anyone know of any gui's that use vp9?

[deadrats]

as the title suggests, i would like to play around with vp9 but i can't find any software that supports it, does anyone know of any.

and yes, i know about Hybrid but with apologies to Selur the software is really poorly written, it's buggy as hell, the interface is not well designed at all and half the time the encode fails for no apparent reason at all.

so if anyone knows how i can encode some vp9, that would be appreciated.

[vhelp]

i searched and searched and searched and searched and searched, but still can't even find a vp9 or vpxenc.exe or webm encoder app that is what it says it is. the whole thing is convoluted and frustrating. worthless. forget a gui.

[ricardouk]

http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1638455&postcount=330

not a gui...slow as hell...need to pipe it with ffmpeg or use uncompressed video, ive folowed the examples posted in that thread but been unable to get it working

[Selur]

@deadrats: would be nice if you would report bugs, so that I can fix them
(for me vp9 encoding, with the binaries posted by Rumbah over at doom9s works fine)

Cu Selur

Ps.: knowing bugs whould help since I was planning to release a new version later today, but I will put a halt on that for now.

[deadrats]

@vhelp: yeah, that's been my experience as well.

@Selur: it's hard to report bugs because, and don't take this the wrong way, the whole app behaves as one giant bug, at least every time i have tried to encode anything to vp9, but here are a few examples:

the source is my favorite file for testing encoders because it is the single toughest source i have evidently for apps to deal with. here's the media info from the source file:

Complete name : G:\FAVORITES\rws_asa_london_1920_12000-hd.wmv
Format : Windows Media
File size : 3.09 GiB
Duration : 36mn 24s
Overall bit rate : 12.2 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 12.1 Mbps
Encoded date : UTC 2010-02-23 03:21:59.000

Video
ID : 2
Format : VC-1
Codec ID : WVC1
Codec ID/Hint : Microsoft
Duration : 36mn 24s
Bit rate : 1 bps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.000
Stream size : 273 Bytes (0%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : WMA
Format version : Version 2
Codec ID : 161
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Audio
Duration : 36mn 24s
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 33.3 MiB (1%)

it's an adult movie downloaded, legally, from a website from a series they call "real wife stories", i usually test encode the first 7560 frames as it contains lots of minute details in both the actors/actresses faces as well as other parts of the body, i have found it to be an excellent test of an encoders ability to maintain the fine details, and the sad thing is that no encoder i have ever seen is able to reproduce the source file exactly, even the much vaunted x264 with all the settings maxed out and 12 mb/s of bit rate fails to produce satisfying results, at least in my opinion.

using Hybrid, under "main", i input the file and under "video handling" i choose "vp8/vp9", under audio handling i choose "auto add (first)". under the vp8/vp9 tab i choose:

average bit rate (1-pass) - 12000 kbits/s, cbr, codec vp9, profile complex, basic speed control good, cpu modifier 0, deadline per frame 1000000 (this is default), tiles 8/8, noise filtering sharpness threads are all 0, static threshold and error resilience are unchecked, configuration is vp8 hybrid default.

under advanced i set gop min/max to 0/30, frame drop is 0%, spatial resampling is checked, the other options are greyed out. rate control i leave everything at default.

cropping i leave blank, filtering i disable deinterlacing (it defaults to "auto"), under audio i choose "reencode", aac, low complexity, bit rate is 128, and keep input sample rate is checked. for output container i choose mkv.

then i add the job to the queue, start the job and monitor what happens. it says it's encoding the audio with ffmpeg and it lists a bunch of things to do, including "encoding video to vp8 with vpxenc (1 pass bit rate) even though i choose vp9, generating tagging infos, creating mkv/webm file, deleting rws_asa_09_38_04_3510_03.xml, deleting 09_38_04_3510_03.vp9, deleting 09_38_04_3510_03.mkv.

then is proceeds to finish encoding the audio (you see the progress bar fill to 100%), and audio file is generated, and when it gets to encoding video the progress bar goes straight to 100%, it says finished next to it and the same thing happens with all the other items on the list and all i'm left with is an audio file.

i've also tried with much easier sources, like standard dvd spec mpeg-2 but the same thing happens, i don't even know how to put this into a bug report, it just doesn't work.

and while i'm at it, not to be a dick or anything, but you really need to rethink the lay out of your gui, it's way to busy, for lack of a better term, it's poorly laid out and not intuitive at all.

maybe you should consider using gui creator for your front end.

