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Discussion: 10-bit h264

(Pic not related)

Remember the transition from XviD to h264? Well, soon, 10-bit h264 will replace 8-bit h264.

Advantages
Without going into encoder speak, 10-bit h264 can achieve a same level of quality as 8-bit h264, but at a lower filesize.

Disadvantages
10-bit h264 is not widely supported yet.

More info on 10-bit h264 | More | More

This is simply a discussion your opinions of 10-bit h264.

810 comments to Discussion: 10-bit h264

  • Nuclear Disco

    My shit sucks and has problems running SOME 720p BD encodes and a FEW 720p upscaled TV encodes (most of the time OP/ED sequences with heavily layered animation). I would love reduced filesize as long as it doesn’t make playback any worse than it already is (barely tolerable sometimes).
    Laptop that’s a little over a year old:
    2.0ghz AMD Athalon II Dual Core, 3.0gb RAM, ATI Radeon Mobility 4200, Windows 7 64bit using Windows Media Player with CCCP codecs.
    If 10-bit means more video freeze/pixelation, I’ll inevitably move to groups who don’t use it, at least until I get myself a more respectable rig.

    • corias

      I have the same problem when those goddamn karaokes have too much text. I’ll probably have to put off series collecting from doki until I get a better rig a year or two from now, and by that time I’ll have either forgotten about them or found a different source anyway. Don’t know why they’d push out fans to please a small number of video perfectionists. By the time 10-bit becomes the standard, there’ll probably be a newer encoding craze for those types anyway. It’ll never end.

    • adsl

      with theoe specs you should be able to play 1080p without any problem, you probaly have some problem related to malware or a lot of stuff at the same time (and a lot is really a lot)

    • shani

      You serious? I have a 3 and half year old laptop and 720p runs perfectly with vobsub prebuffering turned on in the latest CCCP.

    • Jay

      Could anyone post a link for a h264 10-bit sample? I would like to test if it runs on my Xtreamer Pro.

      Thanks a lot!

  • Ozone

    If you can’t play video in a new codec… you have more issues than you know. It’s time for and upgrade if you’re even worried about it.

    I welcome the progress and the fact that my processors won’t be idling and at a lower storage cost! I might start archiving in 1080p

  • ~afterstory125

    Why the f**k should people have to use a BETA (experimental) version of cccp to watch 10 bit fansubs?

    my vote is, until there is a stable version able to be downloaded on the home page, 10 bit is unfair.

    not everyone updates thier xbmc/mpc-hc/cccp every time a nightly build comes out.

    its called beta for a reason. Experimental and not for everyday use.

    and do not tell me stuff like. “i use a beta cccp and it works fine blah blah blah”

    because that is beside the point.

    STABLE release of codecs that support it would be really nice.

    untill then, please refrain from releasing in this format.

    To quote, somone elses post, what happened to people who watch anime for the sake of watching anime because they love it. Instead of obsessing over quality. Reminds me of crysis >.>

    if you spent less time configuiring your codecs and more time watching anime shows, maybe we would have a real community here.

    this thread has no place on doki. save it for cccp forums or somthing.

  • tototati

    Your brain stoppped progressing.

  • shani

    Those who are complaining about beta are afraid of accepting a change. Why not install and see damnit. it’s just a 5 MB file and there is always an option to uninstall if your system cannot get along. oldies.

  • Fallton

    I’ve watched a few shows done in 10-bit. Not only can I actually tell the difference I’m enjoying the space I’m saving by replacing some of the shows I have already. I don’t have a super PC. It could actually use some serious upgrading, but I have no problems watching anything at 720p or 1080p smoothly and clearly. My Blu-Rays play fine too (just got a BD Burner for it a couple weeks ago). I don’t even have a video card, I’m just using the video from the motherboard and everything works fine. If anyone’s having issues with playback after installing the proper codecs and using an appropriate player, then they need to clean up their system. I’m using Win 7 Ultimate (64-bit) which is a bit of a system hog, but I only use well respected free software for all my applications. A big problem I find most people have (especially laptops) is Norton/Symantec Anti-Virus. That alone will eat up system resources. Uninstall it and switch to Avast, Kapersky or one of the other handful of free Anti-Virus softwares that has good ratings. For systems that use Norton that usually helps a huge amount.

