Adobe Premiere - MainConcept's H.264 vs x264 open source encoder

[rallymax]

I think I and jagabo are saying the same thing
question is - what's in the buffer? A HxW array of Y values then a HxW/4 array of U then V then repeat?

[jagabo]

I think I and jagabo are saying the same thing
question is - what's in the buffer? A HxW array of Y values then a HxW/4 array of U then V then repeat?

Yes.

<edit> Oops, no, it's Y then V then U.
http://www.fourcc.org/yuv.php#YV12
</edit>

[rallymax]

and one last question. YUV12 is unsigned 8 bit right?
ie: BT.601 is 0...255 and BT.709 is 16...235

[jagabo]

and one last question. YUV12 is unsigned 8 bit right?
ie: BT.601 is 0...255 and BT.709 is 16...235

Y is unsigned (0 to 255). For rec 601 and 709 black is a Y=16, full white at Y=235. Values outside that range are valid though. I believe V and U are unsigned, 16 - 240.

For interlaced YV12 the the first row of U and V values applies to the first and third row of Y values, the second row of U and V values applies to the second and fourth row of Y values. Etc. I believe technically, YV12 is always progressive and that interlaced YV12 should have a different fourcc. But as far as I can tell, no software does this.

[rallymax]

ah. good to know. I was going to ignore the interlace for now but I can design the converter to cater for it now I know it is x+1 for progressive and x+2 for interlace.

[rallymax]

Hi all. a quick update to say I'm making progress. Rgb to yv12 was hard to get right but I think I have it now. Anyhow I hope to get more done this weekend.

[creamyhorror]

Cool. <3

[creamyhorror]

Hey rallymax, the libx264 API is changing somewhat:

x264 official announcement: major API change

Not sure if it'll affect you much, but do take note.

[rallymax]

thx for the note.
I've been trying to work on it but I'm slammed with work and a newborn so I'm running out of time.
But it is getting close

[creamyhorror]

Ouch, newborn comes first

[rallymax]

just a note to say that this isn't forgotten - just on a little pause.
I've also been talking to an Adobe engineer and am changing the plugin from being a "custom compiler" to the new "encoder" plugin that plugs into Adobe Media Encoder. That way x264 rendering will work for Premiere, After Effects and in Media Encoder for transcoding. More importantly - it will work in CS4 since the "custom compiler" type has been end of lifed (so it would have only worked in versions 2.0 to cs3).

[rallymax]

Hi all,
I have some good news! I have the dialog box working and am in the process of pushing frames to the x264 encoder. One quick little question... Has there been any major or significant changes since the slice support was added that I should be aware of?

[creamyhorror]

Heya rallymax. They've put a feature called weighted p-prediction into x264, so there's a new 'weightp' argument now. It's on (=1) by default, I believe, but I don't know if that's the case for libx264. It apparently isn't compatible with Apple TV and possibly other decoders. They've also gotten b-pyramid working with mb-tree (it wasn't before). I don't really know how these recent changes affect your project, since you're dealing with the API.

MeGUI has become problematic as a project partly because it was hard to keep up with the rapid changes in x264's options. That's the trouble with dialogue boxes that attempt to present every possible option. I don't know if you'll face the same trouble, but to make it easier to maintain, I suggest focusing on the main profiles, presets and tunings instead of offering all possible options (if you aren't already doing that).

Good luck.

[rallymax]

good to know.
I'm trying to not get distracted by playing with the window too much. the real challenge right now is good RGBA444 to YUV12 and then getting the "GetFrame" from Adobe to play nice with the x264 "p_read_frame".
Once that's working I can start to nice-up the window.
'fortunately it was easier to "borrow" heavily from the command line parser. eg if you choose the tuning drop down box to be "film" it passes the equivalent command line argument to command line parser. It made it so that I didn't have to keep up with the lib changes since the command line gui code is just one file (x264.c + libx264.a = x264.exe) and presumably that is still working with each new feature. All I have to do is keep up with the changing the window to match what's possible on the command line.

anyhow, it's close and I'm working on getting result instead of making it sexy right now.

[creamyhorror]

Great, so you don't have to worry so much about options in detail. It sounds like you need someone with experience to advise you on the Adobe-x264 interfacing, but I don't know what to suggest besides posting on the H.264/AVC forums on Doom9 or Doom10.

[rallymax]

I have created my first output from Premiere!
lots of small things to clean up but it works!

[lordsmurf]

Sounds interesting. Look forward to the CS4 plugin.

