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Old 12th August 2009, 17:33   #41  |  Link
Lyris
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Sadly, if compliance isn't at least "likely", then I really doubt I'll use x264 (unless some sort of solution appears). Even if it involves going with a slightly less high quality but compliant encoder, the quality gains wouldn't be worth the amount of sleep I'd lose (or the consequences of putting a dodgy disc out there).

The best-looking disc in the world done with x264 would be pointless - not to mention a liability! - if it creates playback problems.

Chengbin: on past DVD projects, I've normally just filled the disc up - I just don't see any reason not to when you're guaranteed a certain amount of space. A little headroom is good since the sizes can be a little unpredictable, but re-encoding a bonus feature to be 3% smaller to get the whole thing to fit is really no big deal with the speed of today's SD MPEG-2 encoding.
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Old 12th August 2009, 18:23   #42  |  Link
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If a solution for x264's compatibility doesn't come up, and you're forced to use a commercial encoder, could you encode a tiny part of the film with x264 "just for fun"?
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Old 12th August 2009, 19:22   #43  |  Link
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Well, it seems the outcome of this thread is that x264 should be able to produce a BD compliant stream at Level 4.0, just not at Level 4.1 yet.

Also: If somebody is willing to spend thousands of dollars for a proprietary encoder, he could also give that money to the x264 devs to complete the required slices patch
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Old 12th August 2009, 19:34   #44  |  Link
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Also: If somebody is willing to spend thousands of dollars for a proprietary encoder, he could also give that money to the x264 devs to complete the required slices patch
If compliance could be guaranteed and access to a stream verifier was possible, this is an option I would certainly consider running past the money people (assuming that the off-the-shelf encoders were producing visibly poorer results). Real-world issues could get in the way though.

I know there are a lot of people who would love to see a free, high quality BD compliant AVC encoder. And also people who would probably be quite disturbed by the appearance of one...
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Old 12th August 2009, 20:40   #45  |  Link
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One thing that's been reported is some Panasonic and Samsung players don't display video with 24p enabled from x264 encoded streams. It may be an x264 issue or it may be that directshowsource changes the framerate of the input which also breaks eac3to. Either way it's something that would affect millions.
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Old 12th August 2009, 21:53   #46  |  Link
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Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR View Post
Well, it seems the outcome of this thread is that x264 should be able to produce a BD compliant stream at Level 4.0, just not at Level 4.1 yet.
Doesn't enabling p4x4, b-pyramid (increases ref sometimes) and other resolutions than 1920x1080 or 1280x720 still create compatibility-problem?!
EDIT: Although it's no point using b-pyramid now that mb-tree doesn't allow it, which is positive in that way BTW, I forgot to mention that maximum 3 bframes is allowed for Blu-ray.
EDIT2: Some more resolutions are allowed, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray...specifications
Thanks for answering DS, I didn't knew that b-pyramid created that problem (beside adding a ref sometimes).

Last edited by Forteen88; 13th August 2009 at 08:20.
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Old 12th August 2009, 21:56   #47  |  Link
Dark Shikari
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Doesn't enabling p4x4, b-pyramid (increases ref sometimes)
B-pyramid violates Blu-ray rules anyways because Blu-ray rules prohibit P-frames referencing B-frames. But it's not on by default.

p4x4 is fine, but not useful for Blu-ray resolutions anyways.
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and other resolutions than 1920x1080 or 1280x720 still create compatibility-problem?!
Well obviously, Blu-ray prohibits other resolutions.
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Old 12th August 2009, 21:57   #48  |  Link
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Doesn't enabling p4x4, b-pyramid (increases ref sometimes) and other resolutions than 1920x1080 or 1280x720 still create compatibility-problem?!
Then just don't turn on those functions and resize/crop the film properly.

Edit: Doh, beaten.
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Old 12th August 2009, 22:05   #49  |  Link
moviefan
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B-pyramid violates Blu-ray rules anyways because Blu-ray rules prohibit P-frames referencing B-frames. But it's not on by default.
Oh, b-pyramid is not Blu-ray compliant? In that case... damn, encode again .

Does this slicing patch add the needed slice-feature to be ultimately Blu-ray compliant or are there any problems with it?

http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermai...st/006106.html

How about a Blu-ray preset in x264 with max. settings being compliant to the specs? (except for AQ and psy-rd since it's personal taste and source dependent I guess)

Last edited by moviefan; 12th August 2009 at 22:08.
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Old 13th August 2009, 01:45   #50  |  Link
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Originally Posted by moviefan View Post
Please stop mentioning this patch, as:

1) I didn't write it and am getting a little tired of the PMs asking me questions about it, and:

2) This commit to x264 breaks the patch and I don't have the time to fix it (although it's probably just a one-line realloc() fix), and finally:

3) Even if the patch worked with the latest revision, I still don't see how it would help as it doesn't allow you to directly specify an arbitrary number of macroblocks, just a threshold. In other words, the patch is not ready for blu-ray prime time.

