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Encoding software

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Helmet:

--- Quote from: Krudda on June 27, 2012, 11:24:27 AM ---Well, it looks like you want this for re-coding, more than encoding.

--- End quote ---

   Well, I thought I was pretty clear that what I wanted was to simply change some features in order to make them more accessible for different kind of media hardware. For instance, changing the format level for video codecs from 5.1 to 4.1 or changing which is the default stream, things like that.


--- Quote ---Also, what do you mean by "keep" the subtitles?
Burn them into the video or keep the soft option in the file or what?
If you want the subtitles for on a dvd or bluray, you will need to convert them to an appropriate format for dvd/bluray

--- End quote ---

     I'll give you an example. For instance, I wanted to re-encode Fushigi Yuugi from ogm (which is outdated) to mkv. In the process, I also tried to change the audio, so that the japanese stream should be the default one. So the re-encoding went fine, changing the default audio also went smoothly, but the subtitles are well... gone. On my PC, not on some media hardware, like a blu-ray player or something else. In Handbrake, you can select the subtitle track you want, set which to be the default one, but when the re-encoding ends, there is no subtitle in the new mkv file. This happens only when re-encoding ogms.

Bob2004:
If all you want to do is convert an ogm file to mkv, or change the order of streams so that Japanese audio is first, there generally isn't any need to re-encode the whole video, assuming the video itself is h.264 to begin with. That takes hours, will have a quality impact, and is often unnecessary. You might need to re-encode it if you want to change the h.264 profile, and you definitely will if you want to change things like the bitrate etc. But other than that, you can just demux all the streams contained in the ogm file, then mux them into an mkv file instead.

I've never needed to demux ogm files before so I don't know which tool is best for the job, but a very quick google suggests this, which looks like it should work fine. It should just create a separate video file, audio file(s), and subtitle file(s).

For muxing these streams back into an mkv file, use MKVToolNix, specifically the MKVMerge GUI (mmg.exe). You can select the video, audio, and subtitle streams to be used (the files you extracted from the ogm), change their order, set their names, language, etc. It's all fairly self explanatory.

Doing this doesn't actually modify the video, audio, or subtitles themselves. So if you want the video to be at a lower bitrate, then yes, you will have to re-encode it to achieve that. Similarly, changing the audio format (eg. from ogg to aac/ac3/flac/whatever) will require re-encoding the audio. But just changing the container, and changing the order of streams, and their metadata (name, language flag, etc) doesn't require changing the actual streams themselves, so re-encoding them is just a waste of time.

Helmet:

--- Quote from: Bob2004 on June 27, 2012, 03:11:05 PM ---If all you want to do is convert an ogm file to mkv, or change the order of streams so that Japanese audio is first, there generally isn't any need to re-encode the whole video, assuming the video itself is h.264 to begin with. That takes hours, will have a quality impact, and is often unnecessary. You might need to re-encode it if you want to change the h.264 profile, and you definitely will if you want to change things like the bitrate etc. But other than that, you can just demux all the streams contained in the ogm file, then mux them into an mkv file instead.


--- End quote ---

    Well, converting ogm to mkv is just the immediate task. Maybe I was not clear enough, but, in the long-term, these are the tasks which would require the use of a converting tool (for which I opened this inquiry), depending on files in question:

1. Converting old containers like ogm into newer ones, like mkv.
2. Converting h.264 profiles from Level 5.1/5.0 to 4.1 (primary)
3. Changing the default audio stream and subtitle (where it is the case) so that japanese audio + english subtitles would be default.
4. Changing the audio codecs to AAC/AC3 (where it is the case).

    Those are all I can think of right now. Things like bitrate, framerate, sampling rate, resolution will stay as they are in the original files.

     As you probably noticed, it is basically a compatibilization of video files with blu-ray standards. As you might now, some of the fansubbing groups have rushed to use the most advanced h.264 Profiles like 5.0 or 5.1. From having watched both on my PC, I fail to see what benefits do 5.0 or 5.1 provide particularly for resolutions of 1280x720 or less in order to sacrifice for it the compatibility with an entire class of media hardware. The same can be said about the High 10 profile, which had been lauded as "providing better image" or "less size" or whatever, but it does neither, quite the opposite, it makes the picture look like crap. The first time I saw a video file encoded in High 10, my reaction was "what the hell is this shit", because the color of the image looked from place to place like a painting over which someone spilled some drops of water.

