X264 vs. H264...

[fALk Gärtner]

It's really unfortunate that apple has known about this issue for years and hasn't addressed it yet with a fix.

8 YEARS! apple has so messed it up with quicktimeX its unbelievable - its been my biggest gripe with the company since the introduction of OSX where they just forgot about quicktime and then when they finally got around to redo quicktime it was almost too late and then they delivered a hack that they haven´t considerably fixed and made working since its release,. I am completely at loss why that is - it doesn´t make sense as its such a vital piece of software for apple - I would even say next to OSX/iOS probably the most important piece and yet it recieves almost no love. Maybe with Lion QT will get its former glory back - if not we might have to look to WebM and that codec stinks quality/performance wise - but as things stand right now and with HTML5 catching on it just might become the standard codec if apple isn´t making a huge push to make h264 playback/authoring coherent and easy.

 

[Brice Ansel]

sounds good guys... Ill render it out overnight and upload it tomorrow... this should be fun.

one rule.. no creative decisions on color or brightness... if you guys try and change the way we chose to present this movie, I will hunt you down and cut your nuts off

deal?

Va bene mister Land. :001_cool:

 

[H. Farberg]

The only reason we haven't posted the "Tattoo" movie yet is because it is almost impossible to post a correct H264 movie that looks right. We have had much better luck with X264. The problem is that you all will need to download and install an X264 codec to play the file.

...

Jim

As far as I am aware, x264 produces H.264 compliant video encodes. In the proper container (mp4/mov) it should play back on any modern operating (OS X / Windows 7) system without installing codecs.

 

[Mark Toia]

You know what I like from this little short movie is the lighting. The Dp and Gaffa need congratulating. just gorgeous !!

And agree with you Jim and Jarred, you will never ever see how clean and rich this movie is on a little 1k compressed quicktime, especially created with a 4180k bit rate. Yuk. Go to at least 10,000+ at least and go to 720P, also knock your keyframes out to 200.
This is a quicktime we did, that has 800asa shots at the start from the old REDONE (non MX). Gamma correct, looks like the master and you don't get hardly any bubbly grain.
http://www.zoomfilmtv.com.au/tvcs/downloads/ffa.zip
Apple HD trailers have good compressions going on, You can at least match those.

I think people downloading a 1 or 2+ gig PRO RES LT will choke or give up.

Anyway, I think this little short film of yours looks great, the low light lighting really shows how moody and dark you can go. Even though the grain was bubbling a little bit from the compression of the little quicktime, no one really cares..
I would how ever love to see it in it's true 4K form.

I just watched Inception again in my cinema, just blows me away the sharpness and richness of all the IMAX scenes (and I'm only looking at it out of a 2k projector off blue ray) So I can only just imagine the 4k projection at RED.

I reckon congrats to all. I read the tattoo movie notes, for a quick turn around, it rocks.

Do another one JIM !!!
Have a RED award competition, best short film shot on RED, 48 hour turnaround time, Idea given out on the Friday morning. quicktimes uploaded Sunday midnight from competitors.
Keep the rules tight and simple.
Winner gets a JIM signed EPIC "M"

 

[Subhadip Sen]

downloading now...
x264 being better is nothing new ... they continuously won codec tests in the past years
Filesize doesn't matter to me, as long as an fast enough download is available.

Matt
P.S.: I recommend MPC-Homecinema+MadVR+yCMS (for color management) for playback in Windows
(Download K-Lite Codec Pack if you are missing codecs)

I wholeheartedly second this recommendation! That is my exact set up, and MadVR is an incredible renderer. Don't think I could do without it!

 

[H. Farberg]

I uninstalled all my codecs, and I can play the file just fine.

The sound is out of sync though. It was even before I uninstalled my codecs, and it happens in both Windows Media Player 7 and Media Player Classic HomeCinema.

 

[Luca Immesi]

If you want a correct H264 file with no gamma and color shifts, the only solution is to encode it in the Adobe Suite (media Encoder for instance) with the latest update and export directly to MP4 (not Quicktime). Use then VLC to play the MP4 correctly. Well, that's what my boyfriend found after a hard work ;-)

I also found using stand alone version of Adobe media encoder gives the best results for h264. Choose Format H.264, it encodes the file in h264 into an mp4 container. In video settings I check render at Maximum Depth and in the bitrate settings I set the bitrate encoding to VBR, 2 pass.

 

[Luca Immesi]

The short film is awesome!

 

[Stephen Gentle]

I'm sorry, I have to agree here. It's time someone else stepped up to the plate.
QT and Gamma must be dealt with similar to how Powers Boothe treats his disrespectful customer...