[Selur]

"encoding video to vp8 with vpxenc (1 pass bit rate) even though i choose vp9"
that's a cosmetic bug, should be 'vp8/vp9 with vpxenc'

In general it's far easier to hunt a bug if you create a debugoutput. (see: http://www.selur.de/support)

then is proceeds to finish encoding the audio (you see the progress bar fill to 100%), and audio file is generated, and when it gets to encoding video the progress bar goes straight to 100%, it says finished next to it and the same thing happens with all the other items on the list and all i'm left with is an audio file.

my guess it that for some reason mencoder or ffmpeg whichever is used as decoder has some problems with your source.
For mencoder it might help to download the 'binary codec pack' from http://mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ extract it next to your Hybrid (mencoder/mplayer binary) version and rename the extracted folder to 'codecs' Hybrids mplayer&mencoder can then use the included decoders, which might help with the wmv file.

i've also tried with much easier sources, like standard dvd spec mpeg-2 but the same thing happens, i don't even know how to put this into a bug report, it just doesn't work.

create a debugoutput, this way I can see the command line calls used and a bunch of additional informations.

and while i'm at it, not to be a dick or anything, but you really need to rethink the lay out of your gui, it's way to busy, for lack of a better term, it's poorly laid out and not intuitive at all.

Sorry, but I doubt that I will change the layout any time soon.

-> found the problem,...
I misinterpreted the info:

  --tile-columns=<arg>           Number of tile columns to use, log2
            --tile-rows=<arg>              Number of tile rows to use, log2

seems like '--tile-columns' is restricted to 0-6 and "--tile-rows" to 0-2
seems like this changed from the experimental branch


Cu Selur

[El Heggunte]

.................

and while i'm at it, not to be a dick or anything, but you really need to rethink the lay out of your gui, it's way to busy, for lack of a better term, it's poorly laid out and not intuitive at all.

Selur is a native speaker of German alright.
And as we all know very well, Germans like to complicate things

[Selur]

*gig* If you think Hybrid isn't really intuitive since:
a. I like to have a lot of screws to turn. (and Hybrid has a lot of options and possibilities)
b. I like a compact gui, since I often use Hybrid through a remote desktop connection and since mobile surfing in Germany is relatively slow or expensive I normally only use a 800x600 resolution.
c. I'm by far no designer and time is always rare. (especially when looking at the list of things I still want to add to Hybrid)

Hybrid definitely is not ment for beginners, but more for folks who know what they are doing.

@deadrats: fixed the 'tile'-bug (never encountered the problem since I normally use 2/2) and send you a fixed Hybrid version.

Cu Selur

ps.: I also would recommend to use 2pass encoding, because the 1st pass is then really fast and it helps a bit with the rate control. (but even vpxencs 2pass encoding is often off the target size/bitrate, no comparison to any encoder I have ever seen)

[vhelp]

i can see why a gui was sort after, this thing requires lots of long param strings. difficult to figure out just a short basic encoding string, just to test. its so convoluted. anyway. i finally made headway, i think, and i now want to view the encoded vp9/webm (don't know what to call at the moment) so, how do you use the vpxdec to view ? it dumps garbage on my screen.

[Selur]

it dumps garbage on my screen.

not garbage, raw video data

vpxdec only decodes to raw video
you can choose:

--yv12                      Output raw YV12 frames
--i420                      Output raw I420 frames

how do you use the vpxdec to view ?

I guess (never tried) it should be possible to decode with vpxdec and pipe the output to mplayer and than display the raw content with mplayer, but personnally I would use Chrome (--enable-vp9-playback) for playback.

[vhelp]

i'm actually using chrome, and tried that too. it just shows a timeline and no video. i encoded as 1 pass, with (-p 1) but not sure that was correct. i don't want two pass encode. maybe i did something wrong during encoding. i'll try ffplay, i assume the "|" pipe char works as pipping ?

edit: nope, doesn't work..garbage on screen --> vpxdec32 --yv12 video.webm | ffplay

[Selur]

you will have to tell ffplay the resolution&co otherwise it won't work.
(raw uncompressed video normally has no headers)

[vhelp]

not working. won't accept pipes. i don't get the purpose of vpxdec, the help screen is useless, no example codes to get anyone started. google is turning up useless nonense. this i useless, if i can't figure it out by now and no one else chimes in, its useless and i'm waisting my time on this. another dead horse to push aside. later guys..

[Selur]

you did call ffplay with something similar to:

... | ffplay -y -pix_fmt yuv422p -s 720x576 -f rawvideo -i -

right?

[vhelp]

yes, that is correct, i also tried other variations of that, and then some.

in the vpxdec32 console window, it gives this and other similar errors: unrecognized option -y, which is on the right-side pipe i.e., | ffplay ..