Anyway, to each their own, but, as far as I'm concerned, I would rather get rid of all these needless "bells and whistles" with which some groups adorn their releases for no gain which I can see, as I much rather prefer to watch the videos from a blu-ray player than a PC and it does not really cost me anything to re-encode them. The amount of time required would have been indeed a concern in the past, but, with the power of the most recent CPUs, is not one anymore. For instance, my CPU is a Intel i5200K Sandybridge at 3.3 Ghz which takes less than 8 minutes to encode a 300 MB files. Basically, if I leave it on a task over night, it can do an entires series of 60-70 episodes until the morning. Which is a satisfying speed, especially having in mind that not all the series would need re-encoding, but just a part of them.

    For this task, I had one tool, MediaCoder. While it has all the features one could desire, it has one major drawback: you are constantly pestered with requests for donations. As such, I decided to test the waters which are the best tools used for encoding/re-encoding and, from all the suggestions, pick the one which suits my needs the best.
     Handbrake is an acceptable option. It has less features than I would like, but it's usable.
     X-Media Recode seems to be a very good choice as well. So, everything is fine for all aspects, except one: I can't figure out what happens with the subtitles tracks when converting from ogm to mkv. Both handbrake and X-Media Recode have the option to select which subtitle track you want to include in the output file, but no text appears (and, yes, I know where you select the subtitle track - in the WMP which I use, it's in the navigate/subtitle language, but the text simply dissapears during the conversion).
    It's not necessarly something crucial, as ogm files which I need to convert are very few - is an antique container which was abandoned a long time and, for the few files still left encoded in ogm, I can dispense with them. But I would like to know what is the problem, if possible.

Krudda:

--- Quote from: Helmet on June 27, 2012, 04:22:35 PM ---The same can be said about the High 10 profile, which had been lauded as "providing better image" or "less size" or whatever, but it does neither, quite the opposite, it makes the picture look like crap. The first time I saw a video file encoded in High 10, my reaction was "what the hell is this shit", because the color of the image looked from place to place like a painting over which someone spilled some drops of water.
--- End quote ---

Th hi10 profile (10bit) is superior because of many reasons, if you actually research it. The reason it looks like crap is because you haven't updated your decoders to play it. It compresses superior to 8bit and displays colors better than 8bit does.

Now enough ranting. If you want all that, then xmedia-recode does the lot, even 10bit decoding. Give it a try.

Helmet:

--- Quote from: Krudda on June 27, 2012, 06:32:18 PM ---
Th hi10 profile (10bit) is superior because of many reasons, if you actually research it.

--- End quote ---

I dislike the implications that I did not.  :) I know the theoretical drill. Hearing someone telling me a gazillion times how awesome Hi10 is does not matter too much when my eyes tell me otherwise from what I see on screen.


--- Quote ---The reason it looks like crap is because you haven't updated your decoders to play it.
--- End quote ---

     Beg your pardon, I keep my decoders quite updated. I'm using the K-Lite Codec Pack from this spring and many of the releases I was criticizing were from last year.
    Is there something I miss?


--- Quote ---Now enough ranting.
--- End quote ---

     That's a bit off-topic, but, with all due respect, there seems to be a massive discontent outside of the encoding scene in regard to this. Allow me to offer some quotes I found :


--- Quote ---It's not the same story. They're not transitioning to a new standard, they're transitioning to non-standard encodes. The same story would be back in the xvid/divx days when you had to update your codecs every week because the encoders didn't know what the heck they were doing and kept trying new things all the time. When groups started using h.264 a lot of things finally stabilized.

Most of the people who were bitching durning the transition to h.264 were wanting compatibility with old hardware and divx DVD players, but there was already a lot of hardware and software that could play back h.264 correctly. From what I've read so far, there are no hardware decoding/standalone/PMP options for using h.264 with Hi10. The only option is raw CPU power, which is fine for a modern, general use computer, but these days more and more people are using set-top boxes like the Boxee Box, ATV2, Popcorn Hour, GoogleTV/Android devices, phones, tablets, netbooks, ATOM powered HTPCs, etc.

