Endless Paradigm

also what resolution do you want it at

bboy_sonik Wrote:blessedhands, I think MeGUI ignores audio stream completely and u have to Mux it into the output MP4 with MP4Box

With MeGUI, you have to encode the video and audio seperately. MeGUI isn't really a 1-click encoder designed for user friendliness like XviD4PSP is. You have to do everything separately, like you would need to if you were using the CLI encoding tools without a front-end. So yeah, harder to use, but allows more customization.

About muxing. If you don't like using MP4box through the command line, in MeGUI, go tools-» Muxer-» MP4 Muxer. That will give you a really smple GUI for MP4Box. Or you can go download YAMB (a more advanced GUI) instead.

bboy_sonik Wrote:...I am uploading it to rapidshare right now and will update this post with a link to the original video. Thanks heaps I would love for you to do some comparrisons for me! :D

Movie looks pretty awesome. You just successfully made me want to watch it. :)

bboy_sonik Wrote:Ah, so CQ IS better than any 2-Pass bitrate based encode - but the end filesize is unpredictable right? Now I see... sorry to you too Zinga :( forgive me for I was ignorant but now I see the light.... :D

He (Zinga) was actually talking about Crf. (CQ = Constant quantizer. Crf = constant Rate Factor, aka Constant Quality)

As for CQ vs 2-pass and Crf, I personally prefer 2-pass. CQ will make everything the same quality (bitrate varies a lot). CBR will make everything the same bitrate (quality varies a lot). 2-pass and crf are more compromised, and somewhere between CBR and CQ. So CQ will give you a more "consistent" encode, while 2-pass and crf will give you a more "efficient" encode. Depends on your preference.

bboy_sonik Wrote:yeh wee all take same file and try and make it the same size as the other with our own encoders
see what turns out best

Also, has to be a low bitrate. Because for a high one, you probably can't tell the difference between the encodes.

And if wee really want to have a competition, PSP probably isn't the best medium to compete for, since it's rather restrictive, both in screen size and encode settings.

But that's beside the point I guess. Since this was originally about encoding for PSP...

squee666 Wrote:yeh wee all take same file and try and make it the same size as the other with our own encoders
see what turns out best

If anyone still cares about this stuff at all (probably not). Heh.

Download Link

960x400. Same size as the bboy's one, 18.3MB.

Yes I still care, sorry for my absence! Stupid "real" life...

Downloading now :)

*Waiting for download then watching*
On that note, TMPGEnc supports CQ but not CRF! Lame! Its a shame because I will NOT use any other program, simply for its ease of use [in combination with AnyDVD, it allows me to encode encrypted DVD's straight to MP4-AVC with a variety of options, many of which other GUI's do not allow, eg AviSynth won't let me do anamorphic i.e. 640x480 with 16:9 pixel aspect which is what I do for all 16:9/letterbox sources for various reasons]

I think I repeated myself there. Meh.

*Finished watching your encode*

Nice! I honestly can't see a difference in quality, except the scene where he's looking at the bed and the camera pans behind him, there is a little bit of "fuzzyness" on his jacket - that might just be me though. Using Cyberlink AVC decoder by the way, the one that comes with PowerDVD [mainly cause it gives me hardware/GPU acceleration].

Repeated myself again.

But this is only 1-Pass, correct? So encode time would be a LOT shorter than my current 2-Pass VBR preference! I am truley impressed, and I have been enlightended :) Could you share your settings with us?  :)

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Urgh, Rapidshare?!  I can't download anything from there at home

All good man, don't bother yourself there are much more important things for you to worry about im sure :)  But yes it's the "original". I just wish I could find that website that has all the AVC 1080p trailers on there then i coulda given a direct link, I shoulda added it to favorites *IDIOT*...

If I may chime in..

I have been tinkering with compressing and archiving videos since the mid 90s, and when the first TV capture cards came out, been loving it ever since.

I just wanted to say, great conversation of comparing compression settings that you both have found on your own. As you know, anyone messing with these things must remain open minded and be willing to change/alter their settings every once in a while as new improvements come along.

I wanted to offer an 'outside view' of what you guys have submitted so far (the two Max Payne comparisons).

Assassin, yours seems to have more detail/sharpness; but at the cost of artifacts, namely Gibbs Effects ('mosquito noise') and macroblocks. I actually find the blocks odd, because you state you use a mostly quantized form of compression.

Sonik, your Max Payne vid has hardly any blocking at all, but gets quite smoothed out (one of the ways TmpegEncXpress quantizes out the data) in motion areas. Tmpegencxpress by the way, will use the bitrate you set as a variable bitrate and then quantize based on your settings after that (if there is enough bitrate, it keeps the sharpness of material - if you choose Variable Bitrate).

It's hilarious, you are both so close to that Holy Grail of Perfect Balance Between Detail and Compression... great samples submitted by both.

Good luck in your experiementations! Keep it up

bboy_sonik Wrote:All good man, don't bother yourself there are much more important things for you to worry about im sure :)  But yes it's the "original". I just wish I could find that website that has all the AVC 1080p trailers on there then i coulda given a direct link, I shoulda added it to favorites *IDIOT*...

Actually, I don;t think it's the original. Open it in a hex editor, and search x264, you will find the x264 settings used for the encode. So it was encoded with x264, and so I kinda doubt was the original.

bboy_sonik Wrote:Nice! I honestly can't see a difference in quality, except the scene where he's looking at the bed and the camera pans behind him, there is a little bit of "fuzzyness" on his jacket - that might just be me though. Using Cyberlink AVC decoder by the way, the one that comes with PowerDVD [mainly cause it gives me hardware/GPU acceleration].

Repeated myself again.