Last edited by cacepi; 13th August 2009 at 01:48. Reason: Typo.
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Old 13th August 2009, 03:23   #51  |  Link
benwaggoner
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Ok, i have several questions:

1. What is max allowed vbv-buffersize and vbv-maxrate for Level 4.0 from blu-ray specification (i.e for 4.1 are 30000/40000 buffer/maxrate), not H264.
Not sure beyond "25 Mbps max." I don't have the Blu-ray spec handy.

Quote:
2. So definitly L 4.0 dosen't require slices? can be then L 4.0 video primary video?
Yep. You could even use AVCHD spec for primary video.

Quote:
3. What is max allowed vbv-buffersize and vbv-maxrate for Level 3.2 from blu-ray specification for SD content, and what resoultion and fps allowed for SD, and is L 3.2 maximum for SD?
Sorry, no idea.

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4. Is there anything about BD5/9 and special restrictions such as VBV or other?
It's been recommended to use lower peaks for red-laser media for better accuracy. 3x has been bandied about (like the HD DVD "3x" mode), for which 25 Mbps video would be a fine constraint.

That said, BD-on-red-laser isn't something that a lot has been done with, and I expect we'll find significant theory/practice divergence, particularly on early hardware BD players.
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Old 13th August 2009, 03:26   #52  |  Link
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Chengbin: on past DVD projects, I've normally just filled the disc up - I just don't see any reason not to when you're guaranteed a certain amount of space. A little headroom is good since the sizes can be a little unpredictable, but re-encoding a bonus feature to be 3% smaller to get the whole thing to fit is really no big deal with the speed of today's SD MPEG-2 encoding.
That's find for replicated discs (well, I like to have a max 9.6 Mbps for a little headroom since very early DVD players sometimes didn't did the full 10 well).

But for DVD-R discs, early players can work better with a lower peak. So if I'm making DVD-R optimized for general consumers (so grandma with a 10 year old hand-me-down player) I'll use
  • Peak video + audio of 6.5 Mbps
  • Closed GOP

Won't matter for < 5 year old players or PC playback, of course, but raises compatibility for the old stuff.

6.5 Mbps peak isn't bad for 24p, but can be low for 30i. Carbon Mastering Mode FTW...
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Old 13th August 2009, 03:38   #53  |  Link
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LoRd_MuldeR, I see you didn't finish reading my post, I said "from a master".

Anyway, I'm very excited to see what Lyris can do with his project using x264. BTW, p_l_e_a_s_e use the full 50GB of the disk. I've seen so many Blu-rays with low 20mbps bitrate and the disk still has 10-15GB free. But then truthfully this 40mbps cap is kind of a bottleneck. If you use high average bitrates (like Jumper's 33mbps), if you use bitrate viewer on it, it will probably look like CBR.
Using up 50 GB for a movie is really specsmanship.

Having 40 Mbps peaks can make things a little easier on the compressionist, but they are NOT required for a high quality encode for VC-1 or H.264. I doubt those "low 20 Mbps" titles would have looked any better at 10 Mbps higher ABR. Bear in mind lots of BD encodes have in-loop deblocking off to avoid any potential detail loss, but I don't think that should be needed with a well-tuned adaptive quantization encoder.

It'd be interesting to mess around with BD-compliant streams to see how low CRF would have to go in order to generate ABR at 25+ Mbps.

x264's one weakness there would be Open GOP support, I suppose. However, with Level 4.0, you're allowed a 2 second GOP as opposed to the 1 second with 4.1, which can offer another efficiency boost. 25 Mbps Level 4.0 with 2 sec max GOP and single slice likely would outperform 26 Mbps Level 4.1 with a 1 sec max GOP and 4-way slicing.

Most HD film source really doesn't have THAT much detail. I did a 2.39:1 HD DVD spec 1080p MPEG-2 at 8.5 Mbps ABR disc about four years ago, and it looked really quite good most of the time. The only really bad shot was a bunch of soldiers running through a forest at dawn. Panning shots through moving foliage and lots of shadow detail was not pretty. But it was definitely HD quality for 98% of the content.
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Old 13th August 2009, 03:46   #54  |  Link
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He mans that if you were encoding from an original lossless source ("Master"), then you would need significant more bitrate to retain all detail, because there is so much detail/grain in that source.

However we usually don't have access to such sources. What we have are BluRay's, which have already been filtered and compressed in a lossy way. Many detail is already gone for good when we get the data!
Honestly, I've looked at plenty of real 10-bit 4:2:2 HD masters, and the kind of detail you're looking for is rarely there as well.

For CGI or VFX-heavy Digital Intermediates, sure, but I'd say the average recent BD disc is very close to what's in the master. In the cases where I've been able to compare a title someone had a complaint about with the source, most of the time the defect was present in the source (at least the 8-bit 4:2:0 compression source).

