Why are h.264 files so big?

[Arimfe]

Wow, did you even read TheFluff's comment? Or any of the thread? You just earned an award for failure to read.

Let's leave him out of this. I was pointing at you and your misleading statements after all.

Originally Posted by bayoab

I can make an encode 100mb with 1 codec, or 500mb with another, and they will look THE SAME.

Are you really up for the challenge? I'll take you on it if you want.
I'll choose the raw(by this I also mean series), and the codecs.
You'll ouput the 100 MB. And I'll output the 500 MB, and we'll have someone judge whether it's the same...

Originally Posted by bayoab

I can likewise, with certain series and the same codec, make a 150mb encode and a 250 mb encode, and yet again, they will look the same.

Why "certain series"?
By your misleading general statement:

Originally Posted by bayoab

File size has nothing to do with quality

Any series should do, any raws should do.

Why don't you take on this challenge as well?

Originally Posted by bayoab

It completely depends on the series. With a dark series like Monster or Witch Hunter Robin, that 200mb encode probably looked no better.

Even dark series/dark scenes need their bitrate. Of course it's true that bigger filesize won't ALWAYS result higher quality, but then we were discussing why and when filesize CAN be compared here.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Arimfe

Are you really up for the challenge? I'll take you on it if you want.
I'll choose the raw(by this I also mean series), and the codecs.
You'll ouput the 100 MB. And I'll output the 500 MB, and we'll have someone judge whether it's the same...

Considering that it matters with that kind of size difference, you picking the codec would be unfair. The point of that statement was simply, every codec encodes differently. (Ex: RMVB-10 vs MPEG would produce exactly the results I said and the MPEG would only look slightly better.)

Why "certain series"?
By your misleading general statement:Any series should do, any raws should do.

Why don't you take on this challenge as well?

Because it depends on whether the series can be compressed at 150mb to begin with. Certain series (ex: some episodes of Gash Bell), don't start looking decent till 190mb in XviD. (This is why most of them were done at 233 XviD.)

With a series like Monster, one group would produce 140mb file and the other was producing 180mb files and they were basically identical. (The 180mb actually looked worse in places because it was noisy in the dark.)

According to the "bigger is better" theory, a 170mb looks worse than 180mb encode when they are practically uncomparable.

[Medalist]

Before posting in this thread I suggest: Ask yourself "Why not big filesized h.264 files?" and answer it. And once you have a knowledgeable, legit answer post here: that would drop the many posts there already are.

[RaistlinMajere]

Kinda off topic, but if you do dark shows in XviD, it is almost required that you use a MPEG-4 custom quant matrix (CQM). I recommend YACQM.

[Arimfe]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Because it depends on whether the series can be compressed at 150mb to begin with.

Really, there's nothing stopping you from compressing anything down to 150 MB. The result is another matter.

Originally Posted by bayoab

With a series like Monster, one group would produce 140mb file and the other was producing 180mb files and they were basically identical. (The 180mb actually looked worse in places because it was noisy in the dark.)

According to the "bigger is better" theory, a 170mb looks worse than 180mb encode when they are practically uncomparable.

1. Different codecs, different encoders/settings/filters, different raws etc. = Filesize comparison pointless.

2. Nobody spouted "bigger is better" as general statement (at least I didn't >_> )

You on the other hand are pouring out misleading statements like "File size has nothing to do with quality."

Anyway, all in all good job stating the obvious and proving your own misleading statement wrong on top of it.

[regged]

I love Xvid, and I am a big fan of it. But people are getting a bit carried away with file size, if you are going to use a better codec, then try to get better quality out of it, without using more data.

Anyway check this out: http://www.xile.net/xvid_vs_x264/

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Arimfe

1. Different codecs, different encoders/settings/filters, different raws etc. = Filesize comparison pointless.

See the OP on page 1... this thread is ABOUT EXACTLY THAT.

> Why are h.264 files so big?

Comparing 175mb xvid files and their h.264 counterparts. Read the thread next time.

2. Nobody spouted "bigger is better" as general statement (at least I didn't >_> )

Yet again... reading is a fundamental skill... here is the original one that started this. (And he wasn't the first, we already had this conversation back on page 3 or 4.)

Originally Posted by Maniac

smaller filesize = lower quality regardless of the codec.

larger filesize (up to the original raw size) = probably higher quality regardless of the codec.

You on the other hand are pouring out misleading statements like "File size has nothing to do with quality."

And you extrapolated it to mean something entirely different. I do not feel like repeating the same argument I made 2 pages back (in which the whole size=quality argument was debunked). Here is a summary: Beside, it is simple to make a larger file with worse quality (without special filtering). I have seen it done many times. If larger file sizes can look worse and a smaller file size can look just as good, the conclusion is: File size has nothing to do with quality.

You might want to take a look at the Death Note comparison to see how stupid and bizzare encoders can be. (Note the divx3 one and the 90mb xvid one there.) Hell look at the variation in all the 175mb ones. They are the same file size and they all clearly aren't the same!

Fansub encoders usually have a clue but it is not true in general that the size determines the quality. Fansubbers are not always the most competent around. Although, the new generation (xvid and later) of encoders seems to be even more visual whorish (read: hardcore) than the old one (divx3 prior) where settings mattered as much as filterset. Bloated files were very common back then.

Anyway, all in all good job stating the obvious and proving your own misleading statement wrong on top of it.

