Struggling with my x265 settings

[Hostile_18]

Originally Posted by microchip8

Indeed, but I mentioned lossless because he wasn't happy with the lossy results, nitpicking this or that doesn't look as good as the source...

I wouldn't say nit picking, just testing and refining before been applied to the whole library. It makes sense to do all that first, before rolling it out on a larger scale.

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by Hostile_18

I wouldn't say nit picking, just testing and refining before been applied to the whole library. It makes sense to do all that first, before rolling it out on a larger scale.

Sure, but at some point, with lossy compression, you have to realize that you'll get imperfections. And you'll come across content that doesn't look as good as you'd expect while others do. I don't think there's a magical formula that works on 100% of all content.

[Hostile_18]

Originally Posted by microchip8

Sure, but at some point, with lossy compression, you have to realize that you'll get imperfections. And you'll come across content that doesn't look as good as you'd expect while others do. I don't think there's a magical formula that works on 100% of all content.

Yeah that is fair. I've come along way since my OP post, but there probably isn't much more extra quality to extract.

Grain is the enemy of all mortal men, especially if you aim to preserve it to hold the detail.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Hostile_18

Yeah that is fair. I've come along way since my OP post, but there probably isn't much more extra quality to extract.

Grain is the enemy of all mortal men, especially if you aim to preserve it to hold the detail.

QFT!

At least until we can get a good grain synthesis technology in a codec. AV1's was a good start, and AVFG1 is better yet, although still has limitations from a maximum 64x64 synthesized grain map used for everything.

[microchip8]

Yes, grain is a very evil thing, especially when it's added artificially. I don't get why some mastering people do this. Along with judder which I hate with a passion (do you see juddery when looking at the world? No? Why should it be different for video?) grain is my second enemy!

[rwill]

Grain is an artistic style element and you can encode it just fine, it just takes some trial and error when starting out. No need to hate on it just because you cannot encode it well yet.

[Z2697]

Can't agree with the obviously fake grain in some modern movies.
Real / legit "grains" are more acceptable, whether it's film grain or "digital grain" (noises from sensor).

[jpsdr]

Grain and/or noise, but i'll talk more about grain, is very relative to people.
For me, i don't like it. And even more on old movies, when film deteriorate with age, making them look worse (and sometimes a loooooot) than when they were released decades ago.
So, there is people who are not bothered with it, or even more like it, and there is people who don't...
This i why, on my personnal encodes, i remove grain on old film movies.

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by rwill

Grain is an artistic style element and you can encode it just fine, it just takes some trial and error when starting out. No need to hate on it just because you cannot encode it well yet.

I do not hate it because I can't encode it - I have main grainy movies. I hate it because when I look at the world, I do not see it grainy. You do? Why should it be any different in video? Artistic or not, I do not like/want grain

[GeoffreyA]

For my part, I like grain, but it's a curse to encode. Artificial grain is less defensible, like artificial flooring made to look like wood.

Dune, 2021, is an interesting case: shot digitally, it was printed onto film and scanned back, giving a fine, grainy texture. From what I can see, the scenes on rainy Caladan are smooth, but as soon as the setting moves to Arrakis, the desert, the grain kicks in, usually fine, but thick during the visions—again, fitting to the context.

[microchip8]

Regarding judder, I read a survey that most people prefer it. Of course they do! They've been babyfed and brainwashed by Hollywood and TV in general that judder is good and is part of the "cinematic" experience. I strongly disagree with that. It gives me a headache and "eye problems" when a movie is juddery. The biggest judder I've seen is in Star Wars: Attack Of the Clones, where Obi Wan walks around the clone cocoons with the two Camino aliens. It is totally unwatchable, ugly and "shocking" when the camera pans. Luckily my TV has motion smoothing that gets rid of most judder but it still needs improvements.

Grains I can tolerate a bit if it's not that strong/in your face. I sometimes add a bit of noise to very clean encodings to not introduce banding, but this noise is not visible from a distance like thick grain. Besides wasting bits and slowing down the encoding, I do not see any benefits in grain. It does not look more "authentic" than a clean picture.

[GeoffreyA]

Judder is indeed tortuous to watch, and a major defect. By the same token, I don't like high-fps video, which makes my head spin. Proper 23.976 fps, without judder, looks pleasing.

[x264N00b]

Worst judder I've seen is in Pulp Fiction when Travolta walks through Jack Rabbit Slims and the camera , right after the "all right", moves from the posters to the singer. That must have something to do with the camera shutter speed, right?