[Selur]

sorry, '-y' is a ffmpeg option

[vhelp]

np. but it won't accept any params after | ffplay. but will if i only do | ffplay "video.webm" but then it gives me a new error message,

"no codec could be found with the id 169"
"Failed to open file "video.webm" or configure filtergraph"

[Selur]

ffplay itself can't decode vp9 since libav can't decode it, no surprise there.

[vhelp]

no success. i made mistake and set codec to vp8 not vp9 sorry for the false alarm.

the string below does not work on my work (i3) pc, but does on my dual core home pc. i don't know why.

to play your vp6/webm encoded videos, enter this command line string inside a dos console window:

vpxdec32 --i420 | ffplay.exe "video.webm"

edit: actually, just typing ffplay.exe "video.webm" played it. very strange it doesn't work at work.

[vhelp]

this (below) only works for vp8 encoded videos, not vp9 - sorry for the false alarm.

here is a slight improvement to the process of playing these videos using ffmpeg's ffplay:

1. assuming the source and destination folder name is c:\webm
2. copy ffplay as a shortcut (ie, right-click it and select 'create shortcut')
3. right-click the new shortcut and select Properties
4. and under Target enter <folder/path>ffplay.exe video.webm and select Apply and Ok.
5. finish. just double-click the ffplay to play your default filename, video.webm to play

substitue folder/path in step 4 for yours, here are some examples

"c:\webm\ffplay" video.webm
"c:\my webm\ffplay" video.webm
"c:\webm\ffplay" "d:\the videos\video.webm"

get the ffmpeg binaries here:

http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
or select this one for direct download, i used these in this archive for the examples above.
-> http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win32/static/ffmpeg-latest-win32-static.7z
for convenience, copy the ffmpeg ffprobe and ffplay into your webm folder.

[deadrats]

@Selur

thanks for the updated Hybrid but it still doesn't work on my system. 64 bit win 7, sp1, 3770k, 8 gigs of ram, x264 and vp8 encoding works but when i choose vp9, it just hangs on the video encoding portion, nothing happens, no cpu activity, no increased ram usage, no file creation, nothing, the app itself doesn't freeze up, it's still responsive, just nothing happens.

i also have some feedback to give you on a bunch of what i like to call "logic bugs", flaws in the way the program works that are failures of logic rather than coding errors, but i'm on my way out now, i'll share with you what i mean later.

[Selur]

That's strange, VP9 encoding works (slow as hell, but) fine here.
And when I start the encoding I can see vpxenc in the taskmanager maxing out 1 CPU. (depending on the length and resolution it takes a lot of time before the progress switches to 1%,..)
(Using Win7 64bit, 16GB RAM and a i7 875k here)

[deadrats]

i just tried again with 1 thread, i checked task manager, vpxenc is launched, it says it's using about 146 mb of ram but cpu load is just about idle, i see no evidence of file creation, there doesn't seem to be anything happening.

with regards to the "logic bugs", here's some things i noticed playing around with your app:

1) Hybrid doesn't prevent a user from going back and changing settings after the encode has started.

2) some on mouse over hints need to be formatted differently. some are in paragraph form and are displayed neatly on the screen, some, like when you mouse over "token partitioning" under the vp8 option, are in sentence form and run past the edge of the screen (21" monitor, 1280x1024 resolution), thus getting truncated and you can't read the whole thing. there's a number of mouse over hints that this applies to.

3) there doesn't seem to be an "error handling", for lack of a better word. let's assume i'm setting up an encode and initially choose mp4 as my output under the container settings, then go to the output portion and set an output folder and name but at some point i change my mind and want to go with mkv. changing the container settings not only fails to update the output portion so that it reflects my new choice but if i then add the job to the queue and start the encode my change of container settings isn't updated, instead the original choice is kept.

4) there are obtuse, non applicable error messages given to certain choices. for instance, assume i load up my vc-1 test file with wma audio and set the output to webm with vp8 and ogg, i get an error message that webm doesn't support the wma audio type but i'm not trying to mux wma into webm, i'm re-encoding wma to ogg and muxing that to webm. this type of error message happens with various combinations, where Hybrid will tell you that this codec or that codec is not supported by the container you have chosen but the codec it's talking about is a source codec not a destination codec so the error message doesn't apply.

