The H.264/AVC/MPEG4 discussion thread

[SSS]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Anyway, I tested it out on all the h264 stuff I have, and it plays almost everything.

But, it crashes one One Piece 169 (but not 168 or less)... Anyone know if **** is using some different encoding settings for that episode?

You can check the video file with Virtualdub Hex editor, all the encoder settings are store inside the container:
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/4694/hex3yn.jpg

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by SSS

You can check the video file with Virtualdub Hex editor, all the encoder settings are store inside the container:
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/4694/hex3yn.jpg

Wow... the settings **** uses are so.... low quality...

Check it:
cabac =0, ref=1, deblock=1;1;1, analyze =0x3:0x113, me=hex, subme=5, brdo=0, etc etc...

to sum up, they seem to not be using CABAC, or more than 1 ref frame, no mixed refs or anything. they use 3 b-frames and b-pyramid though...
bitrate is set to 1270.

This is pretty shocking, really. Those are really low level, "let's encode as quick as you can" type settings. Sure, at that bitrate ANYTHING'll look good with h264, but you could do a lot better, I think.
Lythyka, what say you to this?

[pengvado]

Originally Posted by SSS

If you guys want more slower encoding, i suggest use these x264 nth-pass options
(not recommended unless you want your CPU explode):
-r 16 -f -6:-6 -A all -m 7 -w --chroma-qp-offset 2 -p 3 --progress --b-pyramid --me esa -8 --mixed-refs -t 2 --b-rdo --bime

What did I say about "slower is better"? --me esa isn't any better than --me umh, even if you ignore cpu-time entirely.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

This is pretty shocking, really. Those are really low level, "let's encode as quick as you can" type settings. Sure, at that bitrate ANYTHING'll look good with h264, but you could do a lot better, I think.

Except that once you turn off rdo, cavlc isn't any faster to encode than cabac is. So it's trading 10% bitrate for... a little decoding speed? (Which would be a valid reason if it were actually why that option was chosen, but I have to assume that it's not so.)

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by pengvado

What did I say about "slower is better"? --me esa isn't any better then --me umh, even if you ignore cpu-time entirely.

I know this, but a lot of people don't, it seems. I still don't know why people don't just stick with umh...

Except that once you turn off rdo, cavlc isn't any faster to encode than cabac is. So it's trading 10% bitrate for... a little decoding speed? (Which would be a valid reason if it were actually why that option was chosen, but I have to assume that it's not so.)

It just leaves the impression that the encoder doesn't really know what he's doing, which is really odd considering **** is all about quality in most other reguards.

[LytHka]

o_o What can I say to that? I'm not an encoder. ****'s encoder will do what he wants. Bug him (don't expect him to change his settings or anything even though he says those aren't his settings). But if the file can be played with libavcodec, I think there's something wrong with coreAVC. Like the man at Doom9 said, it still needs a lot of work. rofl, it's an alpha release and people are already expecting it to run as a RC. And yes, I think **** uses AAC audio now.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by LytHka

o_o What can I say to that? I'm not an encoder. K-F's encoder will do what he wants. Bug him (don't expect him to change his settings or anything even though he says those aren't his settings). But if the file can be played with libavcodec, I think there's something wrong with coreAVC. Like the man at Doom9 said, it still needs a lot of work. rofl, it's an alpha release and people are already expecting it to run as a RC. And yes, I think K-F uses AAC audio now.

Heh, well encoders can say all they want about the settings they use, but the hex editor doth not lie. x264 stores the exact settings it was called with in the file, so there's no getting around that unless you modify the source and compile it yourself.
Personally I think it's a great idea, makes it easier to debug problems from unknown files if you know what you are doing.

Oh, and I was addressing you since you were in OP in the channel, so I figured you at least knew something about it.

[LytHka]

I can only say that that doesn't look like an MP4 to me. >: o

EDIT: OK, now I see what you're talking about. Nope, can't comment on that. I'm not an encoder.

[Eeknay]

So the Dattebayo h264 release thing was just a troll.

[blizeH]

Originally Posted by Eeknay

So the Dattebayo h264 release thing was just a troll.

Yup, and it made me purchase an Xbox and a bloody 250GB hard drive!

/goes to find his axe

I was quite looking forward to that actually, mkv seemed like such a better option than DivX/XviD, the file size was only 75mb per episode, the subtitles being embedded was sheer genius (meant there was absolutely no loss on them at all) and, overall, it seemed like a good idea.

/hopes someone gets the idea now to do mkv releases

[subcool]

just tried CoreAVC's codec... it works on BSplayer, but VERY bad.. the image is shrunk and colours are messed up.
Then i tried it in WMP and it played fine o.O

I hope they'll improve compatibility with other players =)

[TheFluff]

Considering my experiences with BSPlayer, I would rather blame it than CoreAVC. Try switching to overlay mixer - the so-called "Overlay mode 1" in BSPlayer seems to be extremely buggy.

[Nicholi]

/me affirms BSPlayer to be the buggy one.

[Eeknay]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

...up to 1920x1080 H.264 HDTV encodes that requires a monster CPU to decode in realtime.

Quoting from the other thread. The HTPC I use in my living room has a Celeron 2.66Ghz CPU. Currently it can do 544p h264 before it can't keep up and starts to stutter (using latest CCCP). Downloaded CoreAVC, threw 720p at it, flawless playback. Created my own 1080p test encode using maximum quality settings during a high motion scene with Megui/x264... fell off my sofa when it played back flawlessly.

So I guess people really don't need a monster CPU anymore, thankfully I'm extremely pleased with the results since I was considering upgrading this CPU last week.

[Zero1]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

In memoriam: Zero1's Longposts. So much work lost... T_T It could however be argued that the world is a better place without all the old flames.

In any case, let's start anew! It was interesting last time, no reason for it not to be so again.

<Gundam_drama_scene>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!</Gundam_drama_scene>

I have to admit I was pretty pissed off and gutted to find that the original H.264 thread had been taken out, it was awesome. I also lost my account, rep points and PMs (as did many others) so I was quite dissapointed. Thank you for recreating the thread in good faith. You beat me to it Had it not been for the fact that I am internetless and am typing this whilst connected to my mobile phone, I would have gladly kicked off a new thread with a traditional longpost, because longpost is long!

So right now I've got 11 pages to read through and reply to. This will be fun in a warped way.

Originally Posted by Jekyll

While reconstructing the Rozen Maiden ~träumend~ thread, I stumbled over my archived copies of the "H.264 = what the hell" thread, so all is not lost (actually, it seems to be complete). I fixed the links and zipped the whole thing. It can be downloaded here.

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I am very greatful that the thread was saved as it were. It's a shame it's not merged with this current thread for historical purposes (lol), but it's infinately better than losing it for good. I was going to save the individual pages myself and merge them into one big page or something just for easy reference. Great job, I'm very greatful, and I'm sure others are too. I might host this on my server when I get my connection restored and see if I can make it easy to navigate. I speak with TheFluff occasionally, so maybe he could edit his first post when it's done to have a link to the original thread.

Originally Posted by DryFire

I believe the last post was TheFluff saying Anime Lit's Angel heart releases were upsized and then another of zero1's long posts.

Very nice find Jekyll.

Yes, this is the last I recall of that thread also. I was anticipating a response from LiT since I was curious about his sources.

Originally Posted by Sylf

The old version of this thread was about discussion (pro's, con's, etc) of h.264/AVC, not technical support surrounding the technology.

