Request for info: Encoding samples.

[khaosx]

All-

If you wouldn't mind, please reply with your top two or three go-to videos / chapters that you use to test encoding strategies. I'd like to have a good sample set established when and if the wiki happens. If we build a community set then we can all speak a common language when testing new features. Let's see what we have in common, encoding geeks :)

My personal favorites:

1. Chapter 1 - Guardians of the Galaxy vol 1 - SIGNIFICANT potential for color and grayscale banding when the ship illuminates the field.

2. Any chapter from Clerks. It's film, it's black and white, it's super grainy by design.

3. Chapter 1 - Star Trek III - It's my goto for testing forced subs

[lisamelton]

@khaosx What a great idea! I'll get you a whole list later after dinner. (It could take awhile, though. :) )

I didn't know about "Clerks (1994)" and "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)" because I stupidly don't have either.

This would also make great content for our future Wiki! (Once I get off my ass and start it.)

[lisamelton]

@khaosx OK, this is a partial list of the many Blu-ray movies and TV episodes that I use to test transcode-video, particularly my four ratecontrol systems and the --quick option.

Some of these titles I've transcoded not just dozens, but hundreds of times.

• "Tombstone (1993)"

  • The textures in the sky during Chapter 2 starting at about 4:00. My default ratecontrol system combined with --quick has some trouble here. But it's not a problem for --avbr.
  • The extremely coarse texture during the shooting of the Federale at about 4:39 is especially difficult. My --simple ratecontrol system still has trouble with this and --abr struggles a bit.
  • The textures behind Doc Holliday and the wide shots in the saloon during the first part of Chapter 4.
  • The background textures during the horseback chase in Chapter 22 starting at about 1:53:11. My default ratecontrol system still doesn't look its best here.

• "Jaws (1975)"

  • The dark skies and background skies during the swimming scene in Chapter 2 are the gold standard for testing color banding, blockiness and other artifacts. I've tuned all four of my ratecontrol systems and --quick to this one. Try transcoding this with the default preset in the HandBrake app and you'll see how bad it can look.

• "Army of Darkness (1992)"

  • There are so many difficult passages in this one no matter which version of the film that you decide to rip. And there is no good version to rip, either. It contains everything from blockiness and artifacts to color banding. And that's in the original, before you transcode it! My --avbr and default ratecontrol systems probably handle this beast the best.

• "Daybreakers (2009)"

  • There's something about the textures in this one that give my default ratecontrol system the fits. It's one of the reasons why I developed --abr ratecontrol. But --avbr probably handles it the best.
  • Pay attention to the background texture behind the main character when steps out of the car at about 5:10 in Chapter 2.
  • Look at the background textures behind the soldiers as they move through the room at the beginning of Chapter 12.

• "Blade Runner 2049 (2017)"

  • This is my go-to title for testing color banding, particularly Chapters 3 and 11. But difficult passages are all over it.

• "Arrival (2016)"

  • Another color banding test, particularly Chapters 4 and 13. But be aware that, unlike "Blade Runner 2049 (2017)," some color banding is in the original.

• "Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)"

  • The backgrounds behind the young Starlord as he runs through the dark and falls to his knees near the end of Chapter 1 are a particularly difficult test for color banding.

• "Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)"

  • The clouds that appear at about 36 seconds into the film after the Marvel logo are a brutal color banding and blockiness test.

• "Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)"

  • The background textures as Cap discovers Nick Fury in his apartment starting at 35:05 in Chapter 6 are difficult for all my ratecontrol systems except maybe --avbr.

• "The Great Gatsby (2013)"

  • The "confetti" scenes during Chapter 3 are particularly hard on --abr and --simple especially when combined with --quick. Thanks to @samhutchins @JMoVS for finding this one.

• "Prometheus (2012)"

  • Another A favorite of @samhutchins, the dark scene immediately after the "digital dream" sequence in Chapter 3 is especially difficult for --abr, causing color banding.

• "American Sniper (2014)"

  • The dust storm in Chapter 11 is a color banding torture test.

• "Saving Private Ryan (1998)"

  • Not only are the beach landing scenes in Chapters 2 through 5 a mess of noise for artifact testing, the quiet and dark "church scene" in Chapter 9 is a great test of color banding and blockiness.

• "Planet Terror (2007)"

  • Significant artificial noise and degradation were added to this film during post-production so the enire thing is a transcoding stress test.

• "Breaking Bad"

  • An artificial texture was added by the morons who mastered Seasons 1 and 2. Good luck not crying about these when you see them. Chapter 1 of Episode 13 in Season 2, "ABQ," is particularly brutal.

• "Battlestar Galactica (2003)"

  • All four seasons and the Miniseries are a mess of shaky camera work and digital noise. Episode 10 of Season 3, "The Passage," is particularly difficult.

• "Game of Thrones"

  • Actually, this applies to most HBO TV episodes which start with HBO's annoying animated "static" logo. This still gives --abr problems, but --avbr and the default ratecontrol system handle it well.
  • The logos for the first four seasons of "Game of Thrones" are more difficult than later seasons because, I think, HBO finally realized how difficult their logo was for streaming services to transcode.