    So yeah, IMO I say go for the switch. I’m enjoying 10-bit already.

  • shani

    Use Alt + Ctrl + del and see which program is eating your resources in Task Manager. Often it will be your browser, adobe or your antivirus.

      • shani

        Did you know that Adobe Acrobat has a tendency of overworking your CPU with a .pdf file opened for a few hours? It might sound stupid, but it does. Claiming from my previous experience. No update helps. Also, background updates are often the reason.

      • shani

        and finally your antivirus. I have lost faith in Norton for a while and never used it since 2008. Not sure about the latest ones, but the last few versions were real culprit. Get a decent antivirus and stop going to weird places all over the net and your system should not be affected with influenza.

        • Relgoshan

          ESET products have served me well. From the 2009 edition onward, Norton was completely rewritten. I still don’t use it but their software stopped being a worldwide punching bag.

          • ZERO

            Also using NOD 32 here and it has worked great for years

          • CASANOVA

            Norton right now is pretty light but eset is also a very good option (i use it for a long time on my laptop and never had problems)

    • shani

      500! Long Live Doki! 😀
      Banzai Doki! Banzai 10bit!

        • shani

          Not really. I just made sure the race towards the 500 posts mark remains free of whining. 😀

          I already gave a spec for a decent laptop previously in one of the posts and the 10bit test passed with flying colors. And it didn’t even have a dedicated graphics chip in it. The test was in 720p of course. I really don’t care about 1080p and do not wish to watch my anime in 1080p and do not suggest anyone to watch either. Honestly, can you seriously keep up reading the whole line of subtitle in a 52 inch screen? Meh.

          Watching 720p anime in a Laptop or a 17″ desktop with 1280 x 800 res is the way to go. 😛

          • shani

            *flying colours.

            Deary me. Forgot the language we use here is British English. 😀

          • martinez

            well…. 52″ is another matter.

            i watch my anime in 22″, actually. not too big and not too small for 1080p 😛
            looks excellent 😉

          • johnc

            If people are watching 720p anime on their computer screens and laptops, then the argument for 10-bit video quality seems even more moot.

          • Desuwa

            I don’t see how it becomes “even more moot”. Banding is still helped a lot by 10bit even for “mere 720p”.

            I gather that you, at least, use an HTPC, but you have to realize that you are in the minority here, and you’ll be able to upgrade your HTPC as soon as budget video cards with 10bit support come out.

            You may not notice the difference in quality enough on a TV (though I suspect you haven’t tested this), but you have to realize that the vast majority of us watching on the computer (both 720p and 1080p) do notice a large difference.

            That’s also ignoring file size, which, IMO, would be enough reason to switch in the long term, the other benefits make it worth it to switch in the short term.

          • Kel

            Actually, I watch my anime on a 47-inch flatscreen LCD TV using my HTPC. And a friend of mine uses a brand-new Zotec HTPC to watch it on a 120-inch projector screen.

          • Desuwa

            Uhhh… Congratulations? Good for you?

            Still leaves you in the minority.

            You, at least will be able to upgrade your video card once they can handle 10bit, though I can’t guarantee when that will be. As for the Zotec… well, that’s sort of like buying a really weak computer that can just barely play all the current games and hoping it’ll be able to play the newest games in a year.

            There are even some current h.264 encodes using weird settings that can’t be handled through hardware. Which is why I recommended to the few friends I have who were heart set on an HTPC to put in the beefiest CPU they can passively cool.

  • Me

    Maybe its because I’m British but encode in 10bit, I don’t care, as long it as it works, it can be 9000bit :P.