True, it wouldn't hurt to stray slightly off topic to encourage discussion in general, but as you say regarding transcoding of files is better discussed at Doom9 or the Tech Support of the Anime Suki Forums.

Come to think of it, the H.264 thread is pretty legendary already. Let's see, the old thread had 514 posts and a crazy amount of page views, was it 22,000? Add to that 212 posts currently in this thread and 9,000 page views... Crazy. I guess encoders and enthusiasts just love to talk about stuff that Joe Average wouldn't have a clue about.

Originally Posted by Eeknay

Ok, can't remember if this was done already in the old thread, but how far have you managed to push the capabilities of h264 before it becomes fugly?

One episode of Pretty Cure I tested on I got down to 100MB (including audio, so about 80MB video) and it was only slightly worse than the 233MB xvid. Even then I wasn't using teh uber l33t settings (can't remember what I used exactly... something like 8 mixed refs, 2 b-frames, rdo1, blocking 1,1). I'll probably do another one once I get back to my decent computer and test some more.

During my offline time, I was unable to complete my x264 guide because I needed to be online to clarify a few things, I decided to carry on with an old Komugi vector (I must finish these projects before starting new ones, it's killing me :|) and do some encoding.

I decided to try every trick in the book, or at least the tricks I know about. I encoded an episode of Kamichu using Variable Frame Rate, Anamorphic Resizing, a Custom Quantisation Matrix, and audio side I simply used HE-AAC v2 with Parametric Stereo (Oh noes!) I don't remember my exact encoding settings, but the first file I used --crf 24, and when muxed with audio it came out at 22MB for 27 minutes. Needless to say, H.264 and AAC are good, but they aren't magic. It looked a bit shitty and the sound wasn't up to much, but given the filesize it was pretty remarkable.

My aim was to hit 30MB again and get as high quality as I could. Using --crf 24 was partially me wanting to see how CRF works and shooting in the dark (yes, I do know how to calculate bitrates , hell Zarxrax and I even made a calculator together (since my original calculator was a speadsheet and I can't program)).

After the initial shock of the CRF 24 encode being so small (I was expecting ~35MB) I calculated a bitrate and produced what would be equivalent to 30MB/24mins. It still has a way to go before being regarded as releasable, perhaps it would work for dial up people, who knows, but it's pretty damn good for the filesize. Since I am unable to upload images or screens right now (my mobile phone's GPRS connection is about 33.6Kbps or less, and I get booted every few minutes), just take my word for it that it probably looks as good as a 114MB XviD (possibly higher or lower, but there are many factors involved). I have seen just as good, if not worse encodes at 175MB in XviD. Probably just a suckass source though, although I wouldn't rule out bad filtering choices, people who are beginning to learn encoding or awful speedsubbers.

I would also like to build a new system soon, I have 4x250GB WD RAID Editon Caviars screaming to be hooked up to this Escalade 9500. I want to go dual Opteron, but it's very expensive and a lot of research will be involved. I welcome suggestions, and any benchmarks if you know of any or have some handy. I'd like to know how I can expect a dual Opteron 250 to perform against a Socket 754 Athlon64 2.2GHz (3400+) with 1MB Cache (it's the model referred to as Clawhammer).

Originally Posted by Ulayo

What could ever be wrong with H.264? It has superior quality over the previous mpeg4 based incarnations (xvid & divx). Plus it isn't really anymore difficult to get it to play at your computer than any other codec.

Right now my only concern would be CPU usage, everything else is trivial since we have FFDShow and Haali's splitter (not forgetting CCCP for those who would rather not mess around maintaining stuff and configuring). On VGA encodes, I think that the extra CPU usage required isn't extortionate, but when you get into the HDTV resolutions it becomes a concern. Thankfully the way things are going is dual CPU/dual core and hardware accelerated decoding via graphics card. The thing I would like most now, is for FFDShow to somehow make use of the GPU decoding, that would be awesome, assuming the GPU decoding isn't buggy and hyped like WMV was. Lets face it, H.264 is huge already, and will become more widespread. ATI and nVidia need to get it right, it will be a good point of sales for those that do not have the raw CPU power to play HD-DVD or whatever when they hit. H.264 not being closed and anal like WMV (for lack of a better word) means that they can get hold of some official spec and do the job right (assuming that WMV acceleration is homebrewed without the help of MS? I guess that would explain why it would be buggy.)

Originally Posted by Eeknay

Mostly it boils down to

"Grrr I can't get it work on my 386 with 2MB of RAM"
"Grrr it won't work on my standalone"
"Grrr I don't know how to install codecs"

Quite right. The installation of codecs is the failing point for most "newbies" Wow, installing one ACM codec like XviD is hard work enough (or was until the general public realised that it's do or die and wised up), but getting them to install a Video decoder, Audio decoder and file parser is like hell. Especially when they don't like that you can't double click the file to play (when the extension is not associated with anything). You also get the FFDshow hate, "OMG I have 50 icons in my system tray, just play the files and go away" or you get a crash in libavcodec or something, and they do not want to accept that open source is not 100% perfect 100% of the time. More often than not it's their own fault from having codec packs or selecting every format for FFDShow to decode. The trick is to only select the stuff you need.

Of course for you and I, this is a non issue, I quite like messing with the OSD and other stuff, but I have found that most people want transparent playback, as if it was already integrated into Windows. They don't want to see systray icons or have a lot of (confusing to them) things to set up. Fortunately the CCCP is about the best no hassle way for newbies, since it's basically a pre-configured FFDShow with Haali's splitter and vsfilter. The important things like anamorphic support (via using overlay mode) is enabled by default.

As for standalones, this remains to be seen. There is a good chance that the Nero/KiSS player will play MP4 files containing AAC since it will be beneficial to sales of the player and Nero's Recode software.

To all those people on antique machines, Microsoft only supports their operating systems for a number of years, is it 4-6?. As we discussed in the old thread, it's cheap enough to build or buy a H.264 capable PC, or even simply upgrade. Those of you from the VCR fansub days will know that you had to buy a VCR to play back these fansubs, well owning a recent PC is part and parcel of digisubs in my opinion. We don't want to isolate people but times change and things need to move on. I mean there are always anamolies, I bet there are still a legion of Win95 users out there. We can't cater for everyone, someone has to suffer somewhere along the line (unless they choose to go with the flow, in which case suffering is not necessary). If we put out encodes playable on a Pentium Pro 100MHz, you can bet your bottom dollar that you would get eye cancer watching it.

Originally Posted by Jekyll

Also, once in a while there are people that are afraid of change, just because it's different from the olden ways.

Indeed, You might say I'm pedantic, or simply a perfectionist. I love order and consistancy, and often my encodes are never good enough for me. I'm very undecisive, and I think this is my problem. Funny thing is that anyone working with video will know that nothing is perfect, so I'm fighting a losing battle :| but when I checked into x264 and saw the efficiency over XviD, I realised that this will ultimately give me higher quality at the same filesize which means I can lower the filesize and maintain a comparable quality. I'm a stick in the mud, but H.264 is too good to be stubborn about.

Originally Posted by hikaru2895

I can't play it on my Athon 600 w/ 128MB Ram and 32MB Geforce 256...

They made an Athlon 600? I thought Athlon came in around 800-1000MHz (assuming here since I have a Duron 750 also). But yes, if that's right, it's time to do something about it unfortunately.

Originally Posted by PastPrime

I had my first problems the first time I tried to play an H264 encoded file and, while I was able to get it to work, it wasn't right. And for a number of months I only noticed problems, slowly getting worse, when I tried to play H264 encoded files. Guess what I blamed. It was when I started having problems with all my video files that I realized it might be the video card.

