X264 vs. H264...

[Antonio Forjaz]

Thanks, been patiently waiting...so many people to show it to

 

[Jarred Land]

thanks!

what GUI do you use , and what source material (like avi or mov etc...)you use ?

thanks

g

Me and Jim have been using After Effects " top set up" exports since the very first Demo Reel we ever shot. We just started using external compression programs such as DV Kitchen.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

thanks!

what GUI do you use , and what source material (like avi or mov etc...)you use ?

thanks

g

My regular GUI is MeGUI, but RipBot264 is very convenient for quick encodes. Both of these can accept pretty much any source material if you have AviSynth and the relevant codecs installed. There's a x264VfW codec too, which you can access from any software supporting VfW - which most Windows based imaging softwares do - including Adobe CS5 or Sony Vegas Pro. So you can render to x264 AVI directly from your NLE.

Sorry for dragging this a bit off-topic!

 

[Adam Eden]

I encode on sorrenson ONLY on a PC, I have 6 avids, 2 on a PC and 4 MAC. My main box is an Avid Symphony DX.
I export a quicktime reference from the symphony the Sorrenson and I never have a gamma shift, etc. Mac is a different beast.

The only explanation I can give is that when I export from AVID, the Avid is native YUV gamma (unless you are in 1:1 RGB DUAL LINK) and when you export from the AVID is correctly converts from YUV to RGB and then Sorrenson can do its job.

When doing this on a MAC somthing F*&Ks up along the way... And only sometimes which is very annoying. On a mac the audio SOMETIMES slips from the vision randomly.

This doesn't happen on a PC.

My Symphony is on a Z800 with an FX4000 card

 

[Jarred Land]

Its really incredible the hoops professionals need to jump through to make a Quicktime movie that looks good... Some people export with .9 Brightness, some people pre-render different Gamma shifts to offset, some people go from PRORES to Uncompressed Tiffs/DPXs to strip the Gamma flags then back to H264... it is pretty unreal.

I remember back when " Quicktime X" was going to fix everything... and ultimately I think it just made things worse.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

I encode on sorrenson ONLY on a PC, I have 6 avids, 2 on a PC and 4 MAC. My main box is an Avid Symphony DX.
I export a quicktime reference from the symphony the Sorrenson and I never have a gamma shift, etc. Mac is a different beast.

The only explanation I can give is that when I export from AVID, the Avid is native YUV gamma (unless you are in 1:1 RGB DUAL LINK) and when you export from the AVID is correctly converts from YUV to RGB and then Sorrenson can do its job.

When doing this on a MAC somthing F*&Ks up along the way... And only sometimes which is very annoying. On a mac the audio SOMETIMES slips from the vision randomly.

This doesn't happen on a PC.

My Symphony is on a Z800 with an FX4000 card

Pretty much my experience - I have learned to stay far away from a Mac (the hard way) as long I am doing any kind of work with images.

 

[Adam Eden]

Its really incredible the hoops professionals need to jump through to make a Quicktime movie that looks good... Some people export with .9 Brightness, some people pre-render different Gamma shifts to offset, some people go from PRORES to Uncompressed Tiffs/DPXs to strip the Gamma flags then back to H264... it is pretty unreal.

I remember back when " Quicktime X" was going to fix everything... and ultimately I think it just made things worse.

I don't want to rub it in but this is why I alway PREACH AVID.

The DNX codec is the best by far for 1080 and doesn't change gamma or gammut. Its a free codec and works cross platform.

 

[Omar Al-Masab]

you could export from The Foundry's Nuke
This you have much better control over gamma.
i had great success with it.

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

Please Jarred ...give us a 1080P x264 version...i want to play it back fullscreen ....!!!!

g

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Just a note: VLC on Windows 7 plays the video.

Looks great.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I have good results from Adobe Media Encoder, exporting out of Premiere CS5 to .MP4 H264 at fairly high variable-constrained bitrate, like 35 or 40 mpbs.

1080p, please.

 

[Robert Frank]

I just watched it. That was great!

 

[Subhadip Sen]

I have good results from Adobe Media Encoder, exporting out of Premiere CS5 to .MP4 H264 at fairly high variable-constrained bitrate, like 35 or 40 mpbs.

1080p, please.

Do give x264VfW a try (if you are using Windows) - it will offer similar quality at bitrates of 10-15 Mbps!

 

[Bruce Allen]

Vimeo works... or Youtube 4K
Or Redcode RGB! Release the Kraken! I got really excited about that in 2007 or so!

3rd party codecs - Avid, Cineform - are freely downloadable and no gamma shift - unlike Apple's own Qt codecs... so it proves the beast can be tamed.

Othewise, yes I like x264. Although recently I encoded stuff on x264 and when other people tried to play it, the gamma was wrong on their (non-x264-installed) Macs. I don't know. This has always undermined my confidence in Apple. They make it easy to make things that are good... how hard is it for them to just care about one final level of quality and consistency? Not Pro.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Nikolai Pigarev]

But how then does apple get their trailers to look so freaking good on itunes?

 

[Subhadip Sen]

But how then does apple get their trailers to look so freaking good on itunes?

I don't think they do - many of them are plagued by contrast (gamma) issues. Of course, some of the photography in the said trailers is great, which more than makes up for it.

 

[Kristin Stewart]

It's really a great little movie ! Congrats Red team, everything (picture, sound, actors' playing, set design, art direction) is top notch !

 

[Adam Eden]

Vimeo works... or Youtube 4K
Or Redcode RGB! Release the Kraken! I got really excited about that in 2007 or so!

Yep I would just upload the master file straight to VIMEO.

 

[Benoît-Joan Clariana-Roig]

No problem here to read that video on PC. Any modern PC have VLC or codec pack installed today.

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

just watched it again...3 times...after 2 at NAB...great...really great

this film always reminds me of "Deadwood" and "Blade Runner"...any else have the same feeling?