The Guide for best H.264 playback (with both SD and HD content)

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by NvIon

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4181/n...ts-this-year/3



Looks like I can play all H.264 high profile videos, even those with L5.1 16 reference frames encodes off my smartphone/tablet device without transcoding/reencoding ever again on a very power efficient SoC that uses no more than 1 watt of power.

The future is so great while so many Luddites are still stuck in the past with CPU decoding wasting power all the time, using 35/65/95 watts of power to decode.

but does it support the High10 profile? no? too bad, because software decoding of that just got finished, so you still won't be able to play anything released after april this year or so, since people are gonna start using it pretty soon~

[cyberbeing]

TheFluff, High10 supporting ffmpegsource2 build now. Which ffmpeg commit marked the finish of High10 support?

A few days ago, Dark Shikari indicated it was still being worked on, but nowhere was I expecting it to be finished so quickly. That's great news if it's been completed so soon.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by cyberbeing

TheFluff, High10 supporting ffmpegsource2 build now. Which ffmpeg commit marked the finish of High10 support?

A few days ago, Dark Shikari indicated it was still being worked on, but nowhere was I expecting it to be finished so quickly. That's great news if it's been completed so soon.

It's not committed to the main repo yet, it's in irock's own experimental one currently. But the decoding works; what remains to be done before it's merged to vanilla ffmpeg is code cleanup, testing and fixing it so it can support both 8- and 10-bit in the same binary (most likely easier than it sounds).

JEEB made a 10-bit ffms2 compile but for some reason YV12 output doesn't want to work; you have to convert to RGB32. That's probably caused by a bug in ffms2, which I'll have a look at fixing.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

but does it support the High10 profile? no? too bad, because software decoding of that just got finished, so you still won't be able to play anything released after april this year or so, since people are gonna start using it pretty soon~

Really? Are fansubbers so keen for High10 support that they'll immediately make the jump even if most of their audience gets left behind? A lot of people (like me) probably don't plan to upgrade their ffmpeg until CCCP 2011-11-11 comes out, so High10 must have some massive benefit to justify such fast adoption.

[cyberbeing]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

1. ~15% better compression *of typical 8-bit content*. In terms of "where this comes from", this gain is split roughly evenly (at typical bitrates) between:
a. Higher precision output (in reality, this would be dithered down, but you'd still get the visual benefit).
b. Higher precision intermediate values in (en|de)coding a frame.
c. Higher precision reference frames.

2. Almost complete elimination of banding artifacts.

The elimination of banding artifacts caused by encoding should give a very significant quality boost for most anime content. Better compression is just an added bonus.

Chances are that as soon as 10 bit lands in FFDshow-tryouts, and it appears to be 'working correctly', CCCP will release a new CCCP Beta containing 10 bit support. If it then passes decoding various odd-ball samples and fansub encodes over the course of 2-3 months, a new CCCP will be released. This could mean a new CCCP build no later than June 2011 if everything is bug-free.

CCCP 2009-09-09 was released for support of WeightP decoding. CCCP 2010-10-10 was a forced release, a year later, to keep things modern.

Just because the last versions of CCCP were 2009-09-09 and 2010-10-10, doesn't mean the next version will be 2011-11-11.
Just like WeightP support, we should have High10 support in CCCP sooner rather than later, if the fansub groups behind CCCP (which includes gg and TheFluff, among others) decide they want it.

@TheFluff
Did they decide to add some nice 10-bit to 8-bit dithering to the decoding chain, or is the conversion still being done without dithering?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by cyberbeing

Just because the last versions of CCCP were 2009-09-09 and 2010-10-10, doesn't mean the next version will be 2011-11-11.

Heh, I was using that as a placeholder for *next stable release*, but I do think it would be kind of neat if the release schedule ran on a one year one month one day cycle

Anyway, thanks for the informative reply. Although when I read my previous post now it sounds like sarcasm, it was actually meant as a serious question - I know encoders are caught between "you suck, why don't you make use of the latest features" and "you suck, why don't your encodes work on my ancient outdated player", so I figured there had to be more to this than 10-bit depth if people are seriously considering switching.

Still, from my layman's perspective a new CCCP release is the pragmatic point for groups to make breaking changes. But maybe I just overestimate its importance and enough of the audience use more recent codec builds to justify early adoption?

[cyberbeing]

CCCP is important. Realistically, all the groups which support CCCP should wait for a new build, before releasing anything which is 10 bit exclusive. This of course only applies to the groups listed here.

[cyberbeing]

The first stable build of CCCP officially supporting 10-bit (hi10p) h264 was released today.

Go grab CCCP 2011-07-30 now, so aren't greeted with blocking and corruption when many groups switch to 10-bit next season.

New CCCP Win7/Vista/XP Release! (2011-07-30)

New development, ho! Lord has been a true Hero of the Workforce, and we have for the first time actually added new features to FFDShow-tryouts! A brand new hi10p-compatible CCCP for Win7/Vista/XP, codename "A legend reborn"!