Yes, I have a Matrox Parhelia and I get a strange flickering white line in the top left hand corner of my screen when playing full screen video. I know it's a driver issue for a fact, and I can't be bothered to search through and trial and error all the drivers, but it would be easy for me to have blamed H.264 had I been a newbie or not known any better.

Originally Posted by Sylf

That's not true. AonE&Live-eviL&Froth-Bite's Maetel releaes in mp4/h.264 has mp3 audio. MP4AAC is just the recommended audio format for mp4 video.

I was quite surprised to find this a while ago, I guess I am of the assumption that most people will be storing H.264 and AAC in MP4. Depends on the encoder, but IMO FAAC is only marginally better than LAME. Other AAC encoders should be fairly better. I really wish more people would get involved with the FAAC project, it would be the perfect thing to go with x264 and MP4box. Maybe we should hunt down that Japanese guy that tuned the AoTuV Vorbis

Originally Posted by Sylf

Yes, both makes sense.
Unfortunately, the encoder's choice of mp3 wasn't that sophisticated. That Maetel team actually bought the DVD. The audio track was linear PCM. So there's no such thing as keeping the original mp3 from the raw - we could've encoded however we wanted.
It's just that the encoder didn't want to hear the viewers whine about audio codec problem.


Personally, I use AAC over mp3

Hmm, that's a gamble I'd have willingly taken, I assume that FFDShow was the recommended method of playback for Maetel, in which case AAC decoding already exists. Considering how well the encode turned out, it's barely a loss, just maybe would have benefitted from slightly better quality audio (not that I'm saying it wasn't good, just there is potential for it to be better through the effeciency of AAC).

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Which, of course, still reduces the quality. I have a 256kps CBR mp3 stream in a raw I'm using now. Wonder if I should re-encode to Vorbis or not... ^^;;

I'm no audiophile but HE-AAC sucks to my ears.

Originally Posted by subcool

wow, MP4 with MP3 audio... talk about raping a container

It's quite ok, and supposedly spec compliant (though I don't have anything to hand to back this up). I get the impression that as well as H.264 and AAC, that MP4 will be able to contain all past MPEG versions too. I'd be interested to see some specs though, I might have to go hunting when I get my connection back. It's also fine to store XviD encodes with MP3 or AAC in MP4 too. I tried it with MPEG2 myself and it's fine, MPEG1 is hit and miss, but that might be due to the Nero decoder, need to nuke that later on.

Originally Posted by nwa

I'd say Sharktooth's x264 builds are better, but that's just my opinion, you could also 'buy' Nero Recode to encode h264, it's even easier to set up, although there are some differences between the 2 encoders.

Sharktooth's builds usually have uncommitted patches and is more likely to be unstable, they are supposed to be a bit faster too. The only hint of instability I came across was a very strange subme 7 problem a while ago. If anyone ever runs into a problem, make a note of how to recreate it and see if the problem goes away if you use subme 6.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

On topic: Apparently XviD AVC started off as a decoder. If it's good, it might finally kill the "ZOMG I HATE FFDSHOW SO LET'S NOT USE H.264 KTHX" argument... The encoder doesn't seem as good as x264 (yet?), however.

The link wouldn't load for me (maybe my mobile phone is acting up), but in my opion it would be more productive for the XviD AVC devs to commit something useful to x264 rather than starting a new project x264 already has it's "friendly" competition and I think that good things could come from the guys working together. Is syskin working on XviD AVC, x264, or both? Or does he just idle these days and do something occasional for XviD. I remember at one time that syskin was developing for x264 if I remember rightly and the situation may have changed what with his new job and generally being busy. Hmm, that's something to ponder.

Originally Posted by Linkthe1st

---h.264---
Seriously I don't mind this codec since I have a good PC and it gives me no problems. However looking at it from a distribution perspective it's not a good choice after all not everyone who watches anime has a fast PC that can run the CPU intensive coding it uses. My personal complaint is that I can't use the DivX player to watch files using this codec since FFD show doesn't work with it. Don't get me wrong using the windows media player 2 (version 6.4) isn't bad (I used to use it only) it's quick to respond simple and effective but it doesn't have any controls you can use while in full screen mode. I would personally stay away from this codec for personal reason and distribution reasons.

You're mistaken. With the increased efficiency of H.264 over other codecs, it allows you to lower the filesize and keep equivalent or better quality. When you are talking in terms of raw distro, it's an excellent choice. Let me quote from the legendary thread.

Originally Posted by Zero1 @ H.264 What the Hell? - 09/12/2005

Now I was just checking our tracker page to see the typical number of downloads for Shugogetten. It seems to average ~6,100 (yes, I did calculate that -_-. It was really hard to judge otherwise). Shugogetten is a 22 episode TV series. If I were to encode this project now I would use 114MB H.264 as opposed to the 175MB XviD we did back then. Let's see what I would have saved. Note that the last episode was 2x the size of the regular episodes due to Perdita doing a rather nice finale, so it's effectively 23 episodes.
175MB * 23eps * 6100 Downloads = 24,552,500MB (~24.5TB)
114MB * 23eps * 6100 Downloads = 15,994,200MB (~16.0TB)

That's an 8TB saving. That's just insane for a small group subbing a little known series. Imagine the savings for a large group.

The other thing is storage media. DVDs have been a Godsend until now and CDs would have been a real nightmare to store in my cramped room. There is also the convienience factor. Not burning disc upon disc, I don't have time to be burning CDs all night after I've been at work all day, similarly for searching for stuff, less discs = less searching

The figures speak for themselves, I need not comment on this any further.

Originally Posted by Linkthe1st

not to mention those annoying top and bottom borders that take oh so long to disappear and cover subs in the process of being sluggish.

I have a tool somewhere that allows you to change the duration, fade type, and some other stuff. I might see if I can dig it out some time.

Originally Posted by Linkthe1st

I have Comic Party Revolution (5-13) on my HDD and its sucking up 2.28g because of the extreme file size the MKVs generate (I’m waiting for someone to release AVI copies of the episodes). I find MKV to be the least desirable form of encoding for any video file.

It's not the fact that it's large because it's MKV, I've encoded a test file recently that was 22MB for an episode, it's down to the encoder and what bitrate or quality setting they decide to use.

Originally Posted by Linkthe1st

ok so i said some things that are wrong MKV is not a codec it is a container but the MKV file size is still larger than a typical AVI i find. Aside from that i stand by the fact that ffdshow refuses to work with many video players and usually activates when using MKVs.

MKV has a lower file overhead. What does this mean? Well all things being equal, the exact same video and audio when put in MKV will be slightly smaller in file size than the AVI, MP4 would be even smaller still. DVD rippers tend to use MKV, and DVD rippers encode for quality rather than filesizes, this is why MKV's you find are likely to be large.

Originally Posted by Linkthe1st

Also maybe i'm thinking to main stream for my own good but i understand and follow the general rule that the easier something is to use the more appealing it is to use and return to. So if you have to do something special for your PC to get it to run a file properly, some people will rather just look for another simpler file format. Staying with the easy to use idea, DLing another player is a little coumbersome and the classic WMP (i meant WMP2 vesion 6.4 my mistake i fixed it now) like i said has no on screen controls in full screen.