There's probably only a few dozen features that really have that intense HD "pop" that many seem to crave. But we're still mainly talking 35mm film with a 1/48th of a second shutter speed. There's a reason they have an on-set photographer instead of don't just blowing up frames for marketing materials .
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Old 13th August 2009, 08:38   #55  |  Link
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Concerning the Blu-ray compatibility discussion with Level 4.0, is the following list a summary of key options/limitations? (media I would like to use is DVD9)
  • VBV-maxrate: 25000 (with L4.1 I used 30000)
  • VBV-bufsize: VBV-maxrate - audio-bitrate - some headroom for subtitles (???)
  • no b-pyramid
  • no multiple slices required
  • ref: 4 (formula gives 4 for 1920x1080 for L4.1, how about L4.0)?
  • bframes: 3
  • min-keyint: 1 (or 2?)
  • keyint 48 (2x fps)
  • nal-hrd + aud option

Could someone please confirm that these settings are maxed out within the limits of the Blu-ray specs and (probably only concerns VBV) should not be less compliant for BD9s? As many others already said, I also hope to achieve max. BD compliance with x264 and L4.0 with BD restrictions seems to be covered entirely by x264 by now.

Last edited by moviefan; 13th August 2009 at 08:57.
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Old 13th August 2009, 10:27   #56  |  Link
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There's the possibility of both (or a combination). I'm a freelance author right now so there's nothing set in stone.

Regarding how a $3000 encoder is going to compare to x264: one of the most respected names in the video world said that none of the main studio's encoders matched the quality of x264. Certainly, on most BD titles, I can see small compression artefacts that I don't see on (quite grainy) test encodes I've done. I imagine this is the "speed over quality" argument again.

Oh, if anyone wants to buy me a copy of Cinema Craft HD, I will gladly try that out
Don't worry - it's not so so great. It's quite fast and has nice features, but quality with grainy sources is not perfect as you would expect.

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Old 13th August 2009, 10:31   #57  |  Link
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25 Mbps is really a very high bitrate for 1080p24 H.264! using single-slice x264 with good settings. I'd expect Level 4.0 x264 with 25 Mbps peaks to be transparent for almost all real-world film content. 1080i30 without MBAFF, could be an issue, but 24p should be just fine. HD DVD titles looked great with older encoders, shorter GOPs, and similar or even lower peaks (one highly rated title was VC-1 with 13 Mbps ABR and 19 Mbps PBR).

Remember Blu-ray's peak bitrate was defined for MPEG-2 applications. It's rather overkill for modern codecs.
Ben, have you seen this (check mouseover):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1169645


It's quite ineteresting how VC-1 puts relatively more bits into B frames than AVC encode (even if AVC encode has much highier average bitrate many B frames form VC-1 are bigger).


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Old 13th August 2009, 10:41   #58  |  Link
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Originally Posted by shon3i View Post
Ok, i have several questions:

1. What is max allowed vbv-buffersize and vbv-maxrate for Level 4.0 from blu-ray specification (i.e for 4.1 are 30000/40000 buffer/maxrate), not H264.
2. So definitly L 4.0 dosen't require slices? can be then L 4.0 video primary video?
3. What is max allowed vbv-buffersize and vbv-maxrate for Level 3.2 from blu-ray specification for SD content, and what resoultion and fps allowed for SD, and is L 3.2 maximum for SD?
4. Is there anything about BD5/9 and special restrictions such as VBV or other?


That is for now.

Thanks.

1. 30Mbit buffer and 24Mbit for maxrate.
2. Double yes.
3. 24Mbit buffer, 24Mbit maxrate, quite many resolutions, up to 60p, no- you can use level 4.1 if you need to.
4. There are special restricion in case of BD5/9. Disc read rate is limited to about 30Mbit, so there are bigger restrictions.


Andrew

Last edited by kolak; 13th August 2009 at 10:54.
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Old 13th August 2009, 10:45   #59  |  Link
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Sadly, if compliance isn't at least "likely", then I really doubt I'll use x264 (unless some sort of solution appears). Even if it involves going with a slightly less high quality but compliant encoder, the quality gains wouldn't be worth the amount of sleep I'd lose (or the consequences of putting a dodgy disc out there).

The best-looking disc in the world done with x264 would be pointless - not to mention a liability! - if it creates playback problems.

Chengbin: on past DVD projects, I've normally just filled the disc up - I just don't see any reason not to when you're guaranteed a certain amount of space. A little headroom is good since the sizes can be a little unpredictable, but re-encoding a bonus feature to be 3% smaller to get the whole thing to fit is really no big deal with the speed of today's SD MPEG-2 encoding.
I don't have problems to fill up BD50 up to 99%
Usually they're about 90-95% full. Hollywood studios seem to have problems with this, even if calculator is a part of Windows

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Old 13th August 2009, 10:47   #60  |  Link
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If compliance could be guaranteed and access to a stream verifier was possible, this is an option I would certainly consider running past the money people (assuming that the off-the-shelf encoders were producing visibly poorer results). Real-world issues could get in the way though.

I know there are a lot of people who would love to see a free, high quality BD compliant AVC encoder. And also people who would probably be quite disturbed by the appearance of one...
I think, it shouldn't be free. There should be some charge and part of it could go to charity


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