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Someone needs to invent a non-lossy video compressor

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I've grown tired of seeing compression artifacts.

- I watch my Star Wars dvds, with a dark firelit scene, and I see squares floating around the screen.

- I watch Ben Hur, and I see the same thing.

- My King Arthur dvd has strange graininess to it. Plus pixelation.

DVDs are supposedly "hi-res" with 525 horizontal resolution, but I don't see it. Not when the result has visible pixelation. I still prefer my 425 res Laserdiscs and Super-VHS tapes..... they don't suffer from compression artifacts.




Now that HD-DVD/Blu-ray has arrived, I hope someone takes advantage of the 20 times increase in space, and invents a lossless codec, so we can view our movies w/o artifacts.

troy
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There already are lossless video codecs. The problem is that you can't currently compress a lossless movie down to a size that will fit on a disc (even Blu-ray sized, maybe possible once more than two-layer discs are available, though it won't be HD).

So lossless isn't really an option, what is is better lossy codecs. MPEG2 was never really that great, whereas MPEG4 is quite decent already. Most Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies will be encoded using one of two MPEG4 based codecs and therefore will be much better quality already, maybe enough that you wont notice any more artefacting, plus they will have the bonus of even greater horizontal resolution.

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Originally posted by: Gillean
MPEG2 was never really that great, whereas MPEG4 is quite decent already. Most Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies will be encoded using one of two MPEG4 based codecs and therefore will be much better quality already


I hope you're right... that what I'm seeing is just a poor codec (mpeg2) and that future codecs like mpeg4 will fix the problem.

Just curious, using a lossless codec, how many hours of NTSC video can you squeeze onto a 100 gigabyte Blu-Ray disc?

troy
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About 2.78 hours, no sound. Using the huffyuv losseless codec's compression ratios.

Lossless is good for editing, but BAD for consumer use.

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Yeah, I notice those MPEG-2 compression artifacts all the time as well. I watched Carl Dryer's "Vampyr" the other night and the compression on that DVD was absolutely HORRENDOUS!

Gillean is right: MPEG-4, especially the H.264 codec, is amazing. If you want to see for yourself, get Quicktime 7 and go to www.apple.com/trailers . They have a few trailers in High-Def that you can watch (granted your computer is fast enough) and the quality is superb. The great thing is, the new Blu-Ray/HD-DVD fomats have to support it!

On the topic of using Lossless compression on the new disks coming out: I don't think that the bit-rate is fast enough on those drives. I think the peak data rate is 30Mbps on Blu-Ray/HD-DVD. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if this were true, there'd be no way you could play those films in a normal disk drive. You'd have to copy the files to your harddrive and watch them there.

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Originally posted by: skyman8081
About 2.78 hours, no sound. Using the huffyuv losseless codec.

So figure 2.7 hours with sound, on a 100gig Blu-ray DVD. I'd be happy with that. At least there wouldn't be any compression artifacts.

troy
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Christ you people are picky. How close do you sit to your TV's to see this stuff. I've got my nice DLP 50 some inch thing in the orner and I look at this fire you speak of and see nothing worth caring about...oh wait...nothing at all and I'm pretty damn close to it. This also needs to b moved to well..not Star Wars.

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You spend money getting the high-quality DVD version, and that's what you want - high quality. NOT artifacts.

Else, you might as well get the cheaper VHS version.

troy
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Originally posted by: electrictroy
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Originally posted by: skyman8081
About 2.78 hours, no sound. Using the huffyuv losseless codec.

So figure 2.7 hours with sound, on a 100gig Blu-ray DVD. I'd be happy with that. At least there wouldn't be any compression artifacts.

troy



Did you not read what I wrote? You can't play the lossless codec off a Blu-ray disk for one major reason: BIT RATE. The mechanics inside a diskdrive can only access so much information per second. Huffyuv uses a 38 megabytes per second bit-rate. That's a hefty amount of data. Bluray can only access 4.5 Megabytes per second. It is thus IMPOSSIBLE to play that strong of a codec off of a relatively slow medium.

This is why you need compression. Compression isn't necessarily a bad thing when it's done right. The new compression schemes they'll be using for the new HD content is amazing. I agree with you that MPEG-2 sucks, but when you want digital quality picture, you have to make some compromises.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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"So figure 2.7 hours with sound, on a 100gig Blu-ray DVD. I'd be happy with that. At least there wouldn't be any compression artifacts."

Too bad Blu-ray only holds 50 Gbs.

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Originally posted by: Mavimao
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Originally posted by: electrictroy
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Originally posted by: skyman8081
About 2.78 hours, no sound. Using the huffyuv losseless codec.

So figure 2.7 hours with sound, on a 100gig Blu-ray DVD. I'd be happy with that. At least there wouldn't be any compression artifacts

Did you not read what I wrote?


No I did not. I was replying to Skyman's post, not yours. I didn't read your post until some 15 minutes later. It's a shame HD/Blu-ray DVD can't handle lossless compression..... perhaps by 2015, someone will invent a new disc that can.



As for Blu-ray's capacity, it is *currently* 50 gigabytes, true. But Sony's already developed 100 gigabytes in the lab, and they will add it to the standard before the end of 2005, with PS3's capable of playing 100 gig games/movies.

troy