I understand and see where you are coming from, but once the decoder or player is installed, that's it. You would only need to upgrade it if there was a new feature being used in the video that your version of the decoder doesn't deal with, other than that it's relatively hassle free once you get over the initial installation. You might have been what we call "wrong" on a few things, but you raised a good point here, and to some extent you do see this happening. Instead of people downloading the H.264/MP4 or MKV versions, they will find another group that offers ASP/AVI. I don't really want to dual release because I can see people being lazy and just going for the AVI versions and slowing the transition but it's a tough decision to make because you potentially isolate quite a number of people at this moment in time. Also, if you are releasing two versions you are creating more distro than saving by making the change to H.264.

Originally Posted by Linkthe1st

heck i don't care if you think i'm wrong i don't care if you like MKV or h.264 better i'm just saying that XviD is the easiest thing to use with the smallest work for everyone if you wnat to hunt for codecs or what you think are better options go on i do that myself. However like i said easy and simple for all is usually the bet way to go. but like i said before myabe i'm thinking to mainstream for my own good since this is not mainstream.

Pardon me for saying so, but this sounds like plain idleness rather than any real problem. You visit www.x264.nl, it has links for Haali's splitter and FFDShow. You visit my group's site, it has a bit of an FAQ that tries to cater for both experienced and unexperienced users, and yes it has links to FFDShow, Haali's splitter and a little registry entry I created. In fact I bet 99% of groups using MKV or MP4, be it H.264 or whatever will have some sort of guide or links to whatever is required for playback. It's a bit of a distant memory for me now, but a few years ago XviD was in the same position, only it was worse because it was contained in AVI. People were used to playing AVI's no hassle, then you get a magical XviD encoded AVI and it doesn't play for them off the bat. "What's wrong? AVI files have always played for me, this must be corrupt?" No, they simply don't have the correct, or capable decoder. For people that can't play MP4 files, this is a little easier since you will usually find that they use H.264 or ASP (XviD is an ASP codec) and AAC or MP3.

Originally Posted by LytHka

Also, if you use VLC you can get that CPU usage to almost a minimum. I was checking Froth-Bite's Itsudatte My Santa MP4, encoded with x264 and AAC audio, CPU usage on different players and my poor 2500 AMD Barton, 256 RAM, slow HDD was running VLC (0.8.2 build) playing it with 5% to 26% of CPU power while Winamp was using a bit more (25-40%), MPC even higher (30-60%) and MPC is one of the fastest players out there.
What I'm saying is that there are ways for slower PCs to play these files without much problems, like turning off as many programs running in the background as possible (yes, even your firewall, antivirus software). Perhaps a disconnect from the internet will do the trick too for the time you'll spend watching your anime. Of course, using a fast player is the key here.

Well, to put it bluntly I would like to say that your claim of CPU usage for VLC on your particular CPU is implausible, but I can't since there are too many factors to consider, first off you have the software, and then the actual file and settings used in encoding. Playing back an encode I did of Gundam X back in June 2005 or so I get 16-30% usage on an Athlon64 3400+ 1MB cache, and disk wise I currently have 2x120GB on a hardware RAID card and 1GB RAM.

MPC gives me 16-26% peaking at around 30%, and WMP is up there in the 25-35% but is more consistant in it's CPU usage rather than fluctuating a lot and peaking, at least what I found but note this is no scientific test, just a quick look at task manager while the file was playing.

When I get my internet back, I want to check this file out for myself. It could be quite correct and that I'm just pointing the finger, but we will see.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

The file size and the codec is up to the encoder. Generally, people who puts their stuff in MKV are fond of quality and lots of extras, hence the filesize gets bigger.

Well holy shit, I said pretty much the exact same thing a long way back in this post and I haven't even read this far yet (just replying and reading sequentially). Great minds think alike.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

Note: This test is in NO WAY scientific. I've just taken screenshots of the task manager while playing the stuff. The "CPU usage" things are kind of "average" values - I've tried to choose a value that is some kind of median. My impression by looking at the graphs and the CPU usage meter is that VLC jumps around more. The spikes are higher than Zoom's or MPC's, but on the other hand the valleys are deeper, too. The average usage seems about the same for all the players. I see NO evidence whatsoever for VLC nor any other player being faster. However, for some weird reason ZP seems more heavily single-threaded. I have no idea why, so I'm writing it off as randomness for now.

Lol, snap again, oh and gimme that dual core ya bastid

Originally Posted by Sylf

Otherwise, windows actually lacks AVI splitter by default. We've seen such case before - it happened within a past year, which the thread was lost, but we've seen it. In such case, solving the problem is absolutely no different than supporting people to enable MKV playback.

Really? I'd dispute that owing to me being able to play AVI files on a fresh install of WinME and XP Home/Professional. AVI is legacy stuff, and it should be included in every Windows version since 3.1 by default.
I would have thought that this particular case would have been end user stupidity (maybe that's a bit harsh, but I can't think of a better word now) or some codec pack that installs everything going (ACE or Nimo anyone?) and uninstallation has caused it to take the AVI splitter with it.

Originally Posted by Sylf

Before this thread was destroyed once, a few people reminded us of those chaos days when the fansub groups started switching from DivX3 to XviD. Some people cried against XviD back then, complaining that the technology was too young. That cry didn't last too long - before too long, we couldn't find a group that still used the old technology. Now is the time for XviD to be left behind as old technology and the community seeks out the new technologies.

I'll be sad to see XviD go, well it doesn't have to or need to go. Just that files encoded for distro will tend to move to H.264. XviD will always have a place as a high quality, fast alternative to H.264. The fact that it's VFW is kind of convienient too, just run virtualdub for quick and dirty encodes, ie testing karaoke or whatever. Yes, what you say is completely correct. It's just the same as the transition from SP to ASP (ie DivX 3.11 to XviD), except now we have different audio compression too. It's not hard to install FFDShow and Haali's splitter, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Originally Posted by LytHka

Talking in my sleep, eh? Well, you forced me to repeat this test, using task manager, on MPC, Winamp and VLC. The MPC vs. Winamp difference is minimal (while I switched the skin in Winamp a few times to see if the modern ones contribute to higher CPU usage ), possibly in favor of MPC, while the difference in MPC, Winamp vs. VLC is quite apparent.

SHOPPED!
Well, use 8bit PNG next time please, this LQ JPG gives me eye cancer [Edit: WTF? All the images I view are being recompressed to uber low quality jpg and firefox is telling me to hit shift + R to view full quality. Must be this stupid ISP or my phone] (it should be smaller in filesize too maybe). If you are wanting to prove people wrong, you need to be a bit more rigourous in your tests, for instance we don't know how many or what background tasks are affecting your CPU usage, since the graph takes all things into consideration. I usually hit the processes tab and watch the process and the CPU usage there.

It looks like it averages at around 10%, and dipping at 4% is preposterous for H.264 at any decent resolution. I bet even MPEG-2 uses more CPU power than that.

Originally Posted by LytHka

I just had to check that Mahoraba episode 12 OP and found out similar results to mine. Note that the Froth-Bite encoder tested this as well, on a much better PC and got similar CPU usage differences appropriate for his machine. These are mine screens. He'll post if he wants to.

The second screenshot... That has got to be bull, can we get any of the VLC devs to confirm this? I am quite open to accepting that VLC might be faster than other methods, maybe even tons faster, but hovering around 5% is beyond belief. CABAC alone would probably chew more CPU than that.

Originally Posted by LytHka

You get the idea? Turning it off for encodes where the encoder turned off the deblocking filter is more or less safe, but those are kind of rare. Both x264 and Nero has it on by default, and the lower the bitrate, the more it gets used. But even for high-bitrate encodes, it's frequently used anyway (x264 automatically disables it for frames with QP > 18, IIRC, and that's quite high - getting a QP higher than 18 on all frames means a RIDICOLOUS bitrate). If you want to I can quote pengvado on this. It's an integral part of the codec, that gets taken into account when encoding, and if you turn it off while decoding, you're basically breaking the codec.

