x264 Settings... Help Needed

[Qyot27]

Qyot27 - Helpful as always, I'll try that. It was previously in:

Code: Select all

Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:2
Bit depth                        : 10 bits
Compression mode                 : Lossless

So I figured it'd be okay - I forgot about the YV12. Whoops. I'll see if changing it helps.

Ah, yeah. I've been seeing reports of yuv422p10le being misread as yuv422p16le. Looking at it again, FFmpeg does support V210, which is uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2. x264 doesn't seem to have a problem if it's specifically in V210 as output by FFmpeg, although it still converts it to 8-bit. It just doesn't crash or misread it as being 16-bit.

Basically,
ffmpeg -i input.mov -vcodec v210 output.avi
(or output.mov, since it doesn't seem to really matter, as long as the container supports it)

And then give the output to x264. At least the --vf option makes it work, though.




As a further note on a previous part of the thread, the ./ needed to make the programs run is solely because they aren't on the PATH, and *nixen won't run programs that aren't on their PATH without the user explicitly overriding that behavior (it's a security measure); the ./ is simply the most common method of overriding it. To avoid needing to do that, just copy x264 to /usr/bin (sudo cp x264 /usr/bin).

Do you have Perian installed? That's generally the go-to solution to resolve the issue of Quicktime not supporting H.264 properly, even though it's usually just easier to rely on one's favored variant of mplayer (especially with the reports of Perian doing odd things to Final Cut). Otherwise you have to pretty much gut your encodes. I'm not sure where QT's compatibility cut-off is with x264's presets, although I'd guess any of the 'fast' presets would be fine.

[Kira_Douji]

Ah, yeah. I've been seeing reports of yuv422p10le being misread as yuv422p16le. Looking at it again, FFmpeg does support V210, which is uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2. x264 doesn't seem to have a problem if it's specifically in V210 as output by FFmpeg, although it still converts it to 8-bit. It just doesn't crash or misread it as being 16-bit.

Basically,
ffmpeg -i input.mov -vcodec v210 output.avi
(or output.mov, since it doesn't seem to really matter, as long as the container supports it)

And then give the output to x264. At least the --vf option makes it work, though.

Hm... I wonder if just exporting in 8bit with everything else otherwise the same would work? I'll have to test it.

As a further note on a previous part of the thread, the ./ needed to make the programs run is solely because they aren't on the PATH, and *nixen won't run programs that aren't on their PATH without the user explicitly overriding that behavior (it's a security measure); the ./ is simply the most common method of overriding it. To avoid needing to do that, just copy x264 to /usr/bin (sudo cp x264 /usr/bin).

!!! That makes so much more sense now I guess I'm still used to DOS where if it could see it, it'd run. -_- I'm still getting the hang of navigating via Terminal on OS X - I frankly haven't really needed to know it like I did with DOS back in the day. This gives me a bit of an incentive, though, ty

Do you have Perian installed? That's generally the go-to solution to resolve the issue of Quicktime not supporting H.264 properly, even though it's usually just easier to rely on one's favored variant of mplayer (especially with the reports of Perian doing odd things to Final Cut). Otherwise you have to pretty much gut your encodes. I'm not sure where QT's compatibility cut-off is with x264's presets, although I'd guess any of the 'fast' presets would be fine.

I might dig into this a bit - it's not terribly difficult to poke around, but I do know the default preset for MPEGStreamClip in x264 is "Medium" and if I left it at default values, it never had a problem - only when I tweaked. I'll have to run some encodes to track it down, though I think I remember seeing something about QT not liking certain qpmin values... Aya I swamped myself with forum digging to figure this out so I don't remember where.

I do have Perian, though - it's one of the first things I install, which was part of the reason I didn't originally think QuickTime itself was the culprit for the artifacts. Not sure what you mean about issues with FC, though? It really hasn't given me any problems with that... At least, that I know of.

[gotenks794]

MPlayerX from the Mac App store is much better than Quicktime. Just about every video I throw at it works.

[Mister Hatt]

MPlayer2 craps on MPlayerX, but if you care about GUI you should be using Perian in the first place. Also Apple fucked up again? Colour me unsurprised.

[Kira_Douji]

I have players that work, thanks - I was just hoping to get the integrated one working... Maybe someday you'll actually be able to set a default player other than Quicktime.

One can hope, I guess.

[YiuKorochko]

Mac's don't have any decent interfaces for x264. I highly suggest moving the file to a Windows machine with MeGUI installed.

I have a x264 profile sheet I designed which kicks the crap out of pretty much every other method. Lossless video at tiny sizes.

[Kira_Douji]

Actually MPEGStreamClip has an extensive interface (as seen on the front page), I just didn't understand the settings and when they made more sense, I hadn't realized QuickTime was messing it up anyway.

[YiuKorochko]

Actually MPEGStreamClip has an extensive interface (as seen on the front page), I just didn't understand the settings and when they made more sense, I hadn't realized QuickTime was messing it up anyway.

That's what I mean. You've obviously not seen MeGUI. There's a ToolTip for nearly every single setting in x264 configuration menu. After reading the x264 manual, I spent months figuring out just what made it work so well.
However, since you're using a Mac variant, I can't guarantee that the commands I've figured out will be any use to you.

[Kira_Douji]

To be honest, I was never much interested in the settings. I used to use ZarxGUI and before that just simple scripts with MP4box and the encoder directly. And I've already received a lot of help from everyone in this thread concerning replication of that. So between that and the wiki, I've learned a lot. As far as using a 'Mac variant' goes, the actual encoding of the movies is pretty much identical, it's QuickTime that makes it seem otherwise during playback.

[YiuKorochko]

To be honest, I was never much interested in the settings. I used to use ZarxGUI and before that just simple scripts with MP4box and the encoder directly. And I've already received a lot of help from everyone in this thread concerning replication of that. So between that and the wiki, I've learned a lot. As far as using a 'Mac variant' goes, the actual encoding of the movies is pretty much identical, it's QuickTime that makes it seem otherwise during playback.

You must have fast internet lol. With the proper set-up, x264 can pump out amazing quality with tiny file sizes. If your internet is that good and you don't upload your RAWs to file sharers or via torrent then that's perfectly fine.
Sorry I wasn't able to contribute ;D