Topic by Guga

Posted: 2/20/2012 6:48 PM

Post subject: Original option... it's worthy?

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Guga

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Joined: 1/17/2012
Posts: 838
Location: Chile

IMHO, I don't think that "Original" quality is actually worthy. With 720p is enough. At least 1080p will be useful for the sake of the viewers.

Posted: 2/20/2012 7:21 PM

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natt

Editor, Emulator Coder, Site Developer

Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka

There is a point there. I think that if you want good quality for reasonable filesizes, you should get the downloadable hi10. If you want ultimate convenience, watch the 512 or youtube at moderate resolutions. If you want an encode that takes more bandwidth to download, more processing power to display, yet is guaranteed to be second rate because of the 30fps limit, you watch youtube "original". That being said, I still do originals. Why not? It's just processing time, doesn't really take effort. The people who actually do the TASes put in way more effort than me. I'm encoding an original right now -- do you see me sweating? Edit: Before you ask "why doesn't X have an original, you encoded it", I don't do originals when youtube won't let me. Can't do the impossible, after all.

Posted: 2/20/2012 8:02 PM

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creaothceann

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Joined: 4/7/2005
Posts: 1874
Location: Germany

It somewhat matters for me (or would, if my YT channel hadn't been shut down) since larger files take longer to upload, and I might want to run 'other stuff that also needs upload capacity' at the same time. So I'd go for 720p files. For downloads I take the 60fps for videos I'm interested in (it's just smoother) and they just have to be 2x or lossless.

Posted: 2/20/2012 8:06 PM

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natt

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Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka

creaothceann wrote:

For downloads I take the 60fps for videos I'm interested in (it's just smoother) and they just have to be 2x or lossless.

Most runs don't have that? It's certainly not part of the standard encodes repertoire.

Posted: 2/20/2012 8:30 PM

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creaothceann

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Posts: 1874
Location: Germany

Let me rephrase that - "and I'd prefer if they'd be 2x or lossless".

Posted: 2/20/2012 8:33 PM

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natt

Editor, Emulator Coder, Site Developer

Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka

I see. Well, the lossless can certainly be nice; h264 GBR lossless can be rather moderate filesizes while looking pretty good. But I don't get the 2x (excepting actual higher-res recording on systems like N64). Give me any lossless original source, and a 2x encode you've made of it, and I bet you I can beat the image quality at the same filesize with a 1x encode.

Posted: 2/20/2012 8:40 PM

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creaothceann

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Joined: 4/7/2005
Posts: 1874
Location: Germany

"or" ;) i.e. lossy 2x or lossless 1x.

Posted: 2/20/2012 8:43 PM

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natt

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Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka

Right. What I'm saying is that I can beat a lossy 2x in image quality with a lossy 1x. (I'd just need the lossless source to start from, obviously).

Posted: 2/22/2012 2:58 PM

Post subject: A nice streaming bitrate?

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antd

Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain

I'm building a site to stream videos at 60fps. The consideration should be for quality and file size / client's bandwidth. The server will host hundreds of videos and only has 1TB of storage. Server bandwidth is not an issue. The resolution of the videos will probably not exceed 320x240. What is a good x264 bitrate to use for this task? Is 1000kbit ok?

Posted: 2/22/2012 4:30 PM

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natt

Editor, Emulator Coder, Site Developer

Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka

500kbit or lower would be workable most likely. One thing I saw mentioned on doom9 would be to do something like this: Encode on slow-firstpass mode, with a desired CRF (say, 20 or so), and save the output file. If the output file from the first pass is bigger than your limit, do the second pass (you have the stats file) in bitrate limit mode. This is slow for videos that go over the limit, but it can be completely unattended and it allows for graphically simple videos to save space while limiting the extent that poisonous videos can waste space.

Posted: 2/22/2012 4:39 PM

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creaothceann

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Location: Germany

Space wouldn't be an issue: One video (30 minutes, video @ 1000 kbits/s, audio @ 192 kbits/s) would need ca. 255.78 MB, and 500 of them would need ca. 124.89 GB (plus file format overhead). As for the bitrate, it depends on how much CPU time you have available. Slower presets allow for more quality (lower CRF) at the same size.

Posted: 2/23/2012 4:41 PM

Post subject: try this stream

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antd

Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain

I just put up this test page. How is this stream? http://vgarchives.com/content/streets-rage-2-wip-1-hq For some reason IE plays the video very poorly. Firefox and chrome are fine though.

x264 --preset veryslow --bitrate 1000

Posted: 2/23/2012 4:47 PM

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natt

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Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka

loading advantage, straight through watching:

Wilmington DE area, tested speed (did right after watching): 23.55down/4.24up One thing you may want to do if you only want the videos to be streamed through JW player is to throttle. Encode with vbv limitations and then limit download speed to somewhat (but not too much) above it. I have no idea how that works on the web server side though.