Yep, and it's unlikely that you will want to use > qp 18 since it's roughly equivalent to QP 2 in ASP, and virtually anyone who knows what they are doing always caps at QP 2 when encoding for distro, so as not to waste bits on something that will not be a great deal noticable. Diminishing returns you see.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Not to mention, the h.264 in loop deblocking filter is NOT advjustable at decode time. You set the strength for encode, and that's fixed. It's possible to skip the filter entirely, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible to modify the strength of the fly. Furthermore the ranges don't add up. h.264 deblocking has 2 paramters that can both range from -6 to 6. VLC has one parameter that ranges from 0 to 6... it just doesn't make sense to say they're connected in any way.

Excellent observations. I couldn't be bothered to check it out myself, but I was doubtful that VLC's postprocessing was related to H.264's inloop deblocking.

Originally Posted by LytHka

I have no reason to start a discussion about VLC with made-up data. This "data" (as we can call it now) about VLC being able to play fast came to me two days or so ago and I used it now because you blatantly spit over such a great player as it is. It's GREAT for hardcoded fansubs. Hardcoded subtitles are 99% of the time the focus of this community, not softsubs. I don't want to start a discussion about that again, but for now I can say that VLC is the easiest/fastest solution for hardsubs. But I will agree with iluid here; there probably is more to it than just the CPU data readings.

This is the thing. Most people don't use a computer solely for watching fansubs. They use it for multimedia, meaning they listen to MP3's, maybe Vorbis and AAC. They might also watch official trailers which tend to be WMV. You argue about softsubs, they aren't always evil. I softsubbed an AMV of mine with the lyrics, so it is the users choice if they want to enable them and sing along, or just enjoy the video. Similarly I like to encode textless ops. I could softsub the lyrics if I had the time and could be bothered. Your view of digital video seems rather one sided, like it revolves around hardsubbed fansubs, and hardsubbed fansubs only. A player that is only good for playing XviD+MP3 AVI hardsubs is no better than the DivX player. I'm not going to limit what I watch based on the capabilities of one media player, a media player should (within reason) play what I want to watch. For now I'm content, I have real alternative, quicktime alternative, FFDShow and Haali's splitter. I can play pretty much any type of file you throw at me and just use a single player, even something that is considered lame like Windows Media Player 10 can deal with this (directshow love). Please look at the big picture before rubbishing such features.

Originally Posted by wingdarkness

I truley don't understand the whole H.264 craze that's going on right now...Perhaps it makes encoder's jobs easier, but as a veiwer I much rather xvid/divx decodable projects...Let me be the one to choose if I want to use ffdshow all the time(which I don't hate, but I'm not a huge fan of ffdshow)...Higher quality 230+mbs DVD rips look pretty good with it, but 200 and under fansubs look superior in divx format IMO...I just don't see the HUGE advantage...Lower sized fansubs should stick with divx I think...and don't get me started on CCCP that would be kissing ffdshow's ring if it was the "God-father"...

Huh? I'm sure almost the exact same thing was posted in the old thread. Anyway, encoding H.264 requires more effort and encoding time than XviD and DivX (combined in some instances). And as said before, encoders are usually a bit techy, and like to move with the times and see progress. As well as bringing lower filesizes, reduced distribution costs etc, we could also keep the same size files and benefit from higher quality. Benefit from higher quality... To the average user however, the quality increase is negligable, that is they are content with the current quality, so the other way left to utilise this effeciency is to lower the filesize for the same or similar quality.

Originally Posted by wingdarkness

Well NSW I have watched the new Bleach fansubs in h.264 and I perfer my Divx decodable versions...I watched FMP Fumofuu in h.264 and couldn't bare it until I found some divx decodable ones, but these weren't rips and the divx ones were...Now DVD rips like Overman King Gainer look great in h.264 (I admit only zoom player makes alot of my h.264 rips run with out a hitch), even the new One Piece eps I've seen in h.264 impressed me....But lower sized fansubs under 200 look bad without divx to me, i'm sorry and i watch all the popular titles like Bleach, naruto, One piece, Gundam, etc, etc...Right now i'm watching Magical shopping Abenboshi and there are eps that are 120mbs and they still look great and are divx decodable...So maybe some encoders are just better than others, i don't know...But I do know that when I have a choice I always pick the non h.264 version...Maybe i'm living in bizzarro-world, but i cannot stress enuff how bad some fansubs look without the use of divx filters, namely FILM EFFECT...I mean unwatchable and i'm talking Bleach, naruto, etc, etc... I do admit though High-quality 230+DVD rips look great with h.264 and especially divx to me...

So your beef with H.264 is that you can't use the DivX film effect. Too bad. I suggest that if you love film effect so much they you try and recreate it in FFDShow, because soon enough DivX will become extinct and everyone will be using H.264. One man can't stand against a revolution. I'm sorry. I don't understand what's so great about film effect. Genuine film grain is shocking and nasty to look at in my opinion. Artificial grain is worse. You want grain? Check out the Zeta Gundam movie, god damn. I'd love to post some samples and screens now, but my internet is damn slow. Oh well. [Edit: Check further down the post, I posted them in the end]

Originally Posted by Eeknay

EDIT: Ok I read closer, and you're applying divx filters to anime which you've downloaded, which isn't a fair test at all. Also, of course fansubs look bad. They're re-compressed files of already lossy raws. It's only within the past six to eight months that some fairly nice looking fansubs have been able to happen due to very good raws (or maybe that's just me picking up on it. I haven't exactly worked with a lot of tv raws, so other encoders feel free to pwn me)..

I don't encode much, but the shows I have checked out I wasn't completely happy with the raws. I'll be satisfied when I can get MPEG-2 dumps direct from DVB. But I guess the raw quality is improving a little, but there are still fundamental mistakes like upsizing, using non mod 16 resolutions. Hey that reminds me. I found a 1440x808 raw of To Heart 2 around 500MB, and it was uncompressed PCM audio >.<. So straight away, perhaps 240MB is wasted on audio when if it was a DVB dump that was resized, they could have just demuxed the MP2 audio and muxed it into the AVI.

Originally Posted by ArchMageZeratuL

While I respect your preference, and can even understand you liking film effect, I must complain about something: it doesn't matter how better it looks to you, that DOES NOT look any "digital" at all. Digital sources are clear, with no noise or grain at all. Those are all analogue artifacts.

Truth, I guess a better description than "digital" grain would be artificial grain. Either way it still looks fugly, and doesn't compare with the real thing.

Originally Posted by wingdarkness

Have you ever watched like a basketball game...or perhaps have you ever watched cable television thru a video-card on a flat-screen monitor? The picture has what seems to be a haze or pixeled-coat that you don't see when watching it on regular TV... By "digital" i mean it puts a pixelated-like effect that makes all the textures discearnable...pixel effects in this case seem to be digital hence a "coat of digital"...It almost looks like liqued sometimes...The picture of Mugen you just showed me just looks crisp and clean...I think me saying it adds a "coat of digital" to most lower-sized fansubs is accurate...But I do hear where your coming from...Of the many times I've had this debate, including with The Fluff and others not once has someone told me not to say that or disagreed with that assessment..