[Hostile_18]

I'm not a fan of grain, but I don't go out my way to remove it as it nearly always takes away detail with it. I don't like that they add in grain on modern movies, there's lots of different artistic ways to set mood and ambience without putting a noise filter over it. Some games often have this fake grain filter also (along with depth of field, chromatic aberration etc). It seems like light grain films encode fine, heavy grain films are fine, but it does seem like everyone's settings struggled on the Forrest Gump remaster in terms of maintaining 1:1 grain structure.

I tweaked my settings (mainly the maxrate and bufsize) and have done about 40 movies now. Average reduction is 33% of source, which I am happy with. I just focused on high quality steaming versions that are typically encoded in real time. I decided on 5.1 sound 640 Opus as that had a maximum compatibility with my client devices (increasing the bit rate past >700kbps caused issues, without work around). If a movie really needs it the max limit is 7.5 gb an hour.

libx265 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -crf 17 -preset slow -x265-params aq-mode=1:no-open-gop=1:high-tier=1:level-idc=4.1:bframes=6:subme=4:rc-lookahead=120bratio=1.25:ctu=32:merange=26:deblock=-3,-3:no-sao=1:vbv-maxrate=16000:vbv-bufsize=64000:vbv-init=0.9:rskip=2:rskip-edge-threshold=1

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by jpsdr

Grain and/or noise, but i'll talk more about grain, is very relative to people.
For me, i don't like it. And even more on old movies, when film deteriorate with age, making them look worse (and sometimes a loooooot) than when they were released decades ago.

This is actually a serious issue. Older movies were meant to be projected against a perforated high gain screen from a 35mm film projector that vibrated and projected through glass, at 14 foot-lamberts (and typically less in most theaters).

An 8K film scan of the negative will have ENORMOUSLY more grain than anyone ever saw in a movie theater until the last 20 years, including the creatives. And if you remaster for HDR, that grain can wind up getting color corrected in ways that real-world grain never could have been.

It isn't "creative intent" to include much more sharp fine grain than the creators ever saw when making the film, or after its release. And it is a failure of creative intent to leave it there, in my (strong and correct) opinion.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by x264N00b

Worst judder I've seen is in Pulp Fiction when Travolta walks through Jack Rabbit Slims and the camera , right after the "all right", moves from the posters to the singer. That must have something to do with the camera shutter speed, right?

Shutter speed has some impact on judder; slower shutters mean more motion blur which mediates judder some. But the default is already a 180 degree shutter; 1/48th of a second exposure at 24 fps.

The real problem is that 24 fps was chosen because it was the lowest frame rate where lip sync didn't look artificial, in an era of heavy fixed position cameras and dollies. Handling fast motion wasn't a design goal, and it's not good at it. Hence the "seven second rule" and all the other cinematographic tricks to have things seem to be moving fast while not introducing judder. Like having a close up on a moving item and tracking the item while the fast moving background is outside the depth of field and thus blurry. Look how basketball in a movie is shot versus watching a game on TV. Movies have all these close ups of hands and balls going into a fixed basket and such, because an actual basketball game looks terrible and is hard to even see what is happening at 24p.

The Nyquist limit is the fundamental issue. At 24 fps, any motion that happens or changes in 1/12th of a second or less gets lost. Basketballs teleport instead of dribble or fly. Train wheels stop moving then start turning backwards as they pass 12 rpm.

[excellentswordfight]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Shutter speed has some impact on judder; slower shutters mean more motion blur which mediates judder some. But the default is already a 180 degree shutter; 1/48th of a second exposure at 24 fps.

The real problem is that 24 fps was chosen because it was the lowest frame rate where lip sync didn't look artificial, in an era of heavy fixed position cameras and dollies. Handling fast motion wasn't a design goal, and it's not good at it. Hence the "seven second rule" and all the other cinematographic tricks to have things seem to be moving fast while not introducing judder. Like having a close up on a moving item and tracking the item while the fast moving background is outside the depth of field and thus blurry. Look how basketball in a movie is shot versus watching a game on TV. Movies have all these close ups of hands and balls going into a fixed basket and such, because an actual basketball game looks terrible and is hard to even see what is happening at 24p.

The Nyquist limit is the fundamental issue. At 24 fps, any motion that happens or changes in 1/12th of a second or less gets lost. Basketballs teleport instead of dribble or fly. Train wheels stop moving then start turning backwards as they pass 12 rpm.

It should also be noted that your TV will impact this quite a bit as well, especially in recent years. LCD:s/plasma has historically been quite slow, adding quite a bit of motionblur themself, smoothing over issues created low framerates. So modern pannels with faster pixels, and especially Oleds are way less forgiving when things like the the 7-second rule is broken, which can lead to stutter, even if they displaychain is setup in the correct way to display 23.976/24p content.