x264 BD compliant "perfect" settings

[deleted user]

If the colors look identical, you haven't really done much wrong. The main danger is that you get an inconsistency in the color spaces (let's say Premiere decodes to RGB with Rec601 and x264 then encodes back to YUV with Rec709, which would result in slightly different colors). Otherwise the only thinkable "loss" is possible rounding errors in the color space conversion ... which I think is FAIRLY negligible to the point where its impossible to notice even if you were pixel peeping the lossless conversion ... much less after running it through an encoder like x264 with its quantization matrices that introduce magnitudes more imprecision than that.

Btw, you can check an encode while it is running, at least with commandline. Just open the .264 file in MPC-HC. You will not be able to jump forward or anything, but you can check the result in the beginning rather easily. If you don't wanna risk opening the file itself, you can make a copy of the in-progress .264 file and check that one.

[X5gb]

Yea, I know I could check now via mpc-be but don't want to do anything on the pc while its encoding just in case it interferes with the process. I don't mind waiting for the result and will more than likely like I said redo the whole thing, as I can't remember if I did the export using render depth option at 32bit rather than only 24bit.

[h666]

hello,
after a long search for the perfect x264 BD compliant encoding setting I came across this great forum.

I'm making my first encode at the moment and I'm very exited about it. I used the direct path to the video file (in this case ".avc") since the source is already in 1920x1080.

If the video file has a  lower resolution which I need to upscale to 720p or 1080p I wonder what the perfect AviSynth script would look like. My suggestion was

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\Video\Encoder\AviSynth\Plugins\plugins\DGAVCDecode.dll") or LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\Video\Encoder\AviSynth\Plugins\plugins\DGDecode.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\Video\Encoder\AviSynth\Plugins\plugins\Decomb.dll")
AVCSource ("Film.dga",cpu=6) or MPEG2Source ("Film.d2v",cpu=6)
Spline36Resize(1920x1080)

but it didn't work. I tried to use the script with the x264 batch but it didn't start at all. What am I doing wrong ?
thanks in advance for your help

regards
-h

[bronan]

but it didn't work. I tried to use the script with the x264 batch but it didn't start at all. What am I doing wrong ?
thanks in advance for your help

regards
-h

You might be better off getting it to work right with an Avisynth editor like AVSEdit, then copy paste your script into your x264 encoder.

[h666]

I never used an editor before instead I always tried to figure it out myself but thanks, bronan, I will definitely try AVSEdit out.

So my first encode with x264 is finished and looks absolutely amazing. I didn't calculate any bitrates and just used the suggested setting which was made by spoRv and Chewtobacca and it just fits on a BD 25 with 2 Stereo audio layers in lpcm. So I guess I was lucky here. I don't think that I'll always be that lucky and therefore read a bit through how to calculate the ideal bitrate for a project. As far as I understood I need to set the "vbv-maxrate 40000" a bit lower in order to make some sources fit on a BD25. According to a post of spoRv http://blog.sporv.com/advanced-kush-gauge-calculator/ was suggested as a guideline. Seems to be easy to use except that I need to figure out what to chose in "Motion Rank".

My above mentioned first encode was a 1920x1080, 14.6 Mb/s, 16:9,  23.976 AVC which had a size of 10,4gb and the final encode came out as with 17,8 gb. The encoding took 11 hours with a Intel i5-4460 @ 3,2 GHz and 8gb ram.
This is a pretty okay encoding time for a movie duration of 01:38:25.

The only thing I didn't understand is that the encode now has a framrate of 24.0833. Why is that ? I thought 24 would do for 23.976 or should I use "--keyint 23.976" indead ?
Or should I continue to use  "--keyint 24" but use an additional avisynth command such as AssumeFPS(23.970) ?

Thanks in advance for your help
-h

[spoRv]

Assumefps(24000,1001)

[h666]

Assumefps(24000,1001)

thanks. My AviSynth scrip looks like this

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\Video\Encoder\AviSynth\Plugins\DGAVCDecode.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\Video\Encoder\AviSynth\Plugins\Decomb.dll")
AVCSource("E:\Projects\MOVIE\video.dga")
AssumeFPS(24000,1001)

There is no error in the script and it's saved in the same folder as the x264 batch under the name "HDtoBD.avs"

but still the batch only starts for a half second and then disappears.

so its's

Code:

................--output NUL "Input_File.avs"
.................--output "E:\Projects\MOVIE\Output_File.264" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Video\Encoder\AviSynth\AviSynth Scripte\HD-BD\HDtoBD.avs"

but it doesn't work.  Without the avs it works fine though but I need an avs for future encodes so it would be nice to make that work. What am I doing wrong here ?

[spoRv]

IIRC a small program is needed to read .avs files...

[h666]

it's working now. I forgot that although I use AviSynth 2.6 it is still a 32bit tool and therefore can't work with the 64bit x264. I used the 32bit version of x264 instead. It starts running but before it starts I'm getting 2 error messages telling me that the x264-r2901-7d0ff22.exe is missing the nvcuvid.dll and d3dx9_30.dll in order to work. After I confirm those messages the batch starts encoding anyways. Can I ignore those messages and encode anyways or what do they mean ? I searched a bit but couldn't find a solution which makes any sense. I don't even have a Nvidia graphic card...

I was also curious if I even have to use the avisynth script at all. spoRv What do you think about the old fps command which could be used and would look like
........--tune film --fps 24000/1000 --force-cfr --keyint 24............
Wouldn't that be fine as well?

[spoRv]

Avisynth script is not mandatory; indeed, I always render a lossless version, and use it as final source to feed x264 encoder.

And, as I use only avisynth, I always put assumefps (if/when needed) after loading source/s.