I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring what you are getting at, but that's ok, I know how it is trying to explain something when you just can't find the right words. Flatscreen LCD isn't the best type of monitor if you want quality output since they lack colour depth, and a few other character flaws (that are at least enough to keep me as a huge (huge as in 21" ) CRT fanboy). Haze eh? Well if you mean a sort of dull cast, that will be owing to NTSC having a luma range of 16 - 235, computer RGB has a range of 0 - 255, meaning that a transmitted TV image will have black that looks a bit grey, and white that looks dull.



If you mean the image appears more noisy on the PC, this is because PC monitors are a lot more detailed and are capable of higher resolutions. The connections and cables are often higher quality also.

Originally Posted by wingdarkness

Lol...I'm telling you watching the fansub without it is what seems analog ...But it appears by pure definition you have gotten me...So I guess by saying pixelated effect I'm wrong too, yet that's what it does...And I'll be damned if it doesn't seem to be digital...But you win this point apparently...

I fail to understand. Most new anime are produced digitally, broadcasted digitally. If you have an LCD, it is my understanding that these are also digital (or can be). Analog (as far as I know, who knows what the masters are stored on?) doesn't even enter the equation.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

That's the DivX film grain effect at highest strength. Calling it "film effect" is inappropriate, really, since all it does is add noise (and lots of it at high strengths). Normally, most encoders hate noise more than they hate raw cappers who doesn't know one end of a MPEG decoder from the other, so this obsession with noise is a good way to make them either very annoyed or very amused. However, wingdarkness is the ONLY person I've ever met on the intarwebs that actually LIKES this noise effect... everyone else seems to think it's something that should be killed with fire. I thought that teaching him to use ffdshow's noise filter would make him go away, but nooo, he want's DivX's film grain and nothing else, without it he can't watch anime.

BTW, the reason it seems "digital" is because the NOISE is digital. Go figure.

Save me some of that crisp digital quality! Oh wait, I have some already... Let's dig around.

This is a screen cap of a shitty section in the Tenchi Muyo Ultimate Edition boxset. I was pissed off to say the least. It looks like some low quality Quicktime file or something.




Oh wait, here's some Zeta Gundam Movie DVD released in 2005.



Yes, that's hardcoded, artificial grain on lovely CG, DVD source. Sunrise fails.

You also have the sections of the original Zeta Gundam, it looks like they forgot to turn off the grain filter and the original source become uber grainy.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

So perhaps it's because his processor is using hyperthreading? And VLC takes advantage of this/hacks this? very interesting. In any case, it would explain the differences between the results without resorting to calling someone a lier.

Hmm, I think I remember him saying it was an 2200 XP or something like that, so no HT. No SSE2 either if I remember rightly.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

Well, I don't seriously think LytHka would outright lie, especially not as stupid as that. Something IS weird. What exactly is under investigation...

Maybe not lie, but make things up for his amusement to see us all bewildered? I'm not sure. I don't really like calling people liars either, it's not like I have problems with anyone here, it's just a forum after all.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Though I do agree about the 64 Kbp/s audio.... I really start getting annoyed at anything less than 96 Kb/s he-AAC (and I prefer 112 or above). But at that filesize, it's appropriate.

The situation may have changed, but HE-AAC is usually useless above 64/80kbps (depending on who writes the encoder) due to them not having psymodels (not sure if that's the right name) for those higher bitrates. 80kbps is a grey area for me, would I use HE or LC? HE might be of no use, and LC might just not cut it. I guess the only way to know would be to test it, but my ears aren't as good as they need to be. I'd rather trust your decision as far as audio is concerned, you've demonstrated before that you have good judgement.

Originally Posted by Itachikun

It's times like these I wish I knew more on this topic...

So that means that we might see a trend on fansubbing groups shifting towards the h264 encoding. Though some groups offer both Xvid and h264, such as, lately, DB as well as Arenei...

Exactly. I would like to encourage people to switch to encourage the usage and development of projects such as x264. pengvado is very dedicated and has done a lot of work on x264, I guess knowing more people are using it makes his time more worthwhile, kind of like a fansub group. Fansubbing for 10,000 leechers is more worthwhile than subbing for 10. I don't know the origins of x264 or why pengvado is developing it, was it to get noticed? (as he has done ), is it something he picked up for a university project? Is it something he just likes doing? Who knows, I'm just very greatful that pengvado and the others are giving up their free time and making the project publicly available so everyone benefits.

Originally Posted by LytHka

The sound could be desynchronized because of ffdshow audio filters. I know for a fact that the AC3, LPCM (for DVD), Vorbis filters in ffdshow have a hard time ensuring stable, "skipless" audio playback on slower PCs, in my case it was the harddrive's fault. So I use the "core" audio codecs (CoreVorbis, AC3filter) on that particular drive so that the audio doesn't skip with "special encodes." Surprisingly, ffdshow's AAC audio filter seems to work out fine for me.

There are some formats tagged as unstable in FFDShow, if you go into the audio decoder config list there is an option to enable stable formats when you right click.

Originally Posted by subcool

@ wingdarkness:
You are blind if you think a H.264 does not top XviD and/or DivX, im sure nobody would contest me on this :P (if both version are some the same source and with correct settings)

Absolutely not, CABAC alone gives you a lossless saving of 5-10%, and what with MKV and MP4 having lower overheads, you are winning on two counts already.

Originally Posted by ArchMageZeratuL

Too bad? Oh, yea, sure, why go for the superior container when you can stick to mp4...

Well assuming it's hardsubbed and nothing fancy, then it doesn't really matter whether it's MKV or MP4, the only thing is that you are limited to AAC rather than Vorbis, and MP4 has lower overheads. Losing Vorbis would be the clincher for many people though. AAC encoders just aren't good enough yet, better than MP3 yes, but has a long way to go before it's comparable with the mighty AoTuV Vorbis (from a coding point of view, is it even possible without breaking specs?)

Originally Posted by subcool

btw, saying MKV is superior to MP4 is bs :P
Its a matter of preference (just like the choice of DivX 5/6 or XviD) and i prefer MP4 :P

Though I use MP4 and is my preference for H.264 + AAC, MKV is superior. Currently as a multiformat container it offers many more features than MP4, but because it is so diverse you are somewhat tied to using a PC for playback (ie hardware players = no. etc. etc.). On the other hand I have gotten used to MP4, how MP4box works etc, I'm sure MKV regulars will appreciate what I say when you become used to a CLI and the switches etc.
But yes, it does boil down to preference mostly, unless you have specific requirements like softsubs or using a compression method this is not supported by MP4.

Originally Posted by Mentar

So he says. Okay, let's hear it. Which hardware players on the market support your encodes?

Hmm, well I can't really be bothered to elaborate since I've written too much already, but there is supposed to be a Nero/KiSS player that will likely play spec compliant MP4.
On a slightly different note, I admire people's "brand loyalty" to MKV, and after using it over Christmas and being very impressed with it's features and stuff, I can see why. This may not be related to you, but I'll drop it in anyway. I don't understand why DVD rippers seem against MP4, well maybe I do, it's because they are attached to MKV's features. But it is more likely to get hardware players than MKV, and correct me if I am wrong (since I'm not a ripper and don't know if DVD rippers have any kind of guidelines apart from don't profit from it) but the idea is to provide free anime, so wouldn't hardware playback be of interest to DVD rippers?

Originally Posted by ArchMageZeratuL

Let's ignore the fact that MP4 currently has no means of working with VFR videos, shall we? Which is important in several animes, fansub or otherwise... assuming the encoder knows what he's doing, that is.