    I know you wanted meaningful replies, but as long as something works, who cares?

  • ZERO

    It does not matter to me what the file size or requirements to run it are. As long as it is better quality than what we got now and I can run it at a reasonable cost relative to the increase in quality I will do so. The reason for this is simple, I want to enjoy my series to the fullest and I thus want the highest quality encode around to do so. I just hope that a stable xbmc build supporting it comes out sooner rather than later as I am tied to that system b/c of the way my library is integrated.

  • octoberasian

    I’ve seen m33w’s release of Dantalian in Hi10p (10-bit x264) as well as those from other groups, and I am surprised at the level of quality it can bring while at the same time lower filesizes. Because of the extra color space provided by 10-bit over 8-bit, you can have similar or better quality at a smaller file size.

    At the moment, only the experimental beta build of CCCP from July 15th work with it as well as the latest version of VLC and mplayer2. Also, do not use the ffdshow tryout from July 27th (or anything after July 15th). It seems only the July 15th build has 10-bit decoding, which is odd… (unless someone here has had better luck).

    I have to advise you that the ffddshow codec are not DXVA compatible yet. CoreAVC (for $10 USD) will have DXVA 10-bit decoding in version 3.

    To give more credence to the 10-bit x264 cause, I’ve personally encoded Blood C Episode 2 in Hi10p using a TS raw of the show. Comparing its quality between Underwater’s version at 262 MB to my version at 161 MB, it’s nearly identical or slightly better. You can find the torrent to the file on TokyoTosho if interested in looking. (Note, I’ve only started encoding videos recently so it was mostly a test if anything.)

    I definitely would suggest going 10-bit x264 in future BD releases. Don’t switch halfway for current ones though.

    As for hardware, since this isn’t DXVA compatible yet for ffdshow, I’m sorry to say but you will need a beefy CPU for this. It’s already pushing my current CPU to 30 to 40% usage just to decode it– Phenom II X4 @2.5 GHz.

    • johnc

      Is CoreAVC promising DXVA compatibility with 10-bit encodes?

      • octoberasian

        I will have to say yes because CoreAVC 2.x had CUDA support first then ATI/AMD in a later version. So, it’s all the more confirmed 10-bit (Hi10p) is DXVA for CoreAVC 3.

        • johnc

          So they have found a way to maneuver around the fact that the hardware provided on GPUs is not capable of decoding Hi10p? I’d like to read more about it if you happen to find anything, as this would seemingly be a workaround for DXVA / VDPAU / VAAPI, etc… albeit at a (relatively small) cost.

          • johnc

            “Just added NVIDIA Cuda and DXVA directshow fallback to software when high bit is detected in CoreAVC 3.0.” — BetaBoy

            So I’ll go with no, which seems consistent with the hardware limitations.

            Reading that thread… what a cluster-f playback must be on Windows… probably because of DXVA licensing issues and the likelihood that it needs to be reverse-engineered to interface with software.

  • NakkiNyan

    Just do it, the complainers all have old enough PCs that they should be upgrading any way or dealing with older formats. Just release a LQ version for the bitch and complain group.

    I have a 6 year old Mac and can play them just fine.

    • Kel

      As I said above, a friend of mine has a brand-new Zotec HTPC running XMBC-Lite (a Linux build) and watches it on a 120-inch projector screen. So you are full of crap. A brand-new Zotec HTPC designed for this very purpose, because it features hardware accelerated video playback, but won’t be able to play 10-bit video because there’s no hardware acceleration for it yet. For a 120-inch projection screen. Meanwhile, everyone else here yammering for this is watching it on a laptop. Think about it.

      • NakkiNyan

        HTPCs are low end crap made for a single purpose, no one said they would just stop releasing 8-bit versions. If you want quality get good hardware if you want crap just download the LQ version.