[rallymax]

Hi guys,
sometime last year I came across a tool that would give me the info about the container and it's streams. I can't find that post anywhere. Does anyone know what that tool is? I'm trying to work out what has gone wrong with my mpegts and m2v outputs.

[rallymax]

btw, where should I post questions about FFmpeg library usage? I'm having some problems on that front.

[creamyhorror]

The tool you want might be MediaInfo. About ffmpeg, they have a mailing list and probably IRC channel I believe. But I've not been to either.

[rallymax]

Thx for that.
Can someone have a look at this attached file and tell me what's wrong with it.
It's playing fine (we except that the image is falling apart - presumably because the datarate is too low) on the PC I'm developing on but isn't working on my Windows 7 Ultimate laptop (which has Micrsoft's bundled H.264 decoder).
The development machine is decoding using Main Concept's H.264 decoder (I think).

myoutput.m2v

[poisondeathray]

MPEG-PS isn't a standard container format for h.264. Most people won't have proper splitter/source filter for it

If you use mkvmerge, and re-wrap, then most people will be able to view it, then technically nothing is wrong with it (except maybe the low bitrate)

[aedipuss]

did you try naming it properly? .m2v is for mpeg-2, try .m4v or .mp4

mpc-hc plays it either way on win7u here.

[jagabo]

Isn't the black level way off?

[rallymax]

Isn't the black level way off?

is it?
pls explain.
Premiere gives out BGRA8:8:8:8 in BT601.
I'm yet to find a library that will change BT601 to BT709 so it's the same for now.
is that why the black is "off"

[rallymax]

MPEG-PS isn't a standard container format for h.264. Most people won't have proper splitter/source filter for it

What is a standard container that holds H.264 and audio (AC3, DTS, PCM etc) and what is its proper file extension.
Also what is the standard PCM? There are dozens in the list to choose from.

little endian 16bit unsigned?
other...

[rallymax]

better - especially the datarate.... (using "m4v" output format)..... but can't hear the AC3 tone sweep.
can any of you?


myoutput.mp4

[poisondeathray]

I can hear it. You need a splitter that supports AC3 audio in .mp4 container. This was added to .mp4 spec about a year ago. You can use MPCHC or KMplayer for example. AC3 is completely compliant in .mp4, but some old software still have not been updated to the new specs.

I'm not sure what the standard PCM is, there are small differences between platforms, like MAC vs. PC prefer small variations, big vs. small endian etc.. a lot of it has to do with just the order of bytes. My understanting is that they are all basically the same thing besides order, and can be losslessly converted. http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=PCM

Standard containers for h.264 video are transport streams (.e.g .m2ts, .ts, .mts) , .mp4, .mkv, .flv. x264 internally supports .mkv, .mp4, .flv muxing , although a lot of 3rd party tools use other muxers

[rallymax]

well, I found some other color charts online. that Macbeth one wasn't helping since it's borders are grey not black. but it did help me get a basic frame out.
So anyhow this video is using pictures from here http://tirnanog.fate.jp/tmp/sample/ITU-R/
The first 2 seconds is 1080_arcb_pcscale.png which I think is BT709. The next is 1080_arcb_tvscale.png for 2 seconds then a grade. Since all the black is washed out in the second I'm thinking that the tvscale.png is BT601 and is coming out of Adobe as BT601 but needs to be colorspace converted before it's encoded.
What do you think?

Anyhow, it looks good, but I'm not sure if it's colorspace correct "great".

'lots of gui tweaks to do yet, most of the parameters are hard coded right now.

Can you play this file and hear the AC3 tone sweep? I still can't hear it but can see the video.


myoutput2.mp4

[rallymax]

I can hear it. You need a splitter that supports AC3 audio in .mp4 container. This was added to .mp4 spec about a year ago. You can use MPCHC or KMplayer for example. AC3 is completely compliant in .mp4, but some old software still have not been updated to the new specs.

I'm not sure what the standard PCM is, there are small differences between platforms, like MAC vs. PC prefer small variations, big vs. small endian etc.. a lot of it has to do with just the order of bytes. My understanting is that they are all basically the same thing besides order, and can be losslessly converted. http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=PCM

Standard containers for h.264 video are transport streams (.e.g .m2ts, .ts, .mts) , .mp4, .mkv, .flv. x264 internally supports .mkv, .mp4, .flv muxing , although a lot of 3rd party tools use other muxers

Thanks for that info. I'll not worry about the ac3 then for now. do you happen to know where to look to get the BluRay required PCM spec?