Which Looks Better?

[admin]

The second one is clearly better, if you look at the difference in grain on the fridge next to the picture of the rainbow. However I would say that the original source (the HDTV transmission) is flawed, and so resize/de-noise would almost definitely improve the picture.

MPEG-2 at 12 Mbps is not enough for 1080i HDTV transmissions. MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) would be a much better option, but if you read the news or the High Def DVD FAQ I wrote, you'll find out that Sony (surprise, surprise) would prefer to use MPEG-2, even though the Blu-ray specifications have mandatory support for MPEG-4. If they use MPEG-2, a single Blu-ray disc may not even be enough to hold an entire movie if maximum quality is required, let alone the extras.

[anonymez]

MPEG-2 at 12 Mbps is not enough for 1080i HDTV transmissions

i hear ya admin, unfortunately the highest we get is around 13.5mbps, 14mbps if the AFL is on. you live in aus, don't you? IIRC the US gets ~18mbps

imagine the potential of H264 at those bitrates!!

regarding sony, they haven't been having the best ides recently

btw, the source is progressive

[TNT]

My 2 cents. There is definitely some loss of detail, most noticeable by looking at the wrinkles in her forehead and her eye lashes. HOWEVER, at 18%, x264 does an AMAZING job. I think the removing of noise looks nicer to us very much in the same way, an airbrushed Playboy centerfold looks nicer too. Another thing. I noticed a slight change in aspect ratio between the two. Actually, I did notice one MAJOR thing that I like about the original. Her sweater looks much more real where you can see all the little hairs as opposed to the second one where it looks blurry. The original looks three dimensional whereas the second looks flat. One question ANON, where can I get this x264?

[anonymez]

get it here, new xmas release http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...ideo_Codec.htm

careful though, its extremely slow at dvd res, let alone 720p! and i was encoding on an athlon x2, so expect even lower speeds on single core. on top of that, it was encoded at pretty much max quality settings

oh and you'll need a powerful pc to play it even at dvd res, takes around ~60% IIRC on my PC. recommend you download & install the latest ffdshow for (second)best performance if you haven't already

[TNT]

Thanks Anon. So, if I were to save DVD movies to my HD laptop, how much savings should I expect?

[anonymez]

also no hardware support (except for the somewhat crippled ipod & psp) yet, and no way of telling which settings will result in hardware compatibility

sorry for giving all these warnings, but they're necessary!

[anonymez]

TNT, the benfits are not exactly 'savings' per se, rather 'higher quality' at a given bitrate than any mpeg-4 ASP. i'd say 800-1000kbps is fine for dvd res, while for xvid you'll probably want to go 1500+

laptop specs?

[TNT]

No, I'd do the processing on my desktop, but I would want to watch them on my lap top. Actually, Come to the think of it, I wouldn't know how to convert to x264 or how to watch it. But the results are undeniably airbrushed, I mean, pleasant.

[anonymez]

lol airbrushed = nice

i'll be glad to help with the converting and/or watching, should you choose to try it

the "airbrushing", as you call it, can be reduced

[TNT]

Thanks, I actually may take you up on that offer after the holidays.

[tigerman8u]

I like the 2nd one better.
@anonymez what kind of encoding speed are you getting with your pc specs. ie how long to encode a 1 hour movie. Do you mind posting your pc specs

[anonymez]

PC Specs:

AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+
2GB PC3200 Dual Channel RAM
ASUS A8V-E SE Motherboard
ATI X800XL 256MB PCI-E Graphics Card
Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM 8Mb Cache
Western Digital 200GB 7200RPM 8Mb Cache
LG GSA-4163B DVD +R/-R
LG DVD ROM
Antec 450W PSU
CMV 19" LCD


i'm not sure what my fps is, depends greatly on settings (extremely slow at HD res), but i'll post when i'm doing my next encode.

x264 is multithreaded, so you'll get a nice performance boost if you've got a dual-core

[laserfan]

Before reading any of the subsequent posts, I looked at the pics and liked #1 better (it's sharper and I tend to want to keep as much detail as possible).

But then finding out how much real-estate is saved w/the 2nd image causes me to agree that #2 is completely satisfactory.

[anonymez]

guess something like this comes down to personal preference. i personally hate grain. x264's beblocking seems to take care of that, and i had decided some months ago that all HD on my pc is gonna be x264

[laserfan]

guess something like this comes down to personal preference.

For sure! And what I've come to realize in the past several years is that "normal people" don't see any of this stuff. My wife still doesn't know-or-see what I'm talking about most of the time--she just watches and it all looks fine to her!

So we are free to do what makes us happy!