• "Lucy (2014)"

  • There shouldn't ever be anything difficult about transcoding this movie. It's the canary in the coal mine. It's extremely easy to transcode correctly. So, if you ever see anything wrong here, then you really screwed something up. :)

[lisamelton]

@khaosx Hopefully that was enough to start you off with. :) Let me know if you have questions or need clarifications on the descriptions.

I might be able to add more later if I can find the time.

[samhutchins]

@donmelton I don't think it was me who said anything about the great gatsby. I'm not sure I've even seen it to be honest...

@khaosx Planet Earth, S01E01. The opening sequence has a shot with a lot of birds. Like A lot of the example's Don gave, it's a challenging scene for compression, and it's interesting to see the effects of it in the scenes following

[damorrison]

Deepwater Horizon - first scene which is deep underwater watching the drill cap shift and bubble. Horrible banding and colour matching on almost all rips (even the Netflix version isn't great).

[khaosx]

This is a really good start! I'm taking all of them as they arrive and putting them in order and category. Like I said, I'm hoping to have them in a wiki-ready format later this week. Keep them coming folks!

[lisamelton]

@samhutchins D'oh! I thought that was you. Maybe it was @JMoVS in that long email thread I tortured you and him with last year? And, dang, now I'm going to have to invest in nature documentaries. :)

@damorrison Yikes! Does that color banding happen with the default ratecontrol system or one of my other ones? Looks like I'll have to buy that movie as well. :)

[JMoVS]

@donmelton yes, it was me with the gatsby confetti scene ;-)

[lisamelton]

@JMoVS Aha! The culprit identifies himself! :)

Seriously, that is one gnarly damn sequence to transcode. Great find, sir. Great find.

[lisamelton]

@JMoVS @khaosx I updated the credit in my previous comment, too!

[khaosx]

@donmelton Noted. I forked the repo today and started seperating the readme into component sections for the wiki. Once I get it done, I'll do a pull request so that it can be reviewed. (I think that's how it works, let me know if I'm wrong.)

[lisamelton]

@khaosx Thanks! And that's, more or less, how it works. :)

Keep in mind that we won't be moving the whole README into the Wiki. The "About," "Installation," "Rationale," "Usage," "Feedback," "Acknowledgements" and "License" sections will likely remain. Although "Rationale" could go either way.

But the "Guide," "Explanation" and "FAQ" sections are prime freakin' candidates for the Wiki.

I am concerned what happens to our SEO rankings when we move those. And you would think with my experience in Web browsers that I would know. But that wasn't my area of expertise. :/

Maybe somebody on the team will have some suggestions. We can hope.

Right now we're in the first page of results when you use Google to search for "video transcoding" and I don't want to lose that ranking.

Also, we'll probably move the "History" section into a separate file in the main project at the top level. Probably naming it something clever and exotic like "History.md" because, dammit, that's just how I roll. :)

I'll open an issue this week with some kind of rambling, coffee-addled plan for how we do this. Especially the organization of the Wiki. I've been looking at few on GitHub and to describe some of them as "organized" is being kind. Ouch.

We need to think ahead on where we put our support files like scripts, images, logs, media, etc. And we'll need at least some file/title nomenclature and style rules for the actual Wiki pages. Mostly because I'm an anal-retentive control freak. :)

Stay tuned!

[vr8hub]

I don't think you want to move that much information to the Wiki. The Wiki is for information not in the Readme.

My guess, if precedent holds, is that many more people are going to read the Readme than are going to read the Wiki. Given that, you don't want to move information you want most people to see. For example, the FAQ about VBR underflows should definitely be in the Readme, IMO. As should the note about not doing a GUI. (If you moved that, you would probably see a sudden increase in requests for one.) And so forth.

The Explanation section is about the only thing I would consider moving. I would keep most if not all of Guide, and the same of FAQ.

Things I'd like to see in the Wiki:

• A section on why to use the "major" options. "Use the defaults, i.e. no options, if you want…" "Use --avbr if you want…" "Use --quick if you want…" How are the software encoders still better than the hardware encoders. Why not H265 at the moment?
• A section on known hardware limitations and/or requirements. I don't mean every piece of hardware, but just discussions I've seen around here in the last few days talk in vague terms about things needed for Android, things needed for Roku's, things Apple devices won't do, etc.
• A section on audio and the whys and wherefores of the options there. Why or why not lossless? Why or why not AC3? What the heck is double-width?
• A much fuller discussion of your four steps. Some of the stuff we covered elsewhere about Nil as default for path argument #1, e.g., and more (e.g. what recommended profiles and/or options in MakeMKV). An expansion of Fix links to why-[tool] sections in README.md. #3. (e.g. How do you "isolate them in their own track" if they're not already? A section of the Guide says that MakeMKV can do that, but not how to do that.)
• Things to look for to tell a bad/not good result from a great result, including tradeoffs. ("You might see a little banding with --quick, but that's to be expected." Maybe even some short samples. Some of these are the issues listed in the various examples in the "Encoding samples" issue, but I would list just the issues in a separate section as well.