I didn't prove it wrong at all. I proved it absolutely correct in how I meant it. I proved how you were extrapolating it to mean something completely different was wrong.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by regged

I love Xvid, and I am a big fan of it. But people are getting a bit carried away with file size, if you are going to use a better codec, then try to get better quality out of it, without using more data.

Anyway check this out: http://www.xile.net/xvid_vs_x264/

Oh yeah, I remember that test... I think it was done quite a long time ago, almost a year ago or more, so x264 has improved quite a bit since it was done too (and xvid has, obviously, not).

[Shounen]

again if it's not Anime (excluding CG3,3d animation bla bla)
Anime needs a better codec than XviD or els it will look ugly.
Non-animation kan be keeped at XviD as long as you dont keep it at some "poor" bitrate, like for those funky people who make dvdrips for those who want svcd etc i.e 700mb or smaller.

edit:
for example, why make an video with: 320x240 with bitrate at 4000kb/s~ when you can make one with 640x480 with br at 2000kb/s~?
watching both in "fullscreen" will be easily noticed on which of them that looks like crap. That is speaking of if we play em on an screen with 1280x1024+ set to output say 22" screen

[ffdshow]

One evil way to cut down the filesize is... cut out the OP/ED/Preview!

Let's say that the original fansub is XviD - 207MB
cut out the OP/ED/Preview may make it to 135MB (it really depend on videos, mine cut that much. Others shouldn't)
use x264 instead - 105MB?
use softsub instead to reduce video complexity - <100MB?

It can do the job even without using any new codecs or softsubs. However, anyone want to try that on real releases?

[Shounen]

Originally Posted by ffdshow

One evil way to cut down the filesize is... cut out the OP/ED/Preview!

This was done in the past before the 2nd Internet War.
Ohh..I still remember those Love Hina episodes...

Again..the whole reason for this thread is actually: Why use XviD, when we have h.264?/XviD vs h.264, you name it.

But since the thread has gotten out of place...

edit:
70mb~ worth of OP/ED & prieview? full size of the file 207mb?
OP+ED+Add+priview is like 3-4min and the episode (that i assume you have) is around 24min. So cut 4min away from that and you get: 207-135=72mb? I wonder if you have vbr...

[checkers]

I'd be happy to do sub 100mb fansubs of any currently running series if someone is happy to give me direct dl access to some raws Would be interesting to see if it's possible with a random series.

[Ronbo]

Originally Posted by Shounen

Ok, since i really suck at finding free hosting sites...
http://www.filefactory.com/file/df1574/
h.264 and AVI, what did you know?
bitrate is at fairly 5000kb/s~....

Did it kill your Persacom, or did it just not play at all

Just wondering if anybody else downloaded and played this file what their PC spiked at? Mine spiked at 55% using VLC with an average playback of around 22%. TCMP kept dropping frames so I didn't even bother to check its PC usage. Oh, and I was running uTorrent in the background as well.

[checkers]

not direct download! :P I have enough on my torrenting plate - I would want to get raws from direct download. Secondly, a 480p xvid? Sounds like a re-encode from a jap raw :\

[Shounen]

Originally Posted by checkers

not direct download! :P I have enough on my torrenting plate - I would want to get raws from direct download. Secondly, a 480p xvid? Sounds like a re-encode from a jap raw :\

well do you want de-interlaced material or not? It'll spare ya some time

[Zero1]

I wouldn't care how big, or how much of an "inconvienience" interlaced material was; I'd absolutely love MPEG-2 streamdumps. Sure they would be huge and interlaced, but at least the encoding decisions are then yours, as opposed to some capper IVTCing and transcoding which some of the times can leave bad matches in if they don't do a good job of it.

[Eeknay]

Originally Posted by Zero1

I'd absolutely love MPEG-2 streamdumps.

Amen to that.

[Shounen]

If you want i could provide you with R1's of Rurouni Kenshin (traced back to 1997). But hey, are we walking about tv caps or dvd rips now?

Of course having a bad src from an tv cap, wouldent really help that much with the h.264 possibilities. But again, XviD would make it worse..mm...yes!

[Ronbo]

I always thought that all one could do was to approach the quality of the original and not surpass it! Yet if what I’m hearing here is in fact true then h.264 can indeed perform miracles!
If the source material is encoded in Divx or Xvid or some other format other than h.264 then how does h.264 improve on the original if not by reducing its bandwidth?
I thought that the whole point of using h.264 was to give broadcasters the ability to lower bandwidth requirements so that HD broadcasts would not exceed the bandwidth or packet size currently being used for SD broadcasts!
I’m so confused!

[Sylf]

I always thought that all one could do was to approach the quality of the original and not surpass it!

It's true, yet it's not. Like if you take a piece of mp3 file, and reencode it to higher bitrate mp3, you don't get anything better. You actually get a degraded product. But you can't compare that kind of processing with the video processing that we're doing. One important step: filtering.

The on-air video materials are actually quite crappy. We apply all sorts of filters to make it look better. Compared to this "original" capture, anything we see on public torrents are much better. It's not miracles. It's just as simple as that.

It actually is true for DVDs as well, sometimes. (or many times) For one thing, the video streams in DVD is interlaced. And it's compressed (mpeg2). So, even if the source maeterial comes from DVD, there are possibilities that we can make it look "better" with proper filtering etc.

It's not miracle.