  • zaedaus

    for god sake its already 2011… time to move to a better world with a better technology

    • NakkiNyan

      Or at least let the rest of us move on…

    • johnc

      lol… that “better technology” is called “hardware acceleration”. If you have a better idea, I urge you to call nvidia, amd and intel and let them know about it because the entire market has long moved away from decoding high quality video with software codecs.

      In other news… I hear video game developers are now going to require that their applications run completely on the CPU. They thought it silly to render 3D scene graphs and the like on specialized GPU hardware. Pft — efficiency! How silly!

      • Index

        now ur post really annoyed me…..

        >lol… that “better technology” is called “hardware acceleration”.

        that “better technology” can’t follow technology revolution easily. that’s why u continue complaining in here…..

        >because the entire market has long moved away from decoding high quality video with software codecs.

        software codecs are moaaaarrr flexible than ur hardware acceleration. it only need little tweaks to follow the changes. that’s why some of us are welcome with such a revolution like Hi10

        http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/23100000/-U-Mad-random-23186362-390-270.gif

      • NakkiNyan

        Hardware acceleration is not necessary. A lot of decompressors don’t support it any way ..ffmpeg for example.

        • johnc

          Like has been mentioned, hardware acceleration is necessary for HTPCs. The market is moving towards APUs and SoC anyway, even on the desktop with stuff like Sandy Bridge.

          It’s true that ffmpeg doesn’t do DXVA due to license issues, but it works great with VDPAU and VAAPI and I believe XBMC does all three just fine.

          • NakkiNyan

            You are talking about very, very low end hardware which is why they would still release a LQ version so it can play correctly.

          • Desuwa

            Maybe the problem is not that 10bit is aimaing too high, but that HTPCs are aiming too low. HTPCs target the “bottom”, hardware-wise, and all the people who buy HTPCs can only hope that that bottom never moves.

            Hardware Acceleration doesn’t guarantee results, depending on the make and model of the hardware, the output video can be subtly (or sometimes, not subtly) different from what it should be. Software doesn’t have that issue, and software also allows for more processing options (I often run a debanding filter, which 10bit would hopefully remove the need for). Shaders can accomplish many of the same things, but without the same flexibility.

            Something like MadVR specifically avoids running anything but its own code, to avoid the damage that can be inflicted by varying algorithms built into the hardware.

            I’m a bit unsure about CUDA in CoreAVC, from what I understood it was just for general computing, but if it has issues with higher colour depth, it must be running specialized code, which introduces the possibility of similar damage.

            As it is now, hardware decoding is the unreliable fallback method for weak CPUs (madVR is a renderer, not a decoder, and it’s better to think of it as software treating the GPU as a massively parallel CPU) . Since decoding is a more parallel process, it’s easier to build a cheap GPU capable of decoding video than it is to build a similarly cheap CPU, which are more serial, to do the same task.

  • innerchihiro

    On my two year old mac, I can only get it to work on MPlayerX. I don’t love MPlayerX though, so I have to say I’d prefer there to be more options before you switch. Still, in the event that you do, I’ll probably be okay.

    • NakkiNyan

      I am trying to get used to the weird aspects of MPlayerX but it is tolerable for good quality and a space 30-50% savings. (CG Bakemonogatari was nearly 50%)

      • innerchihiro

        Does the text sometimes change for you? Like a different font or boldness or spacing? It drives me crazy! I put in a complaint but the guy started to ignore me saying MPlayerX was reading the subtitles correctly. I was like “then why don’t they look like they do on MPlayer OS X Extended?? Which looks the same as what I see on sites like Ji-Hi?”
        🙁
        I guess it will have to do though, huh?

        • NakkiNyan

          No I have not come across your specific problem but I did come across what I can only call a variant of. The issue I am running into is one with stroke on everything, this includes adding black stroke when there is none (including ass/ssa based shapes), increased stroke when there is one, and the dot of the lower case i is stroked but the bottom is not.

