Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 46

Well, sure. I mean, if I can get my hands on it, I'd love to check it out.

Harmy said:

Well, sure. I mean, if I can get my hands on it, I'd love to check it out.

I have a copy of the LD, but my capture setup isn't in-place yet.

DJ did a basic DVD5 preservation of it years ago and it's on Usenet. I can't attest to how representative of the LD it is (his capture card may not have been calibrated, etc.), but it should give you an overall idea of what the colors on the LD look like. Would you like me to upload it somewhere for you?

That would be cool, thanks :-)

At the very least, I'd also like to see a screencap or two. You can never have too much Empire.

Harmy said:

That would be cool, thanks :-)

OK, I'm downloading it now.

I'm uploading it now. I'll PM you the link when it's done.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool. :)

Harmy said:

Cool. Cool, cool, cool. :)

PM sent. :-)

It looks like DJ's capture card might not have been calibrated when he did this capture. My LD looks much more vibrant on my colorimeter-calibrated display.

Harmy said:

Cool. Cool, cool, cool. :)

 Channeling Abed are we?

:-)

Wow what a co-inky-dink !
I've been IVTCing that old d_j disc this week.
Doesn't affect the colours of course...

So, I'm testing my new computer's capabilities and I decided to do this by finishing the first half-hour of ESB v2.0 and trying to render it the same way I would an AVCHD version - this led me to two realizations:

A) My new computer rocks!

B) I tried rendering the first half-hour of ESB v2.0 with the same settings I used for the v2.1 AVCHD of SW and the quality of the AVCHD encode isn't very good compared to the results I was getting for the SW AVCHD, so this means I'll need to create a new set of settings for ESB's rendering. As I'm not very knowledgeable about such things, I could use some help with that - this is the script I used (written for me by Jan, who I'm not sure is still around here but I sure owe that guy for helping me immensely back when I was rendering SW v2.0):

"K:\\FINAL ENCODE\x264.exe" --pass 1 --bitrate 6500 --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset slow --keyint 48 --sar 1:1 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 15000 --vbv-maxrate 15000 --open-gop --weightp 0 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 --me umh --merange 64 --deblock -1:-1 --qcomp 0.8 --stats ".stats" --output NUL "K:\FINAL ENCODE\ESB WP 1.avs


"K:\\FINAL ENCODE\x264.exe" --pass 2 --bitrate 6500 --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset slow --keyint 48 --sar 1:1 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 15000 --vbv-maxrate 15000 --open-gop --weightp 0 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 --me umh --merange 64 --deblock -1:-1 --qcomp 0.8 --stats ".stats" --output "G:\ESB_WPfile1.264" "K:\FINAL ENCODE\ESB WP 1.avs"

PAUSE

And here are some PNG screens showing the difference between the original lossless render from AE and the x264 encode made from it using the above script. The screens marked A are from the lossless render and those marked B are from the x264 encode. I uspcaled them to 1920x1080 because the difference is much more visible in full-screen 1080p. It is also much more intrusive in movement - any suggestions on how to alter the script to make it better? It doesn't matter if it makes the rendering slower - with the new CPU it should run quite fast anyway :-)

After I have the new script ready, I'm going to test it by rendering the whole first half of ESB v2.0 (which should be done soon) and post it as a workprint.

Hi Harmy, 

Have you looked into using CRF, rather than 2-pass encoding in x264? If you're not familiar with it, let me explain. Instead of simply setting an arbitrary bit rate, which may be great for one scene but under/overkill for another, you set a visual quality level. (CRF 18-16 and "slow" or "slower" is a good setting, IMHO.) X264 then decides what bit rate it needs to get you there automatically. 

You can select different presets to speed up the encode.  The slower presets will deliberate longer, but reduce your file size. Faster presets take less time to encode, but lead to bigger files. No matter what speed preset you select, the visual quality will be essentially the same (though there's some debate that the slower presets are a bit better), only the final file size will vary. 

I've had great luck with CRF. You can read more about it at: https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/ConstantQuality and http://slhck.info/articles/crf .

I hope this made sense! Keep up the great work! :)

Thank you - I'll try that. Could the same script be used with 64bit version of x264?

Well, it's enough to put me off the idea :-)

Jan said:

Edit: One thing that just came to my mind is your rendering/encoding process. Do you have a lossless intermediate of some kind and then encode using x264.exe? Or does all that happen within the Adobe software?

 I render a UT Video lossless file from After Effects and then I just run the x264 script in command line.

Congrats to your new PC;-) What kind of specs does it have?

Intel Core i7-4770K

GIGABYTE GA-Z87-D3HP - Intel Z87

Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 2400 XMP

2x WD Red - 3TB

In that case, use the 64bit x264, it is way faster on my machine.

Keep an eye on the WD REDs, I have had a bunch fail, but they do seem to fail in the first two months. If they last longer than that they seem to go on forever.

OK, good to know.

And I imagine the 64bit x264 would be fast, since the 32bit only uses about 2GB out of my 16GB of memory.

Do the HDDs need to be empty for the tests? And how long do they take?