Posted: 2/23/2012 5:24 PM
(Edited: 2/23/2012 5:49 PM)

Post subject: Re: try this stream

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creaothceann

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Joined: 4/7/2005
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Location: Germany

antd wrote:

For some reason IE plays the video very poorly. Firefox and chrome are fine though.

Same here, and also works fine in Opera.

antd wrote:

x264 --preset veryslow --bitrate 1000

What audio codec (if at all)? You could also try a game with fast-changing graphics (Sonic, Sparkster, Biker Mice From Mars, DKC2, F-Zero or Super Turrican), a long TAS with occasional heavy movement (Seiken Densetsu 3) or a fast 3D game.

Posted: 2/23/2012 5:29 PM

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Aktan

Publisher

Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283

IMO, really you should not choose a set bitrate. Some require more some require less. It will even out. Just set it to a certain CRF and be done with it. On a side note, TASVideos site itself already streams from archive.org to get great quality and full frame rate. It's what the _512kb files we make are for.

Posted: 2/23/2012 6:39 PM

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antd

Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain

Oh yes, vbv is a good idea. Audio codec is AAC 192kbps. I used a version of x264 that has libvo_aacenc built in. Here's a fast one (super sonic): http://vgarchives.com/content/testing-stuff Only a few input files are encoded to 512kb/archive.org (eg. incomplete runs are not)

Posted: 2/25/2012 3:37 PM

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natt

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Joined: 5/11/2011
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Location: Murka

200kbit/s aac with 1000kbit/s avc is quite... generous. our published _512kb's, which are of quite decent quality, are usually a good deal below that in bitrate.

Posted: 2/25/2012 5:35 PM

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creaothceann

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Location: Germany

So maybe the bitrate could be used for twice the video size? Right now it looks good but only when the zoom level is at 1x.

Posted: 3/6/2012 6:30 PM

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natt

Editor, Emulator Coder, Site Developer

Joined: 5/11/2011
Posts: 1108
Location: Murka

Upon further testing on IRC, it was verified that this particular Adobe bug changes with your system (like many of the other Adobe bugs): If you're running an nVidia card under windows 7 that supports hardware decoding, and you use hardware decoding, you get limited range every time. On the other hand, if you use software decoding, the difference between limited and full range is understood and respected by the flash player. Even with that new information, I'd still recommend limited range for _512kb encodes. It doesn't really hurt anything, and the browser always (?) gets it right.

Posted: 3/13/2012 7:43 AM

Post subject: Does --range pc do the exactly same job as --fullrange on?

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HappyLee

Expert player (2453)

Joined: 12/23/2007
Posts: 822

I saw x264 updated few months ago, and "--fullrange" exists no longer, so the command line was replaced as "--input-range pc --range pc" on the Encoding page. I was concerned about whether 2 command line are exactly the same (just the change of a name) or different. And can anyone tell me which does better job encoding TAS movies, thank you very much!

Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).

Posted: 3/13/2012 7:52 AM

Post subject: Re: Does --range pc do the exactly same job as --fullrange on?

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Ilari

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1141)

Joined: 5/1/2010
Posts: 1217

HappyLee wrote:

I saw x264 updated few months ago, and "--fullrange" exists no longer, so the command line was replaced as "--input-range pc --range pc" on the Encoding page. I was concerned about whether 2 command line are exactly the same (just the change of a name) or different.

Those two are exactly the same if you are feeding full-range YCbCr to x264. If feeding RGB, use '--range pc' and do NOT specify --input-range (otherwise the colors will be somewhat screwed up).

Posted: 3/14/2012 9:58 AM

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HappyLee

Expert player (2453)

Joined: 12/23/2007
Posts: 822

Thank you.

Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).

Posted: 3/23/2012 8:17 PM

Post subject: Problems with YouTube

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Guga

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Joined: 1/17/2012
Posts: 838
Location: Chile

Whenever I upload a video to YouTube, the first seconds of the audio are gone. After it gets restored, it became silent again. You can easily compare the original video with the uploaded one. I even tried to upload it twice, but it doesn't fix it.

flac.exe -8 audio.wav

Posted: 3/23/2012 8:38 PM

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feos

Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)

Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11268
Location: RU

Thanks so much for merging all this s...!

Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.

Posted: 3/24/2012 12:12 AM

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Guga

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Joined: 1/17/2012
Posts: 838
Location: Chile

feos wrote:

Thanks so much for merging all this s...!

Very useful post. --- Well, after doing some tests, I tried to use Lame MP3. And guess what: it works now... No clue why Flac have problems with YouTube now.