    Updated components:
        FFDShow-tryouts 1.1.3951
        MPC-HC 1.5.3.3514
        VSFilter 2.40.3514.3
    General changelog:
        Support for our beloved 10-bit stuff (hi10p support) in FFDShow-tryouts has been added.
        Color space matching priorities have been switched for 420P ("YV12"), to prefer YUV formats before RGB in order to minimize the possibility of libswscale RGB conversion with hi10p material.
        Playback of certain matroska clips, that incorrectly used to play at 25fps, has been fixed with FFDShow-tryouts.
        CCCP Settings and VSFilter have been adjusted for the new pre-buffering changes. Default is still no buffer, and the checkbox sets it to 10 when enabled (buffering set to other values made subtitles blink for users). The settings application currently, in case of the buffering value being non-zero, will reset the value to 10.

FFDShow-Tryouts r3955+, LAV Video (from LAV Filters), madVR's built-in decoder, and MPlayer2 all support hi10p as well, and are additional free options for people that don't like CCCP.

For those who are waiting for CoreAVC, version 3.0 which supports hi10p should be coming within the next month. Anybody who buys 2.x now will get a free upgrade. Anybody who bought CoreAVC outside 60 days of the release of 3.0 will need to buy the new version at full price (currently CoreCodec has no plans for a discounted upgrade).

[sneaker]

Originally Posted by cyberbeing

Anybody who bought CoreAVC outside the 60 days of the release of 3.0 will need to buy an upgrade.

There will be no upgrades, owners of 2.x who haven't bought within the last 60 days will have to pay full price. But with all those free alternatives I wouldn't recommend buying it anyways. (Except older systems like Athlon XP or whatever)

/edit:
latest (unstable) releases of VLC also support 10-bit H.264 now.

[Maceart]

H.264 10bit is useless without DXVA support. Why break compatibility just for marginal improvements on color depth in video? It's not like encoders go for filesize reduction nowadays in the age of 2TB hard drives.

Also, Intel Atoms cannot run 1080p H.264 encodes. It's impossible. And people who say that 1080p can run on 2005 Athlons, give me a break. That's impossible too unless you're using DXVA. No amount of FFDshow "multi thread" decoding will help. CPU decoding is a waste of resources.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Maceart

H.264 10bit is useless without DXVA support.

no

Originally Posted by Maceart

Why break compatibility just for marginal improvements on color depth in video?

it's not marginal at all, and if we refused to ever break compatibility there'd never be any improvements

Originally Posted by Maceart

It's not like encoders go for filesize reduction nowadays in the age of 2TB hard drives.

they actually do

Originally Posted by Maceart

Also, Intel Atoms cannot run 1080p H.264 encodes. It's impossible.

I don't think anyone has claimed they can? The Atom is a toy CPU so the exercise is academic, but I wouldn't say it's impossible (especially if I take your words literally and am allowed to use CAVLC instead of CABAC, etc).

Originally Posted by Maceart

And people who say that 1080p can run on 2005 Athlons, give me a break. That's impossible too unless you're using DXVA. No amount of FFDshow "multi thread" decoding will help.

I don't think anyone has claimed this either. 720p is perfectly possible though, I've done it myself.

Originally Posted by Maceart

CPU decoding is a waste of resources.

and GPU decoding has retarded limitations.

tl;dr: u dum

[cyberbeing]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

I don't think anyone has claimed this either. 720p is perfectly possible though, I've done it myself.

He is probably referring to my claim TheFluff, but that was about my AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual-core desktop CPU from 2005, which does indeed play 10bit 1080p just fine with FFDShow decoding. From my testing so far, bitrate peaks above 35Mbps are where it runs into trouble on 10bit 1080p. This actually makes sense, because 8bit 1080p w/ 50Mbps peaks is right around the limit for a 2.4Ghz AMD X2 with software decoding, and that just so happens to work out to a 40% overhead, matching Dark Shikari's numbers.

[DeadlySoldier37]

I just upgraded my system to the new version of CCCP 2011-7-30 and for some reason every time that I open a video it wont play, it would just go to stop. So I went to MPC-HC view-> options and changed the output to system default instead of the EVR - Custom Press and it seems to work now. Does anybody know whats going and how I can make it work with EVR - CP again?

[namaiki]

What is listed in the menu: Play-> Filters when you open the video?

[DeadlySoldier37]

It shows:

Default DirectSound Device
Video Renderer
Audio Switcher
DirectVobSub (auto-loading version)
ffdshow Audio Decoder
ffdshow Video Decoder

[namaiki]

Have you tried installing the latest DirectX Runtimes?

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35
(beware of Bing bar that you can chose not to install)

Also, try do a reset of settings using the CCCP Settings application:
Close all media related applications and then,
Start-> Combined...-> CCCP Settings-> Next-> Tick 'Reset' and 'Re-register'-> Apply-> Yes.

[DeadlySoldier37]

Yes I just installed it.

I also did the 'Reset' and 'Re-register' on CCCP Settings

[namaiki]

Do videos play with the standard EVR renderer?

[DeadlySoldier37]

Yes videos do play with the standard EVR renderer.

[namaiki]

Any difference if you disable EVR-CP's VSync setting?
(View-> Renderer-> VSync)