There is currently a feature request in for MP4box to create VFR streams using the MKV timecodes file. I'd love this. You can also do hybrid framerate stuff right now, a mix of 29.97 and 23.976, but not true VFR (where you would drop consecutively similar frames under X% threshold)

Originally Posted by LytHka

According to that article, VFR in MP4 is possible. How it can be done I don't know. But I wanted to mention that link for something else and that is Matroska's ownage. It certainly owns pretty much any media container out there, so why isn't it accepted by the true fansubbing community? I think there's a pretty easy answer for that one:

Don't go flame baiting, it's retarded. MKV is a container, it is not an entity that rips DVDs all by itself, and therefore it is "not evil". It is a tool that can be used for creating Audio/Video files with advanced features like DVDs have. AVI is god damn outdated and is time something replaced it. Certainly don't try to "own" MKV, as you will have a hard time doing so. TheFluff and I came to blows a while ago about the whole MKV/MP4 thing. I showed him some funky stuff, menus and the like, he pointed out MKV's merits and we decided to leave it at that. Co-existance if you like. In before anyone else, yes menus is of virtually no interest to fansub groups . MP4 also has flash capability, that could be interesting. I wonder if flash menus would be possible.

Lets suppose you magically converted everyone who uses MKV to MP4. That would be sad since you would be left with MP4, AVI and OGM. Well sad for people that give a damn I suppose. I don't want to live with crippled formats forever.

[Zero1]

Originally Posted by LytHka

I think I can safely say that it's not just me that the first thing I think about is "DVD rippers" and "evil" when I hear "Matroska" or "MKV." Now, who's to blame for that...

If the tools, decoders, parsers, information and whatever were readily available before MKV was on the scene, you would probably be bitching about MP4 right now. Hmm, have you ever subbed a series that was on DVD, or a DVDISO? You must have used Smartripper or DVDDecryptor then. Oh noes... ripper = DVD ripper = evil. What about Virtualdub? Nearly every anime encoder, be it fansub or DVD rips use or has used Vdub at some point. Does that make Vdub evil too? Do you refuse to use it because of that? Do you tell other people to avoid it?

I hate to be personal, but your demeanor is somewhat immature. It's not just you, I'm sure there are others that won't accept that MKV is just a file type and not "something evil because it is used by DVD rippers". TheFluff once said to me something along the lines of "I suppose they used MP4 because MKV is seen as the DVD rippers format". I wanted to think the group in question had better reasons for using MP4, but I can see what TheFluff was getting at now, I've seen it first hand, and it is this what causes the flamewars and hate between the fansubbers and DVD rippers. Sure you might not like what they do, keep it to yourself, do your fansubbing and just get on with life without all the shit. It's what I try to do, and remain impartial.

I come here to discuss H.264 and the adoption of it, not to read snide posts about who is righteous and who is evil. Same goes to others too, don't feel like I'm singling you out, just that a few people seem to be instigators.

Why not just agree to disagree rather than whining about it?

Well, on a side note I suppose some of the pwnage is entertaining, but since I love entertainment and technology, I don't want to see good work put down out of stupidity.

Originally Posted by LytHka

The other part I wanted to say is that even though Matroska pretty much owns every other container format we, the true fansubbing community, have no need for its features and we'll gladly accept something more appealing over something that has a scrutinized image.

Well, I am using MP4 because I can avoid VFW, and use better audio compression at the same time, in this instance I am using H.264 + AAC in MP4. MKV isn't as redundant to fansubbing as you think, it's as redundant as you want to make it. For example I could have native H.264 (without the VFW hacks) and Vorbis or AAC audio in MKV, chapters too. You can get the same benefits, just it's a different container.

Originally Posted by Mentar

I'm not proficient enough with the MP4 definition to say whether or not TRUE vfr will eventually be attainable in MP4, but I can say for sure that right now, with the current toolset of choice, it's not.

From what I gather there is a stts atom which stores the time to sample. If we were able to extract the data from the MKV timecodes and convert it to a stts format I guess it would work.

Originally Posted by DryFire

Umm... anyone who adopts such an irrational line of reasoning?

Just because something can be used for "evil" doesn't mean it's the only use. It's up the the people who create the file to determine its use. Every container could be used by the "evil dvd rippers," but they seemed to have chosen mkv as the one that meets their needs; that doesn't automatically discount it as a great for fansubs (perhaps the opposite).

Just think that most of the things fansubbers use were heavily developed, for the most part, by DVD and CD rippers.

IMO no group should cater to such idiocy.

Also seeing as many leechers refer to mkv as a codec, I doubt they have the knowledge to even make the connection.

Hmm, that's pretty much what I wanted to say, but I think you put it much better than I did. Good stuff.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Yeah, I did a similar experiment about a month ago. Chapters basically don't work in mp4 right now. Then again, chapter support is one of those things that doesn't matter.
In this case, actually, chapter support would be useful. But the problem is no one would use it . Most fansub watchers don't even know WHERE to jump to chapters would be at all. If they had to go to some menu or something in their player, they'd have no clue. so your awesomely useful chapters would go unused by 90% of watchers.
On the other hand, if you were to make a DVD like menu using super fancy XML mp4 scripting, and force people to use Osmo player... then again, who am I kidding...

I don't see any problem with chapters in MKV or MP4. Haali's splitter icon pops up and I can change chapters from there. As for WMP9/10 or whatever, I guess if he was that way inclined that Haali could make his splitter connect to whatever filter WMP uses for changing DVD chapters and angles, but since most people use MPC, I guess he will only want to work on something he deems useful.

As for MP4 menus, I won't waste my time looking into it until one of the viable methods support it, namely Haali's splitter, which is unlikely anytime soon.

Originally Posted by ArchMageZeratuL

Many of them may support MKV too, you don't know. Also, you can't say for sure that they will support data discs, besides HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (Are blu-ray drives even compatible with CDs/DVDs? I've read otherwise long ago, but that might have changed by now). At this point, it's all just speculation.

I don't know if Blu-ray is backward compatible with CD and DVD, it would be a damn stupid move if it wasn't. Well I'd need to look into that, but something amusing is that Pre-recorded Blu-ray discs are likely to use MPEG-2. Yes you have a larger capacity on the Blu-ray discs, but with the increased effeciency of H.264 it would be very easy to store more H.264 on HD-DVD than MPEG-2 on Blu-ray. Add to that HD-DVDs are cheaper to produce, and you see where this is going.

Originally Posted by movax

Just want to mention that using something other than AVI does not kill download amounts. My AVC encode of FF7:AC and LO for Shinsen still got more than 10k torrent downloads, and we had even more for the AVI version. There's no technical reason not to use MKV, other than these laughable ethics.

Heh, yeah. Come to think of it, I don't recall "not using MKV" as a part of the "good old fansub ethics".

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Also, for low motion shows I'll turn it to 4 with the b-frame bias tweaked up a bit).

That reminds me, did you ever try that command line I suggested in the channel? IIRC using 4 bframes and pumping up the B-bias was something I suggested to try and force more B-frames in that Boa video since it was very high in P-frames.

Originally Posted by TheFluff

2-pass or 3-pass? pengvado mentioned in Darkhold that he's been trying to get people to understand that 3-pass only helps in certain special cases, but that people in general are clinging to "slower is better". I used to use 3-pass for everything until I heard that - now it's about 50-50. Slower IS better, after all

Heh, if they won't listen, let them just suffer the extra encode time. I encode overnight and in most cases an encode would finish part way through the night, so setting the batch to run a third pass while I was sleeping was just making use of time the computer was switched on and doing nothing. A thrid pass shouldn't be detrimental. The ratecontrol within x264 is excellent, but the only time you might want to use 3 pass is if you are encoding to a filesize or average bitrate with a very short source, take for instance a 30 second video.