But this is only 1-Pass, correct? So encode time would be a LOT shorter than my current 2-Pass VBR preference! I am truley impressed, and I have been enlightended :) Could you share your settings with us?  :)

Sry about late reply. Kinda forgot about this thread. Only noticed it when Shadarr posted and pulled it to the top again.

This one was actually 2-pass, in order to match your size (since a few people above were saying about doing it at the same size).

As for the settings, I also kinda forgot. (Don't have the file with me any more). But probably something like this:

x264 --crf "something" --ref 12 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 6 --b-adapt 2 --b-pyramid --weightb --direct auto --deblock -1:-1 --subme 8 --trellis 2 --psy-rd 1.0:0.5 --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --me umh --merange 24 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input"

So yeah, very high settings. Because the trailer was short, and I had the time anyway. If you want to encode a 100min movie, you may want to use faster settings that won't take you absolutely ages. Lower subme, lower merange, lower number of refs and bframes's, trellis mode 1 instead of 2, and you should get decent speeds.

For anime, you'd want more ref frames and b frames than for real life content.

(by the way, if you got my file, you can look at the x264 settings by using a hex editor and searching "x264". Should be somewhere at the start of the file).

Shadarr Wrote:Assassin, yours seems to have more detail/sharpness; but at the cost of artifacts, namely Gibbs Effects ('mosquito noise') and macroblocks. I actually find the blocks odd, because you state you use a mostly quantized form of compression.

Probably due to the psychovisual rdo I used. Yeah, I tend to favor detail. Encoding in the fansubbing scene for a while probably taught me that.

That was actually a filtered encode. I went and did a bit of (mild) denoise on the original. So there is probably even more noise (and most likely also detail) previously in the original.

Also, my filtering and encoding style would depend on the size and time constraints. I though that the length of a file isn't too tight a fit for the desired filesize, so I did what I did. If I was aiming for 5MB file size instead, then it'll be heavy denoise/smoothing and no psy-rdo, and would result in something much more smoothed out.

Assassinator Wrote:Actually, I don;t think it's the original. Open it in a hex editor, and search x264, you will find the x264 settings used for the encode. So it was encoded with x264, and so I kinda doubt was the original.

Yeah, it was encoded with MP4Box. Now i remember - I got it from Digital Digest. And that's what i ment by "original" - it was the original download, but surely not the original video! I have no idea how or where to get the raw original, maybe visit the local cinema and go through their projector room!?!? Lol not trying to patronize - I seriously don't know, I guess the uncompressed originals are not publically available.

Assassinator Wrote:x264 --crf "something" --ref 12 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 6 --b-adapt 2 --b-pyramid --weightb --direct auto --deblock -1:-1 --subme 8 --trellis 2 --psy-rd 1.0:0.5 --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --me umh --merange 24 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input"

One problem with that video - I can't play it on the PSP! It's not in an MP4 container and the resolution is way too high! This was something I was interested in if you forgot - having AVC encoded videos that are decent for both PC and PSP playback. I know that the Level 3 Profile isn't the most effective capability, but surely AVC even at PSP compatible settings would still give better compression/quality than the current "standard" or "norm" for videos - XviD/DivX?

Assassinator Wrote:For anime, you'd want more ref frames and b frames than for real life content.

This makes sense. I've done a lot of reading and will definately remember this one, now that I've heard it from a few completely different sources.

Assassinator Wrote:(by the way, if you got my file, you can look at the x264 settings by using a hex editor and searching "x264". Should be somewhere at the start of the file).

Yep, I see em. Honestly, I think I'm going to stick with TMPGEnc - it's just easier to use - and I have lifetime updates of it too =D  Maybe I can make a suggestion to increase MPEG-4 AVC customization options....

Assassinator Wrote:That was actually a filtered encode. I went and did a bit of (mild) denoise on the original. So there is probably even more noise (and most likely also detail) previously in the original.

You rotten cheat! LOL! Haha kidding... seriously though, I used no filters at all [apart from "resample with Lanczos-3 method" of course] as filters are technically externel to the encoder process as far as I know [if you've used VirtualDub a lot you'll know what I mean by that]. But yeah, some encoder programs have support for filters added in - still, that is part of the software ;)


Well I havn't started converting my videos yet still, so I'm still going to do some tests and research and make a few good profiles - as long as it gives me equal/comparative quality to XviD/DivX Pro at a smaller filesize, I'll be happy!  =)

bboy_sonik Wrote:Yeah, it was encoded with MP4Box.

Muxed with MP4Box. MP4Box doesn;t encode anything. It just multiplexes stuff into the MP4 container.

bboy_sonik Wrote:One problem with that video - I can't play it on the PSP! It's not in an MP4 container and the resolution is way too high! This was something I was interested in if you forgot - having AVC encoded videos that are decent for both PC and PSP playback. I know that the Level 3 Profile isn't the most effective capability, but surely AVC even at PSP compatible settings would still give better compression/quality than the current "standard" or "norm" for videos - XviD/DivX?

Should be able to give much better results than XviD/DivX.

For PSP, max number of ref frames can't exceed 3 I think.

Assassinator Wrote:You rotten cheat! LOL! Haha kidding... seriously though, I used no filters at all [apart from "resample with Lanczos-3 method" of course] as filters are technically externel to the encoder process as far as I know [if you've used VirtualDub a lot you'll know what I mean by that]. But yeah, some encoder programs have support for filters added in - still, that is part of the software ;)

I don't use any front ends for filtering. I write avs scripts using notepad. So I obviously know that filtering is not part of the actual encoding. But I do consider it to be part of the "encoding process", the whole process would be the whole lot from turning your source into your output. + what's wrong with filtering?