distribution codec, settings

[ennui]

Hi,

I am working with Edius 5.51 on a Canon 7D-material project. i want to view my finished HD-stuff with a Playon!HD-videoplayer on usb-stick, and I also need a format for sending stuff to others without the need for a disc medium.

I am still fairly new to HD-editing, and what I learned was, that the HQ codec works well as intermediate, though I can also cut the 7D material unconverted. But what codec with what settings would I use in Edius for viewing or distributing the finished HD-product? So far, I only had success with the "Apple TV" one, it does play fluidly on the Playon player, though it shows artifacts sometimes, and probably is very compressed. And there are no quality-settings available, so I guess, there are better solutions, considering that there is no Apple hardware involved here anyway?

Which one of the export settings should I choose instead? What would be the common standard?

[Alter Ego]

My choice would be MP4 h.264. I think this MP4 codec would be a good choice for you as well. This is compatible with Playon!HD. I have delivered demo videos using h.264 on USB sticks myself and everyone was very happy. They were played using WMP or VLC etc. I either use Edius timeline to encode out to h.264, or I use the X264 open source line command encoder with the "Handbrake" GUI. X264 is one of the best if not the best at giving great quality with low bit rates. You can encode with X264 even at 2Mbs and you will be quite surprised with the quality. I know that I was.

[ennui]

Yes, h.264 sounds like the most common standard. But in my export-to-file settings, "h.264/AVC" as well as "AVCHD" are gray and I cannot select them. I can only choose from the different avi variants, or mpeg for DVD, and other stuff, but no mp4 is mentioned. Thats why I came up with this "Apple TV" stuff, because I at least could select it and it worked. Is it because I have movs in the timeline, do I need to convert them first, or am I missing a codec? What is your export option called?

[Red Union Films]

Yes, h.264 sounds like the most common standard. But in my export-to-file settings, "h.264/AVC" as well as "AVCHD" are gray and I cannot select them. I can only choose from the different avi variants, or mpeg for DVD, and other stuff, but no mp4 is mentioned. Thats why I came up with this "Apple TV" stuff, because I at least could select it and it worked. Is it because I have movs in the timeline, do I need to convert them first, or am I missing a codec? What is your export option called?

Try changing your project settings to 1080I not 1080P. This will allow you to export your progressive timeline over an interlaced signal, the end result will still look progressive. Your best master format would be HQ or HQX, you can at least change it to something else later without an intermediate codec, or if you have the codecs on another system they will read your masters.

I make a SD and HD master of all my projects in HQ or HQX. These master files are then used to encode from. If you want better h264 encoding than what Edius will do try using X264.

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18828

Hope this helps.

Dave.

[ennui]

Thank you. If the end result will "look like" 1080p, though being 1080i, does that still mean, no picture information gets lost in the process? As I work with 1080p25, I naturally chose the responding project parameters. I would like to avoid any interlacing, as the result is being viewed on a beamer. I do not yet understand fully, whether h.264/mp4 ist always interlaced, or why these options are grayed out in "p" projects.

Anyway, x264 sounds like a good solution, have to try that later.

[Red Union Films]

Thank you. If the end result will "look like" 1080p, though being 1080i, does that still mean, no picture information gets lost in the process? As I work with 1080p25, I naturally chose the responding project parameters. I would like to avoid any interlacing, as the result is being viewed on a beamer. I do not yet understand fully, whether h.264/mp4 ist always interlaced, or why these options are grayed out in "p" projects.

Anyway, x264 sounds like a good solution, have to try that later.

Sebastian.

When you use the export function from Edius, depending on what codec you are transcoding to, Edius will try to only give you the options for the typical use of that codec. As a for instance. H264 is normaly associated with Blu-ray, and the Blu-ray spec does not inlcude either 1080 25P or 1080 29.97P. These signals are always interlaced. The encoder just splits the progressive image into the interlaced fields and flags it, then on playback recombines the two fields to play a whole frame. Although an encoder may be able to encode at 1080 25p, it will not be read by Blu-ray authoring software without a re-encode.

