The H.264/AVC/MPEG4 discussion thread

[Starks]

Originally Posted by Devastator

Well, quite honestly, I usually output raws to uncompressed at 23.976 fps (usually comes out to about 40GB) before I do any work with them. Of course, not everyone has that kind of space on their hard drives though (nor the need to go that far).

That's rather unnecessary considering you get the same results with Lags and Huffy (or any lossless output for that matter)...

[Sylf]

Originally Posted by Starks

That's rather unnecessary considering you get the same results with Lags and Huffy (or any lossless output for that matter)...

I wouldn't say "any lossless output." Like fluff pointed out, I'd be careful about the colorspace used in the codec in question.

Speaking of colorspace, I guess uncompressed RGB is not lossless, since there's a colorspace conversion involved.

[Power2All]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

I can't speak for any other cons, but on the few occasions that we've used fansubs straight off (as opposed to R2 DVD's with fansub subtitles) on UppCon (Sweden's largest anime convention; 1700 visitors last time around - I'm responsible for the anime screening section), we've used MKV more than once, without problems.

LOL you do the anime stuff in Sweden ?
Nice, me at AbunaiCon in the Netherlands.
MKV is a ass to convert to a DVD with subtitles (and on conversion of the subtitle file will often make problems like hanging subs).
Thats why I use hardsubs so I'm 100% sure that the subs are well... ok -_-
We mostly let the con import the DVD's and fix ourself the subtitle with a seperate fansub group that help us out.
Nothing more then TL'ing and Timing....
Since we get often companies that check us out to see if we don't miss use their anime's

MP4 and AVI are kinda easy to convert to burn on DVD compared to MKV.
This is just how I see it and how I experienced it.

But I keep your hint of demuxing and using avc2avi as a thing in my back.
Will check it out later to see if it works fine ^^.

Its 4:31AM and im at my job so my mind is not clear so pardon if I sound a little weird ^^

[Power2All]

Originally Posted by Devastator View Post
Well, quite honestly, I usually output raws to uncompressed at 23.976 fps (usually comes out to about 40GB) before I do any work with them. Of course, not everyone has that kind of space on their hard drives though (nor the need to go that far).

Originally Posted by Starks

That's rather unnecessary considering you get the same results with Lags and Huffy (or any lossless output for that matter)...

.... How long are those ?
Why not try using Lagarith..
I get for a 25 minutes anime in 23.976 FPS a output from around 6 gig.
I do have 2.1 TB of HDD space but meh ^^

[Starks]

Originally Posted by Power2All

.... How long are those ?
Why not try using Lagarith..
I get for a 25 minutes anime in 23.976 FPS a output from around 6 gig.
I do have 2.1 TB of HDD space but meh ^^

I've only done uncompressed>lossless>encode only a handful of times, it's not fun... I don't know where people are finding the questionable gains from uncompressed output.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Power2All

LOL you do the anime stuff in Sweden ?
Nice, me at AbunaiCon in the Netherlands.
MKV is a ass to convert to a DVD with subtitles (and on conversion of the subtitle file will often make problems like hanging subs).
Thats why I use hardsubs so I'm 100% sure that the subs are well... ok -_-
We mostly let the con import the DVD's and fix ourself the subtitle with a seperate fansub group that help us out.
Nothing more then TL'ing and Timing....
Since we get often companies that check us out to see if we don't miss use their anime's

MP4 and AVI are kinda easy to convert to burn on DVD compared to MKV.
This is just how I see it and how I experienced it.

But I keep your hint of demuxing and using avc2avi as a thing in my back.
Will check it out later to see if it works fine ^^.

Its 4:31AM and im at my job so my mind is not clear so pardon if I sound a little weird ^^

Who said I ever converted an MKV to DVD? Why would I ever want to do that in the first place?

Originally Posted by Starks

I've only done uncompressed>lossless>encode only a handful of times, it's not fun... I don't know where people are finding the questionable gains from uncompressed output.