5) the workflow needs to be reworked, the way you have it set up now you set the output on the first tab and it's not until the 7th tab that you actually choose and configure an output container; by the same token you have it set up so that an end user set's an output folder, name and you add the job to the queue on the first tab but you configure the video on the second tab, the size on the third tab, the filters on the fourth tab, then audio, chapters, and after 8 tabs worth of configuring you have to go back to the 1st tab to add the job and then all the way to the 8th tab to start the job.

the workflow should be a->b->c->d and so on, the way you have it now is "a->e->z->b-?whatever, i don't care, you like it fine, you don't like it then it sucks to be you".

i know you have drawn a line in the sand and said you have no intention of changing your gui and i respect that. it's your baby, your vision, your work, but i would offer the viewpoint that when you code an app that is meant to be used by the general public then the guiding force behind it's design should not be what you want but rather what your users want. you have tacitly acknowledged that by accepting bug reports, as well as trying to work with me to offer a version that has functioning vp9 on my machine. that tells me that you are willing to listen to your end users.

while i'm at it, i would also suggest you think about offering different versions of Hybrid that supports only one encoder, for instance a vp8/9 Hybrid, an x264 hybrid and a xvid Hybrid, after all a guy that uses x264 as his encoder of choice is unlikely to care if the app also supports xvid and vice versa.

[Selur]

1) Hybrid doesn't prevent a user from going back and changing settings after the encode has started.

Why should it? After the job is created, everything you so is not related to the last job, but to a new one.
Sounds a bit like you are to accustomed to linear wizard like user interfaces.

2) some on mouse over hints need to be formatted differently. some are in paragraph form and are displayed neatly on the screen, some, like when you mouse over "token partitioning" under the vp8 option, are in sentence form and run past the edge of the screen (21" monitor, 1280x1024 resolution), thus getting truncated and you can't read the whole thing. there's a number of mouse over hints that this applies to.

Will look into that. The formating is done by Qt. Will check if I find why it changes the display formating sometimes and sometimes not.

4) there are obtuse, non applicable error messages given to certain choices. for instance, assume i load up my vc-1 test file with wma audio and set the output to webm with vp8 and ogg, i get an error message that webm doesn't support the wma audio type but i'm not trying to mux wma into webm, i'm re-encoding wma to ogg and muxing that to webm. this type of error message happens with various combinations, where Hybrid will tell you that this codec or that codec is not supported by the container you have chosen but the codec it's talking about is a source codec not a destination codec so the error message doesn't apply.

If you can reproduce this please make a debug output, for me this only happens if the audio queue really contains stuff that is not compatible with the output container. (tried different settings and can't reproduce your problem)

5) the workflow needs to be reworked, the way you have it set up now you set the output on the first tab and it's not until the 7th tab that you actually choose and configure an output container; by the same token you have it set up so that an end user set's an output folder, name and you add the job to the queue on the first tab but you configure the video on the second tab, the size on the third tab, the filters on the fourth tab, then audio, chapters, and after 8 tabs worth of configuring you have to go back to the 1st tab to add the job and then all the way to the 8th tab to start the job.

the 'Standard output container' does not enforce the output. It justs sets the output container, if no other output is set.
If also does only change the output format if 'Generate' is enabled.
-> no problem in the work flow.

the workflow should be a->b->c->d and so on, the way you have it now is "a->e->z->b-?whatever, i don't care, you like it fine, you don't like it then it sucks to be you".

Sorry, but Hybrid is no linear wizard based gui.

you have tacitly acknowledged that by accepting bug reports, as well as trying to work with me to offer a version that has functioning vp9 on my machine. that tells me that you are willing to listen to your end users.

Sure I do, if there is a bug, I'm normally happy to fix it.

while i'm at it, i would also suggest you think about offering different versions of Hybrid that supports only one encoder, for instance a vp8/9 Hybrid, an x264 hybrid and a xvid Hybrid, after all a guy that uses x264 as his encoder of choice is unlikely to care if the app also supports xvid and vice versa.

I will think about adding an option to limit Hybrid to some specific encoders. In example if you would add '--xvid' to the Hybrid call, it would only show xvid as output format.

------------------------

Problem seems to be, that:
a. you misunderstand some of the options (in example what the standard output container is for; it's tooltip states that it will only be used until another one will be used, it's not a "this is the output format")

b. you are to hung up on enforcing some the linear work flow (sorry, but this is what will not happen) ; also, may be it's me and that I'm just to accustomed to not being forced to follow some linear work.

Cu Selur

Ps.: Thanks for you feedback. Always happy to get some.
PPs.: figured out what causes, the tool tip wrapping to be off. This always happens when I didn't use any richtext font formating, Qt then assumes that no special formating is needed and drops the white space pre-wrapping. -> will fix, but this will take some time, since I have to check each tool tip by hand :/

[ricardouk]

Hi Selur!

Any chance of updating "on the fly" the output container when the user changes codecs? Would it be possible to join the video/audio queues in to just one?

