"Quality Enhanced Bitrate Squeezer" QEBS FASM Encodes

[iR8]

Long time lurker here... been searching everywhere for information on these encodes that are floating around. I'm curious about the actual encoder (modified x264?) that is creating these.

They specialize in super-low bitrates. I'm talking REALLY low. Like 540p at 300kbps low.

For the size and bitrate, they look astoundingly good. However, high action and darker scenes look quite a bit worse than still, well-lit scenes. My guess is they've allocated less bitrate for high action scenes than standard x264.

They obviously use a number of filters, as there is extreme smoothing in some areas, but also sharpened to the point that some detail is still retained.

The only information they give on their encoder and settings is this:

FASM Quality Enhancer Bitrate Squeezer is h264 compression method optimized
directly for lowbitrate HD contents. It is constantly being improved,  each
revision brings quality to a new level. Its efficiency over standard x264
encoding is explained by the same reason as XVID encodes are better than DIVX3


The name FASM was derived from assembler efficiency. If you write something directly in assembler it is usually much faster and takes much less size, than the same thing written in C, Java etc... It also means FAchman SoofMan - founders of FASM :)

Anyone have any insight to what they are using? It could just be vanilla x264 with the info stripped out, and a special chain of filters applied. Anyone an expert of filters have any ideas on which ones?

I'm not really interested in watching these types of encodes, but I am curious as to how such low bitrates are achieved.

Mediainfo:

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L3.0
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 5 frames
Codec ID                         : avc1
Codec ID/Info                    : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                         : 2h 33mn
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 302 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 2 457 Kbps
Width                            : 960 pixels
Height                           : 432 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 2.222
Frame rate mode                  : Constant
Frame rate                       : 23.976 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.030
Stream size                      : 332 MiB (89%)
Writing library                  : FASM Quality Enhancer Bitrate Squeezer 3.4 (c)2010 Fachman
Encoded date                     : UTC 2011-05-29 22:27:04
Tagged date                      : UTC 2011-05-29 22:27:34
Color primaries                  : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics         : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients              : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

And here are 2 samples:

960x432 186 kbps
http://www.mediafire.com/?7738kogumus4y8e

960x432 842 kbps
http://www.mediafire.com/?38vk7l1v1ln3nng

[aedipuss]

maybe it's more than 2 pass vbr. some of us used to do 9 pass cce encodes for maximum efficiency when doing mpeg-2 encoding.

[Selur]

looks to me like some heavy denoiser was run before encoding,.. nothing more
(encoding more than 2passes when using x264 rarely does anything worth the effort,...)

[iR8]

looks to me like some heavy denoiser was run before encoding,.. nothing more
(encoding more than 2passes when using x264 rarely does anything worth the effort,...)

There is definitely heavy denoising, but with the added sharpness it doesn't look half bad. But even with the denoising I don't think x264 could achieve results this good at these bitrates.

[jman98]

Looks like an updated version of an old MPEG-2 encoding trick I've seen used back in the old SVCD days. You set the avg. bit rate ridiculously low and set the maximum bit rate to much much higher.

[Selur]

But even with the denoising I don't think x264 could achieve results this good at these bitrates.

Nope it definitely can, from time to time Dark Shikari (x264 main developer) posts some samples of what is possible (without prefiltering) with x264 whenever a new feature emerges that modifies HVS/PSY or quantization in general and to be frank in my eyes the quality of the samples isn't that great. (sadly there's no demonstration with source which would allow a real comparison).

Cu Selur

[mkvonly]

The developer is Polish and if I'm not wrong his website is:
http://www.soofman.friko.pl/
It's a pity really he/they don't make it public so others can enjoy that high quality in that small size. It's like when a medicine for AIDS was found and kept secret letting people die lol, sorry for exaggeration
Anyway, I compared my 1080p rip (16/9 AR 1080p, 6000 KB/s, Tesa with 64, 5 reframes, 6 bframes, rc=80, pyramid 2..etc..so very high) with the fasm version and the images were 100% identical...BUT in a fast moving & dark scene my x264 was slightly clearer and more precise. Fasm rip is half the size though and took probably not more then a day, while mine took 4 days encoding!

[logomito]

Ich hab keine Ahnung ob die Suchmaschinen zensieren, aber "QEBS FASM" Suchen bringen nur torrent downloads als Ergebnis. Hat jemand von Euch infos wo man diesen Codec bekommen kann oder auf welche Homepage der Entwickler umgezogen ist?

Dank im Vorraus, logomito

eng: I have no idea if the search engines censor my searches, but I only get torrent downloads infos when searching for the QEBS FASM codec. Anybody has infos how to get this codec or what´s the new homepage of the developer?

Thanks in advance, logomito

[CrashUK]

this would be very usefull on android phone. where do you find the FASM Quality Enhancer Bitrate Squeezer?

[thisguythatguy]

As far as I can tell it's nothing special, just a bunch of Hokum. The encoder behind "Fasm" likes to use a bunch of rhetoric to make his encodes look better than they are; he even makes it seem as if his audio is something special, when Ive seen plenty of groups (specific for small sizes) with far better audio without a ton of mumbo-jumbo surrounding it.

Fasm/QEBS is nothing more than tweaked x264 until the "developer" lets us in on what he has done that is soooo "special" (quotations used because I believe he hasnt developed anything, just tweaked settings he likes to boast about, I mean who doesnt tweak settings these days??) Before I get flamed with "The mediainfo says writing library Fasm...bullshit sullshit" That line can be edited within the x264 program to always have whatever you want to put there, takes some tweaking, but can be done, and once it is done it is always there and thats all that will show.

Also the comparison screenshots fasm uses is subjective and rude; a real encoder would never compare their encode against another encode, only the source - but thats the typical mentality of all encoders from the certain site fasm operates out of, they all think they are the best while providing mediocre content

If you are impressed with Fasm for mobile devices, I suggest you do a little more looking around, plenty of these groups out there and they all produce more than Fasm and better quality IMO