Uncompressed > lossless > encode is REALLY pointless, that doesn't save you time at all. Raw -> uncompressed (with filtering) -> encode does have the doubtful advantage of being somewhat easier on the CPU than lossless is (the difference isn't THAT significant, but it depends on what lossless codec you use). On the other hand, with the kind of data rates we're talking about, uncompressed is likely to bottleneck on your harddrive instead.

[Devastator]

Uncompressed, because when I was originally doing the encoding process in steps (filtered lossless -> fixing frames -> placing signs on) due to the fact that Lagarith was causing VD to shut down when I ran everything in one script (I hadn't thought of turning multithreading off at the time), I was beginning to notice an introduction of blockiness in the video (likely due to using full processing and having colourspace conversions for the filtering, when done). Since uncompressed allowed me to do everything in one script, I used it instead (for a time). However, now that I've realized that having multithreading off in Lagarith allows me to do the process all in one step without VD shutting down on me, I am using Lagarith. As for file sizes, most usually come out around 7GB.

[jfs]

Using uncompressed video is generally a bad idea, because the data rate is often too great for the disk, so the speed of I/O will actually limit your processing speed. Using just a light lossless codec such as HuffYUV will usually compress enough to move the bottleneck away from the disk, over to the CPU, and in fact might often speed up processing. Using a heavy lossless codec is usually a bad idea, however, because those take too much CPU compared to the space savings, and the additional CPU eaten by the encoding could be used for video filtering instead.

At least that's my view of things
(Now if you have a heavy-duty RAID-0 setup, using uncompressed video might be possible without the disk becoming a bottleneck...)

[Eeknay]

CoreAVC 1.2 is out. Already lots of gnashing of teeth over the registration scheme. The Core Account page seems to be wonky as well.

[Starks]

Originally Posted by Eeknay

CoreAVC 1.2 is out. Already lots of gnashing of teeth over the registration scheme. The Core Account page seems to be wonky as well.

What registration scheme?

[Eeknay]

Starks I'm reporting you to the Internet Police.

[Starks]

The small performance boost from the last release is really nice.

[Harukalover]

Originally Posted by Starks

The small performance boost from the last release is really nice.

Has there even been a reported boost in CoreAVC 1.2 over 1.1?

From what I read, the only real updates are the new activation system and the furthering of the SMP limit. (Now only 2 cores instead of 4)

[IMSabbel]

Originally Posted by Starks

What registration scheme?

They demand an online activation for each install, complete with the whole "its bound to your install" shit.

With them still not supporting any kind of gpu acceleration, and other decoders catching up while they have been standing still the last half year, i see less and less reasons to give those people money.

Especially the way they talk around like biggot assholes in the respective forums.

[Starks]

Originally Posted by IMSabbel

They demand an online activation for each install, complete with the whole "its bound to your install" shit.

With them still not supporting any kind of gpu acceleration, and other decoders catching up while they have been standing still the last half year, i see less and less reasons to give those people money.

Especially the way they talk around like biggot assholes in the respective forums.

I think you missed the purpose of the wink...

[Eeknay]

Originally Posted by Harukalover

Has there even been a reported boost in CoreAVC 1.2 over 1.1?

From what I read, the only real updates are the new activation system and the furthering of the SMP limit. (Now only 2 cores instead of 4)

Pretty much. Someone posted the speed test of 1.1.0.5 vs 1.2, there's virtually no difference. Very minor fixes, nothing particularly important seems to be fixed. It was like you say basically to roll out the new activation and Core Account website (which is half broken, ever hear of beta testing?).

[Harukalover]

/me lolz that BetaBoy is basically ignoring all the hate the new version is getting...

Really they should of focused on fixing the current problems and enhancing the decoders more instead of spending time making a broken website and a activation system that doesn't seem to be much different from spyware.

Also when has an activation system stopped piraters?

[TheFluff]

Speaking of CoreAVC... I wouldn't recommend using it if you value video quality.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119187

[Grv]

So libavcodec is rapidly catching up to CoreAVC's decoding speed then? That's pretty cool. I hate the fact that CoreAVC is a commercial product. What other decoder options are there? I assume Nero has 1.

[Eeknay]

Elecard, Cyberlink, Nero, Intervideo... (all commercial lulz!)