Try out X264, I have done extensive tests with it and many commercial encoders. X264 is at least as good as anything else if not better. Handbrake is a good front end for X264, but does not see the HQ codec via the GUI and does not encode Blu-ray files. The MeGui/Avisynth/X264 combination is very powerful.

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18828&page=6

Dave.

[ennui]

Ok, this clears things up. So if I had already chosen 24p instead of 25p in the camera when filming, it would conform with the specs of a bluray disc, as 24p is included there, right?

Maybe I just got confused with this interlace stuff, because from SD editing, I know its better to avoid this, as, for example, in the process of converting 50i to 25p, one would loose information, and the 25p would have to be reconstructed/calculated from only half the 50i-picture information, resulting in loss of resolution.

But as you said, this is not the case here. I just thought if I skip the Bluray disc anyway, and play a file from usb-stick instead, I would not have to consider the Bluray specs as well.

So when playing back the "interlaced" h.264 on the Playon videoplayer, it will still send full "25p" frames through the HDMI to the beamer?

And I could work in Edius with the 1080i-interlaced settings all the time, and it would not make a difference at all? Whats the use of the 25p-setting, then? Right now, I can also export mpg for a DVD from the 25p-timeline, resulting in crisp 25p-over50i-DVDs, will this be the same with the 1080i-timeline?

Again, thanks.

[Red Union Films]

Ok, this clears things up. So if I had already chosen 24p instead of 25p in the camera when filming, it would conform with the specs of a bluray disc, as 24p is included there, right?

Maybe I just got confused with this interlace stuff, because from SD editing, I know its better to avoid this, as, for example, in the process of converting 50i to 25p, one would loose information, and the 25p would have to be reconstructed/calculated from only half the 50i-picture information, resulting in loss of resolution.

But as you said, this is not the case here. I just thought if I skip the Bluray disc anyway, and play a file from usb-stick instead, I would not have to consider the Bluray specs as well.

So when playing back the "interlaced" h.264 on the Playon videoplayer, it will still send full "25p" frames through the HDMI to the beamer?

And I could work in Edius with the 1080i-interlaced settings all the time, and it would not make a difference at all? Whats the use of the 25p-setting, then? Right now, I can also export mpg for a DVD from the 25p-timeline, resulting in crisp 25p-over50i-DVDs, will this be the same with the 1080i-timeline?

Again, thanks.

Hi Sebastian.

If you shoot and edit at 24P, you will be able to output 24P, as it is within the Blu-ray spec. You can encode many other formats outside of Blu-ray spec with certain encoders, and they may play through mediaplayer type boxes, but may not be Blu-ray compatible.

I have re-posted a guide for converting 24 and 25 FPS footage, this may also help you and it is the way PAL footage is normaly dealt with.

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19960

The only problem may be going 24 to 25 in E5, because the speed function in E5 does not accept certain numbers.

When 24P monitors where released, they had new standards compatibility like 24 FPS. But older monitors would not see this. In the same way, when Blu-ray first come out most TV's where not 1080P but could accept an interlaced signal. As most available content would have been either 25 or 29.97 fps, the option for interlaced at these standards was because anything would see the interlaced picture but not everything would see the progressive picture. If Blu-ray was to have come out last week, then 25P would probably have been a standard, as most monitors would now accept the signal. Remember when HD TV's first come out, most could not do 1080 and the ones that could, a lot of them could not do progressive.


Your understanding of how you do 25P over 50I for your DVD method, is about the same for the Blu-ray H264 export.

Cheers.

Dave.

[ennui]

I now tried the Edius-mp4/h.264-export from the 50i project. The problem is, that I don't know what bitrate I should use for playback with the PlayonHD-Player. first tried the suggested 12M rate, but the player played it only with stuttering. I then reduced to 7M, and while the stuttering is only reduced a bit, now heavy artifacts show up. Any further tips for bitrate or codec selection with the PlayonHD-player? I play the file from a relatively sandisc usb stick, could the transfer rate be too slow?