Originally Posted by SSS

I still remember 3-pass encoding mode was help alot with video quality because older x264(before revision 223) using CBR(?) algo for encoding.
Untill pengvado change the encoding algo to ABR, i stop using 3-pass encode because i found out that 2-pass psnr is very near to 3 pass.
the default encoding mode now is ABR unless tweak the VBV/ratetol value.

I think it was the one pass bitrate mode that used to be CBR by default (multipass was always ABR). If you want one pass CBR now you need to set the VBV maxrate (IIRC).

Also I wouldn't set the chroma-qp-offset unless you have to. It's true that the human eye takes less notice of chroma than luma, but remember because chroma is subsampled, you need to sacrifice a lot of quality from the chroma plane to make a noticable improvement to the luma.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Big news today:

For all you ffdshow dislikers, and, frankly, anyone who enjoys diversity, there's a new h.264 decoder on the block:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...267#post761267

I tried this super ultra prealpha build, and it works great on all my releases . Even better, it's FAST. Faster than libavcodec, by like, 30-40% according to some.

Hmm, interesting. I shall see how it copes with the MP4 of dewm. Speaking of that, I should make a new, uber one.

Originally Posted by SSS

You can check the video file with Virtualdub Hex editor, all the encoder settings are store inside the container:

I noticed this the other day, but I don't recall it being on the change log. Also my old encodes don't appear to have it (unless I just missed it).

Originally Posted by pengvado

What did I say about "slower is better"? --me esa isn't any better than --me umh, even if you ignore cpu-time entirely.

I've always used UMH, but that's nice to know. Good to see you here too, I bet you've been rofl'ing up till now

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

It just leaves the impression that the encoder doesn't really know what he's doing, which is really odd considering **** is all about quality in most other reguards.

Perhaps people want to move with the times, or do the "cool thing"(?) but aren't prepared to wait the extra time it takes to encode owing to the complexity of H.264. I don't really see the issue, I'm perfectly happy to go down to ~3fps per episode if I am encoding overnight.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Heh, well encoders can say all they want about the settings they use, but the hex editor doth not lie. x264 stores the exact settings it was called with in the file, so there's no getting around that unless you modify the source and compile it yourself.
Personally I think it's a great idea, makes it easier to debug problems from unknown files if you know what you are doing.

Agreed, very useful feature, as well as storing config data in the bitstream, I wonder if we could put any other data like who encoded the file, name of the series or anything like that. A switch to disable writing stuff to the bitstream would be good too, something like --no-conf. Only people that may need to know my settings are libav devs, or pengvado in the rare event that one of my files does something interesting.

I guess maybe I'm being anal about my settings, as stupid as it is, some people regard their settings and stuff a "secret of the trade" lol. I'd rather people work with x264 and discover stuff than copy what myself, or the next encoder is doing, because that's where problems are discovered, through experimentation. If people see that one encode looks good and decide to use subme 6 because they saw it in the bitstream, they wouldn't know if subme 7 was buggy.

Also in some cases it could lead to ridicule...


Well, that's about all for now. Enjoy your RSI

[Sylf]

Originally Posted by Zero1

So right now I've got 11 pages to read through and reply to. This will be fun in a warped way.

And it's "fun in a warped way" for the rest of us to read through the mile-long replies.

Originally Posted by Zero1

Really? I'd dispute that owing to me being able to play AVI files on a fresh install of WinME and XP Home/Professional.

I can't prove my point at this point, actually. I just remember two incidents vaguely.
One, before this forum hack, there was one user who posted in playback help forum who was having problem playing back some AVI file. I believe it was TheFluff who talked through with that user, and solved the issue by having him install Haali's Media Splitter with AVI support enabled. Yes, it might have been the user's stupidity of removing the microsoft's splitter. I really don't know. But it just struck me as so strange that I still remember.
The other was when I installed windows freshly on some machine, and tried to play an AVI on some machine (I don't remember the exact player, but it was a non-microsoft, directshow based player), I couldn't play it back even after I had ffdshow installed. I opened the file in WMP, which proceeded to download some codec type of stuff (which I didn't pay too much attention what it exactly was), and WMP played that file fine. I went back to the original player I had trouble with, and it went away. I just assumed that the WMP downloaded the AVI splitter automatically. Since I don't have any PC I'm willing to reformat right now, I can't test it

Originally Posted by Zero1

Haali's splitter icon pops up and I can change chapters from there.

Damn me for not realizing that option until now. That takes care of zoomplayer, WMP7/8/9/10, etcetc... So the only playback option that lacks chapter support in mp4 is VLC, within the list of the players I care about.

Originally Posted by Zero1

I would like to encourage people to switch to encourage the usage and development of projects such as x264. pengvado is very dedicated and has done a lot of work on x264, I guess knowing more people are using it makes his time more worthwhile, kind of like a fansub group.

This is partially why I encouraged my group to switch from xvid to h.264. And by not giving the xvid option, we want to encourage the leechers to adopt the new technology. And more the new technology gets accepted and used, faster the advancement of that new technology will likely be. And if we can be one of many forces to help that out, I'll be more than happy.

[pathyfinder]

Not trying to be off topic, but when I first d/l H.264 it took me 2 hours to get it to play on my compy. I know my mom and my daughters would never be able to do this, so just waited for other d/l, however with OP going to H.264 I had to figure this out, and rather by accident I learned while installing the newest version 8.4 of VLC Lo and behold..... H.264 plays perfect!!!

So happy, then I went home and uninstalled all my VLC and re-installed the newest version VLC 8.4 and "I was in anime playback heaven".

I just thought this info may help some who may have problems. It solved all of mine

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Sylf

And it's "fun in a warped way" for the rest of us to read through the mile-long replies.

Indeed... Nice to have you back, Zero1!

Originally Posted by Sylf

One, before this forum hack, there was one user who posted in playback help forum who was having problem playing back some AVI file. I believe it was TheFluff who talked through with that user, and solved the issue by having him install Haali's Media Splitter with AVI support enabled. Yes, it might have been the user's stupidity of removing the microsoft's splitter. I really don't know. But it just truck me as so strange that I still remember.

IIRC, the problem was that the AVI header was written in a slightly nonstandard way that the M$ splitter couldn't deal with, but Haali handled correctly. Again IIRC, it was one of Saizen's Eyeshield 21 releases, and I made a post about it on their forum, but now I can't get to those forums anymore, it seems...

[LytHka]

Originally Posted by Zero1

Well, on a side note I suppose some of the pwnage is entertaining, but since I love entertainment and technology, I don't want to see good work put down out of stupidity.

Just for the record, I haven't said the tools the evilmen created are useless or anything, I just started my post with my observations why *I* think some people put down MKV. I agree it's a good container (save the indexing) and probably the best one out there, but like I said hardsubbers have no use of all its features.

And I thought VirtualDub was created by Avery Lee who was associated with Elite-Fansubs... :/ In any case, you're a week late for this discussion so I think we should just drop it.

[ArchMageZeratuL]

Originally Posted by LytHka

Just for the record, I haven't said the tools the evilmen created are useless or anything, I just started my post with my observations why *I* think some people put down MKV. I agree it's a good container (save the indexing) and probably the best one out there, but like I said hardsubbers have no use of all its features.

Hardsubbers have no use for the softsubbing facilities... no, indeed you are correct. But what about chapters? Every release should have chapters IMO, to make op/ed skipping easy.

And what is the problem with indexing?