding. A few notes

1. Unlike with non-lossless, the higher bit depth increases bitrate (typcially >25% due to more noise in the least significant bits).)
2. With x265, --preset placebo can be >10% smaller than --preset veryslow
3. Improvement of HEVC versus AVC lossless is <<2x
4. Using all IDR isn't that much bigger than long GOP in lossless, and allows for more threading. Even --keyint 10 will capture most of the value from interframe encoding.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by PCU

--lossless preset=placebo is it ok?

It would be --lossless --preset placebo

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by PCU

Thanks.
What about AV1?

Do AV1 encoders generally enable the lossless option? x265 via command line is the only HEVC encoder that does off the top of my head.

AV1 encode is generally quite slow and decode is as well. And in many/most cases a lossless AV1 would be going through software decode to due level requirements, so even slower to use in practice.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any reason AV1 would have a material file size advantage over HEVC for the lossless case.

[`Orum]

I have several TB of lossless footage so I've spent a lot of time researching them. To summarize what I've found:

• For best ratio, x264 placebo is actually quite good, assuming you don't need alpha. There are some tricks to getting better compression ratios with it but they come with consequences. I've also yet to see where a slower preset for it produced a larger file than a faster one.
• In situations you need alpha, I recommend FFV1. It tends to not be as good compression-wise as x264 (especially on footage with identical areas over multiple frames).
• There is no reason to use x265 or any AV1 encoder that I have found (except for maybe HDR?). It's slower or worse ratio-wise compared to x264 for any given compression ratio/speed.
• For high-speed lossless scenarios (e.g. capture), nvenc H.265 is what I'd recommend. It gets a better lossless ratio than nvenc's H.264 encoder.
• If you don't have a Nvidia card for nvenc, but still need high-speed encoding, consider the faster speeds with x264 or ffvhuff.

[PCU]

Thanks guys.
It is true that the conversion speed is very important, but more importantly, the volume of the compression is much more important, because the space occupied on the disk is very important.
Placebo preset was terribly slow using the latest Voukoder (Adobe Media Encoder).

[PCU]

I'm confused: Does FFV1 support HDR and 4K? I searched but did not find any answer.

[FranceBB]

Originally Posted by PCU

I'm confused: Does FFV1 support HDR and 4K? I searched but did not find any answer.

4K resolution, definitely.
BT2020 with HLG or PQ transfer characteristics yes, but not in the .avi container. I think .mkv and .mov both support it, but I can't test right now as I'm on my mobile.
The only thing that it doesn't support is dynamically changing metadata, so no Dolby Vision nor HDR10+, but you can totally have HDR10 or even different kind of HDR with 12, 14 or 16bit planar precision.

[PCU]

Originally Posted by FranceBB

4K resolution, definitely.
BT2020 with HLG or PQ transfer characteristics yes, but not in the .avi container. I think .mkv and .mov both support it, but I can't test right now as I'm on my mobile.
The only thing that it doesn't support is dynamically changing metadata, so no Dolby Vision nor HDR10+, but you can totally have HDR10 or even different kind of HDR with 12, 14 or 16bit planar precision.

Replies from the official dev of FFV1:
HDR10+ might be be possible with ffv1 in Matroska with no changes to the specification but i think no implementation supports this ATM.
ive send the developer who implemented HDR10+ with vp9 in matroska in ffmpeg a mail asking why he didnt implemented it more generically so it would work with any codec in matroska

[FranceBB]

Originally Posted by PCU

Replies from the official dev of FFV1:
HDR10+ might be be possible with ffv1 in Matroska with no changes to the specification but i think no implementation supports this ATM.
ive send the developer who implemented HDR10+ with vp9 in matroska in ffmpeg a mail asking why he didnt implemented it more generically so it would work with any codec in matroska

Got it.
Keep me posted 'cause I'm interested too, by the way.

[benwaggoner]

I'm surprised to hear that x265 isn't reliably producing smaller mathematically lossless files than x264.

The preset/efficiency ratio can be pretty non-constant. I've seen content where going from veryslow to placebo offers a bigger size reduction than going from medium to veryslow.

[kolak]

Originally Posted by PCU

I'm confused: Does FFV1 support HDR and 4K? I searched but did not find any answer.

FFv1 same as most lossless codecs doesn't really care about resolution. Max frame size will be down to particular implementation limits, but it will be more like 16K or 32K.

Same with HDR. HDR is nothing more than 10 or 12bit video. Rest is flagging and metadata, but this can be stored in container (so codec itself doesn't need to support HDR flags). MOV, MXF or MKV will work (forget about AVI- old and limited).

I would not bother with x265 for lossless. It's terribly slow for no real gain. If you want good speed use ffvhuff. If you don't care about speed ffv1 is safe. If your source is RGB use codec which supports it natively at your desired bit depth.
As always- there is no simple answer what is the best. It all depends on your specific case.

Some limited numbers for UHD (10bit 4:2:2) source made of BM RAW, Canon RAW and Arri RAW source:
x265 lossless (preset=medium, GOP=1) 1740Mbit= 2.44 compression ratio
ffv1 lossless (ffmpeg) 1471Mbit=2.89 compression ratio
ffvhuff lossless (ffmpeg) 2021Mbit=2.10 compression ratio (10x faster than other 2)

High quality source with noise/grain etc. is typically 2-3x (even less sometimes). Anything above 3x will be rather specific case related to "easy" source (CGI, something lossy compressed many times already, etc.). Maybe long GOP is different.

x265 lossless (preset=medium, GOP=25) 1724Mbit= 2.46 compression ratio - not much gain over I frame only