Every encoder has a strategy how and where to spend the bits which constitute a limited ressource (bitrate constraints, file size constraints). Same with your house. If you have a limited quantity of paint you will have to think where you want to put the paint rather than just disperse it equally in the house, right?
I wouldn't generalize that AQ does more damage than good. It was just my experience for this particular clip (meridien), using the NVEncC (Pascal) AVC encoder.
The source is the reference against which the encodes are compared. Being the reference the source alone has no PSNR.Where you guys fail is you will take the PSNR of the source, ..
B.t.w. I posted the VMAF result of my NVEncC AVC encode rather than x264. Don't know how much NVEnc AVC relates to DS' et al. x264 encoder. Probably little to nil.
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Last edited by Sharc; 25th Oct 2019 at 05:53.
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In my research on this video I can't find where they literally say they added noise/grain. I see where they picked certain shots, transitions, added smoke, etc. But I can't see where they say they added a layer of noise over everything. I mean the noise pattern I see is what I see when denoising the chroma on my DSLR photos in Lightroom. Left being no denoising on the RAW, right having Chroma denoising along with some light sharpening done to it. There is still noise that gets left behind.
[Attachment 50553 - Click to enlarge] -
They don't tell you everything they do; they didn't tell you they graded it either. Neither do studios releasing BD's . Grain is often added to BD"s too (and DVD's)
One reason it looks slightly abnormal is this video sample is downscaled to 1920x1080 . The grain is less coarse, and smaller than usual
It would be a terrible camera , if it had that amount of "noise" on a daylight exposed shot. Go download some native F65 or Weapon camera footage . Even low light footage shot with those has less "noise"
Compare that to the BMPCC night time shot . That is unmistakably digital sensor noise
Regardless of what it is - the job of an encoder is to emulate the source characteristics as closely as possible . So if you were testing BMPCC, those ugly chroma noise, color splotches are supposed to be reproduced . -
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You don't see the irony in your statement do you? For years, PDR, and those like him, have claimed that x264 was the best encoder because it looked the best and they also repeatedly took the position that you couldn't trust objective metrics like PSNR and SSIM, only your eyes. I was the one that repeatedly stated it's not the job of the encoder to produce the best looking encode but rather to produce the most accurate reproduction within the bit rate constraints set forth.
Now that it suits his test results, he has adopted my stance.
Intellectual honesty is definitely not a strong point of x264 proponents. -
WTF?! That's exactly what I've been saying for >10 years. Go back and look at the old series of tests. That's why x264 was rated on top, not because of some score. It most accurately resembled the input, whatever it may be . If there was grain or fine details, it kept the grain or fine details.
The point was that PSNR and SSIM have low correlation rates with human perception, so you cannot trust them. The coefficient of correlation is like 0.3-0.4 for PSNR. Only mildly positive
Now that it suits his test results, he has adopted my stance.
If source has "grain" (noise if you want to call it) , and encode drops it, then it's NOT similar
If source has tire details and encode drops it, then it's NOT similar
If source has facial details, and encode blurs them away, that's NOT similar
If source does not have banding/blocking in the sky, and encode suddenly does, that's NOT similar
By by the same token, if encode has other artifacts, such as broken ratty lines, that's not similar either. If there is keyframe popping introduced, that's not similar either
If you consider everything overall, some encodes are clearly more similar than others
Intellectual honesty is definitely not a strong point of x264 proponents.
I've always said the job of encoder was to reproduce the input as best as possible . Go back and check those tests >10 years ago. It was long before you even registered under the Sophi handle -
There you go Sophi - This was a MPEG2 test, but same idea
2009
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/305028-2009-MPEG-2-Encoder-Test!#post1871881
the job of an encoder is to faithfully represent the frames sent to it, unless you set it not to do so, that should be the job of pre-processing and filters.
So how is x264 "overrated" ? I hear some people making these claims with zero evidence to support it. And if the same people making those types of claims cannot even tell the difference between the details of a low bitrate Youtube video vs. a higher quality, higher bitrate unrestricted AVC encode... I'm not sure anyone should take them seriously anyways.
x264 it has weaknesses, sure it does. And other encoders do too, but stronger weaknesses.
I go out of my way to collect scenes where x264 does poorly. It's just that other AVC encoders tend to do worse in those same scenes.
x264 is on top of almost every test in the past 10 years for AVC . Subjective, objective. PSNR, SSIM, VMAF . If it was somewhere consistently in the middle sure, I'd call it overrated too. How can something be "overrated" when it is on top, or near the top of every test ? -
Color grading is usually expected for any kind of high level video work. Adding noise is not expected, but denoising of some kind would be more likely imo.
I downloaded 4 sample videos from RED's website. Instead of Weapon footage (which they don't list), I downloaded Dragon footage as a 6k replacement. https://www.red.com/sample-r3d-files
Exposure Time: 5214
ISO: 500
https://files.videohelp.com/u/244047/A001_C018_1011KZ_0010.png
Exposure Time: 4184
ISO: 800
https://files.videohelp.com/u/244047/A016_C001_02073O_0010.png
Exposure Time: 1e+04
ISO: 1000
https://files.videohelp.com/u/244047/Q008_C037_11224I_0010.png
Exposure Time: 2000
ISO: 400
https://files.videohelp.com/u/244047/J502_C086_01255A_0010.png
You keep saying that the scene (Meridian) is in broad daylight but, it's a native 60fps so your exposure is going to max out at 1/120s maybe even faster. It has a very good depth of field (small aperture) so the light gathering is going to be hindered, and the sensor was probably hot in what looks to be California (ambient, running the camera a lot in failed takes, 60fps). Then there's the part where these RED RAW files are not 1:1 copies of the sensor data but instead lossy compressed sensor data, meaning there's probably a lot of denoising in my sample PNGs.
Agreed, it is the job of the encoder to retain as much of the source as possible. My only gripe is the notion that most or all of the source of that "grain" is in digital post. And so I apparently can't call it noise but instead "wanted signal". Especially when this isn't based on input from the film maker. -
Adding grain occurs almost as frequently in post processing of high end digital acquisition as color grading - especially with today's digital acquisition (too "clean"), and especially with visual effects shots and compositing. Often scenes are degrained, processed, then regrained to match shots. People go to extremes to emulate that old grainy film look (for many types of releases). A lot of work goes into grain emulation technology, and grain plates
https://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/news/364113
The team also incorporated a subtle, fine film grain, helping offset any video feel from digital motion picture camera HDR acquisition.
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