Change in itself isn't bad, but a non-standard change that has no support is bad.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---'Small compatibility sacrifice' is the understatement of the year, considering it completely breaks hardware acceleration and even software decoding in most cases. We have faster connections and more storage than we've ever had at any point and they're whinging about filesize.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---I have to say that I don't mind the concept of 10-bit - better quality with smaller filesize (and reduced banding) is definitely a good achievement. However, forcing it on people when there is still so little support is aggravating.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---If your hobby is to get top of the line high power stuff for your pc, this is cool. But this concept is hitting a small percentage of the market.
Think of devices not capable of playing this format:
iPad, iPhone, Android phone, Android Tablets, Google TV, Roku, Squeezebox, Apple TV, Netbooks, Lower end laptops, etc...

I dont see it breaking out of hobby status until "typical hardware" can deal with it

---edit---
Dont get me wrong - I like the whole concept it is based on
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---I get the impression that many of them are just trying to one-up each other and show themselves off, and once one of them dropped the hammer with 10-bit, the whole line of them followed suit like dominoes. It's clear that they marched forward on this with absolutely no understanding of the technical side of this decision, evidenced by such brilliant recommendations like, "Well, CCCP is putting out a beta next week to support 10-bit, so that should solve everyone's problems." lol

On the Doki website I tried to impress that there are a whole slew of people out there that actually play media on HTPCs (low-end purpose-built boxes like the Zotac IONs, etc. that depend on HW acceleration) that are going to be totally left out by this switchover. The typical response was, "You must have old hardware. It works fine on my laptop." lol x 2

(BTW I am able to play 10-bit 720p on my 2 x 2.2 GHz AMD Opteron, but 10-bit 1080p absolutely chokes the system. Meanwhile 8-bit 1080p plays flawlessly w/o HW decoding. So this 10-bit is going to add significant processing requirements in addition to losing HW acceleration.)
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---The only real reason I see people in the anime communities jumping all over it is because it will allow for a slight drop in file size, good when youre sharing a dozen 720p shows every week, and how well it addresses color banding which is more noticeable in animation than anything else. After first reading about it I started noticing the banding in every animation I watch now. It sucks but it doesnt bother me (and Im sure most other people) enough to outweigh the issues encoding everything into a new format brings. Ontop of that, the only reason you really get banding is because the bitrate is so much lower than the source just so the file size is reasonable to distribute online. If these people really cared more about quality over getting things for free they would just buy the media from the source, ie Blu-ray.

This is personally why I dont care in the end that it isnt supported and Im happy waiting until hardware decoding comes around to do it. It would be nice to have it in XBMC, even if it is just software decoding, for the compatibility. But such groups as these obviously dont care about compatibility and never have. This has always been an issue with them and this is just another example of it, as long as it runs fine on their machines to hell with everyone else, its not their problem. I have run into this time and time again with "their" content as Ive been watching fansubs since the 90s, even with that new-fangled codec called DivX.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---The benefits of smaller file sizes are nice... but the cost of losing video acceleration isn't worth it IMO. Hard drives are cheap and easy to come by. The changes to video quality, while apparent in some cases, are only really "meh". It'd be a good idea if it didn't force EVERYBODY onto CPU-based (software) decoding. Meanwhile the entire industry is trying to move away from that idea with APUs, SoC, etc...

I tried to carry the banner on the Doki forums but people just didn't get it. As long as it played okay on their 720p laptops, they didn't understand the problem.
--- End quote ---

So, albeit I already knew the theory with Hi10, I did one more search on google for "why is Hi10 better". The first result which emerged was a thread dedicated to Hi10 and its support. You can see above the opinions. A lot of people don't seem to be head over heels about it.


--- Quote ---If you want all that, then xmedia-recode does the lot, even 10bit decoding. Give it a try.
--- End quote ---

    I did. It works well, except for the issue I already mentioned, which is to preserve the subtitles when converting from ogm to mkv.

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