I don't think that is wise, given that Final Cut X is coming out so soon... I expect that they will either update Quicktime X to not just wrap around the old Quicktime (as it currently does for most formats) or they will have a new media framework.

 

[James T Mather]

The only reason we haven't posted the "Tattoo" movie yet is because it is almost impossible to post a correct H264 movie that looks right.

This really showcases gamma issues. We all know what that means.
This is really weird.
We have spent days working on this. Quicktime H.264 really sucks... sorry to say. Anyone figure out how to make this work?
Jim

Is the milky blacks in h264 what you're talking about. If so try the following :
Render a QuickTime/h.264 file,

open it up in QuickTime and select “Show Movie Properties.”

Highlight the video track then click on the “Visual Settings” tab.
Towards the bottom left you should see “Transparency” with a drop-down menu beside it.
Select “Blend” from the menu then set the “Transparency Level” slider to 100%.
Choose “Straight Alpha” from the same drop-down menu and close the properties window and finally “Save.".

The film should have proper gamma now.

Hope this helps.

 

[Vince Doran]

360p on youtube please, we outback Australian desert dwellers don't have all that fancy shit you city folk have.

 

[woodybrando]

yes two wins for open source, x264 and vlc. I try to do as much post as i can using open source tools in linux. It's good to see you're starting to use some too Jim. Since you seem up for a new challenge, maybe you can get avid to port their software to linux it's the last thing keeping windows on my laptop, then we can forget about quicktime all together and use ffmpeg.

 

[Nikolai Pigarev]

Ok.. i have a question for you guys. For a 2K downloadable version of this at badass quality..... be it X264 or PRORES or DNXhd... what is the maximum file size you guys would put up with to download? 1GB? 2GB? 4GB?

p.s... just looked at handbrake. Looks good but incredibly restrictive as already mentioned... any other suggestions?

I have been playing with http://www.mainconcept.com/products/apps-plug-ins/transcoding/reference/h264avc-pro.html it seems to be fairly flexible. and uses GPU when you need a very fast encode

 

[Uli Plank]

Main Concept is behind AME too.

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Another option:

http://staxmedia.sourceforge.net/


(for Windows)

 

[Matthias Hutter]

I like the colors and how to highlights roll off - cannot wait for a high res version
BTW: Archiving highly compressed audio and video is a waste of time

 

[Jarred Land]

Is the milky blacks in h264 what you're talking about. If so try the following :
Render a QuickTime/h.264 file,

open it up in QuickTime and select “Show Movie Properties.”

Highlight the video track then click on the “Visual Settings” tab.
Towards the bottom left you should see “Transparency” with a drop-down menu beside it.
Select “Blend” from the menu then set the “Transparency Level” slider to 100%.
Choose “Straight Alpha” from the same drop-down menu and close the properties window and finally “Save.".

The film should have proper gamma now.

Hope this helps.

Thats a new one for me... but again, it is so frustrating jumping through all these hoops. There was a day you could depend on PRORES being correct for a short period of time after they released it.. now its just as messed up as everything else in the Quicktime domain.

 

[Liam Hall]

Superb low-key lighting. Looks really great. Very classy and cinematic indeed.

I'm guessing your not looking for feedback on the short, so I'll keep my comment about the eye-line to myself Though, am I the only one seeing a flicker at around 5:09? Not sure if it's my lap-top, the compression or an unseen candle...

 

[Brice Ansel]

Thats a new one for me... but again, it is so frustrating jumping through all these hoops. There was a day you could depend on PRORES being correct for a short period of time after they released it.. now its just as messed up as everything else in the Quicktime domain.

Published in 2008 on reduser

Implementing the simple procedures, and *poof!* my colour was back. In case the link goes down, this procedure worked for me:
"After rendering into a QuickTime/h.264 file, open it up in QuickTime and select "Show Movie Properties." Highlight the video track then click on the "Visual Settings" tab.
Towards the bottom left you should see "Transparency" with a drop-down box next to it.
Select "Blend" from the menu then move the "Transparency Level" slider to 100%. Choose "Straight Alpha" from the same drop-down and close the properties window and finally "Save.""

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?14517-Gamma-for-internet-quicktimes

Reduser is the place to be hé hé.

 

[I Bloom]

Unfortunately I don't think this problem is going away soon, it's getting worse. If we remove quicktime from the stage then we are left with HTML5 browsers each playing video in their own way or video playing through flash or silverlight. Gamma rendering differences already abound between the various browsers and codecs. So unfortunately, I think cutting off the head might just unleash the Hydra.
Unfortunately most people don't care or don't recognize the difference. Joe iTunes isn't changing his spending habits based on gamma fidelity so there is no financial incentive for anyone to collaborate to fix the problem.

2 cents.

IBloom