[Red Union Films]

I now tried the Edius-mp4/h.264-export from the 50i project. The problem is, that I don't know what bitrate I should use for playback with the PlayonHD-Player. first tried the suggested 12M rate, but the player played it only with stuttering. I then reduced to 7M, and while the stuttering is only reduced a bit, now heavy artifacts show up. Any further tips for bitrate or codec selection with the PlayonHD-player? I play the file from a relatively sandisc usb stick, could the transfer rate be too slow?

If I play these files from Edius 6 encoded with the Blu-ray output settings, at any bitrate, they play properly off standard USB sticks on my PS3.

Have a look at the X264 thread. It will make higher quality encodes at lower bitrates, and again plays perfectly from USB sticks.

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18828

Dave.

[ennui]

Ok, the bluray options now did the trick.

I first tried the h.264/mp4 option. For what purposes would one use that, web video?

I will try x.264 for best results, but for now I am happy with having a least some fluent HD video.

And if I have my master files as HQ, and then render mpg2 for dvd, or m2ts from it - do I need to adapt the HQ files anyhow to the respective color-spaces or Gammas? I seemed to notice slight differences between the DVD colors played by DVD player, and the HD files colors from the PlayonHD, or could there by different Gammas? Same HQ file, same output device.

[ennui]

Oh, and I still have some artifacts, also with the bluray preset. In difficult-to-encode scenes like fluent water in a river, or a windy meadow with many moving details, i got blocky artifacts in the motionless parts of the picture.

[Red Union Films]

Most encoders know what to do with 709, if you play out MPEG2 encodes from HD source via a DVD player, any slight colour or brightness changes may well be just the playback device or TV.

Some encoders still do not handle fast motion or frame changes very well, even at high bitrates. Although the exporter in Edius is convenient, it is fair to say that it is not the best.

Mainconcept do a very good VC1 encoder, if you want something else for Blu-ray. But it is quite expensive.

If you take the time to get into X264, you will never use another h.264 encoder. Have a look at this clip on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tII5XgBh4L4 Although it is not the best pure picture quality, the 1080P version does look very good and is at a very low bitrate, much lower than what you would encode 1080 Blu-ray. As you may or may not know, youtube uses X264 for it's encodes.

If you have a short HQ master that you can upload for me to download. I could do you some X264 encodes for Blu-ray, that I guarantee will be the best h.264 encodes you will have seen from your material.

Dave.

[ennui]

Thanks for your offer - I think I will get fully into that encoding science after finishing the edit. The x264 scenes looked good. But right now, just using the Edius encoder while still editing, I still do not understand some things fully:

For example, encoding for bluray, the preset CBR encoding looked better than my tries with VBR ?!

What datarates and encoding method would you use here? Filesize is no problem, duration will be about 10 or 15 minutes. But it is crucial not to have artifacts. Can I just use the maximum datarate given by Edius and how does it relate to the bluray spec maximum datarate (46Mbit, I think that was)? will Playon!HD-player still play that? In my understanding, if I have a clip with lots of scenes with nearly no movement at all, and some scenes with much movement (like water floating), the 2-pass-VBR encoding should distribute the ressources better, but that doesnt seem to be the case, though it took much longer to encode 2pass. Last try was like 17M for average rate, 21M for max, but it still showed the artifacts in the "difficult" scenes. Why is that?

With mpeg2 for DVDs, I was more successful, no artifacts and quite good encoding.

[GrassValley_BH]

For example, encoding for bluray, the preset CBR encoding looked better than my tries with VBR ?!

This is not as counter-intuitive as you may think... VBR tries to maintain an average bitrate, and because you can't get "something out of nothing" - whenever more bits are used, bits must be taken away from somewhere else.

Action and detail takes more bits than static shots.

If there is more action and detail than static shots, bits will be "borrowed" from the static scenes. Eventually, so many bits are borrowed from the static scenes that even they look poor.

Setting too large a difference between max bitrate and average, and between min bitrate and average can cause these situations of "too many bits are borrowed" and poor image quality results.