About the GUI...it could be more...what's the word for it? Prettier?!?! But you already said you're no designer and why you made it the way it is, so i take it as it is, would be better for a lot of people but its "your baby" and i understand it.

About VP9 encoding...its really slowwww, a 30 seconds video, 2 pass conversion, SD resolution...took about a 90 minutes...the 2nd pass takes a while to "start/kick in"...in case anyone is interest you'll have to wait...its not Hybrid fault...here's my log:

1st pass started at: 09:36:10
2nd pass started at: 09:36:32
muxing started at: 10:52:46

it took 22 seconds for the first pass and +- 90 minutes for the second pass

[DarrellS]

Well, Hybrid was working yesterday but I decided to download the newest version and now none of my copies of Hybrid will work. I have three Folders that that are not installed/just unzipped and had one version installed which was overwritten. I uninstalled the new version to see if it would fix the problem but when I try to start Hybrid in any of the unzipped folders, it crashes while trying to load. Visual Studio pops up to debug but I don't know how to use it to find out what's wrong.

Can someone give me a command line argument that works so I can try and get this working in Virtualdub. I've tried a bunch of different commands that I've found online (yeah, every one is different) and tried piecing one together using the options in the exe file but I'm not having any luck. A couple acted like they were going to work but one had a live lock and the other started encoding but stopped without an error in the log file. I guess this will be like most other encoders. We'll have to wait until ffmpeg implements the encoder (if they ever do) to get it to work.

WEBM has a guide for VP8 but not for VP9.

[Selur]

Any chance of updating "on the fly" the output container when the user changes codecs?

Hybrid would need criteria when to change.
1st thoughts about that:
As long as the video is reencoded with Hybrid, switching by video format would work like this:
mkv supports: H.264, MPEG-4 ASP, VP8 and VP9, so only changing to ProRes (which would only be supported if it beforehand was inside an .avi container) would trigger a change to .mov
mov supports: H.264, MPEG-4 ASP, ProRes so VP8 would trigger webm, VP9 would trigger mkv (mkvtoolnix does not support webm for Vp9 atm)
avi supports: H.264, MPEG-4 ASP (in theory the container should support ProRes too, but Hybrid does not), so ProRes would trigger mov, VP8 would trigger webm, VP9 would trigger mkv
webm support: VP8 (in theory VP9 too, but not atm. in Hybrid since mkvmerge doesn't support it), so VP9 would trigger mkv, H.264 and MPEG-4 ASP would trigger mp4, ProRes would trigger mov
raw supports: everything, no switching necessary

Problem is when the video is set to passthrough, since there are a lot of formats Hybrid can't know of.
-> will think about it some more tomorrow.

----------

btw. I'll probably release a new version of Hybrid tomorrow evening (in 24h), fixed a bunch of bugs but I still have to check if a new feature (sending email and IRC notifications) works as planned.

WEBM has a guide for VP8 but not for VP9.

most of the features of VP9 overlap with the one from VP8, and you can also find some infos in the command line help and the source code.

[deadrats]

@Selur:

ran into another rather interesting hiccup but i'm not 100% sure it's the fault of Hybrid. i was doing some test encodes with vp8 and there's something quite unexpected that happens when you choose "spatial resampling". according to the description your app gives on mouse over (btw, this is one of the descriptions that is not properly formatted, it gets truncated), the portion that i can read says that the option allows the codec to compress a smaller version of the frame which is then upscaled by the encoder to the correct presentation resolution, this supposedly increases visual quality.

the problem is what it does in practice: i tested with the previously mentioned vc-1 source, 1920x1080p and the output is a mix of full 1080p and smaller resolutions padded up to 1080p. to understand, the encoded file is played back, it starts with a proper full 1920x1080p frame and continues this way for about 15 or so seconds, then for the next 15 or so seconds the frames are all of a much smaller resolution fit into a 1080p frame by padding the sides and top and bottom with thick black bars. it's like the encoder arbitrarily chose some frames to encode as full 1080p and for no apparent reason chose some frames to downscale, encode but not upscale just stuff them into a 1080p frame.

this pattern repeats throughout the length of the file, very odd.

[Selur]

That's not Hybrids fault, but afaik this effect is the fault of the decoder.
The resulting stream contains content with different resolutions and signals that the output of the lower resolution content should be stretched to match the other resolution. But in your case instead of stretching the content the decoder decided to add black bars.
(As a side note: To get such an effect with Hybrid itself some serious avisynth or ffmpeg scripting magic would be needed, which Hybrid can't do. )
-> report to the author of the decoder that the decoder doesn't properly support the "spatial resampling" feature of the stream.

Cu Selur