          I know pigoz said in an animesuki thread that he was working on MPlayer2 for OSX so maybe his binary for MPlayer OSX Extended will be updated as well. Either way it is not that major of an issue when compared to the increased quality and lower file size considering I have over 1TB of anime as it stands now.

        • NakkiNyan

          MPlayer OSX Extended just got a new binary thanks to pigoz.
          Conversation :
          http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=3708593

          Download :
          http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QNBWURWR

          He said he killed auto update but it works well and no weird subtitle junk.

          • NakkiNyan

            that is auto update from the old one not auto update for this, it will auto update once installed using sparkle (OSX auto update framework)

  • drunkententpeg

    I welcome the change, and although I won’t be using CCCP for long, I’m sure K-lite will release a stable update soon to accommodate the increasing use of Hi10.

    I have a question though, is there a program/software that encodes to Hi10? I want to play around and encode some things myself to truly assess the quality.

  • Relgoshan

    Just realized none of y’all has mentioned WEBM. Seems the spec has a long way to go before any possible adoption. (Like adding “stop-lookin-like-shit” technology)

    Just like WEBP is fine (in a JPEG2000 kinda way), hence used in Opera Turbo where compression > quality (and JPEG artifacts were terrible). Maybe godawful sites like Mangafox will start transcoding to save bandwidth and piss off even more people.

    • NakkiNyan

      WebM is not meant for desktop viewing it is meant for browser viewing. Because of that it will never have the same quality for space stats as a real codec.

      • Relgoshan

        No – it’s a crappy frozen subset of matroska mated to Google’s crappy VP8 and the freetard favorite Vorbis. And going from mp3 to vorbis produces terrible artifacts. No softsubs, and youtube VP8 is inferior to baseline mp4 even at twice the filesize.

        • NakkiNyan

          There will always be sacrifices for streaming. As for the freetard thing, that is the point, they wanted something that would not require every website to have a license just to play something in the new spec for HTML5. Softsubs have a long way to go and will look like crap it is called WebVTT and they are SRT subs so no styling at all.

  • mspl

    I’m always for the new stuff and this is certainly good thing. Just PLEASE: don’t use FLAC for audio afterwards, because it makes everything looks pointless and idiotic …

  • nagato

    Simple solution: keep 8-bit 720p for people who are happy with things the way they are, add 10-bit 1080p for those who want top quality at any cost.

    There’s no reason to do 10-bit 720p since everyone is complaining about wanting it for the quality (file sizes really don’t matter given today’s HDD size and external drives), those people would be complete hypocrites for wanting it in 720p. That way you don’t alienate people with lower hardware specs (like me >_< I CANNOT play 10-bit 720p even with updated codecs and players).

    Would it be that difficult to do TV in 8-bit 720p and BD in both 8-bit 720p and 10-bit 1080p?

    • Desuwa

      Maybe it’s not that they specifically want 10bit 720p as they want 10bit everything. There are a lot of shows where the 1080p either doesn’t exist or is an upscale. I, for one, would support dropping 8bit cold turkey, but a transition period is probably more realistic, as we had with XviD to H.264.

      Though my advice to people with CPUs that are too weak to handle even 10bit 720p is just to upgrade (assuming it’s not malware/otherwise running too much on the PC at once). If that isn’t an option, well… Save up some money, your computer is due for an upgrade. If you’ve barely held on by dint of GPU acceleration, well, you were barely holding on, get a firmer grip on current technology with a new computer.

  • Harry

    Sounds like a good idea, but would probably need to run side by side with 8-bit versions for a while, Even though My PC should be able to handle the video without a problem, (I have a i5 2500,) but I don’t think it would work on my media player, as it just about handles mkv’s with subtitles, and that’s without effect.

    Same way as when h264 came out Divx/Xvid wasn’t dropped (Infact some people still throw a sissy fit if the Xvid version isn’t released also) I don’t think 10bit will replace 8-bit just yet.

    Maybe it would be best as prviously suggested, to have the 720p version as 8-bit encode, and 1080p version as the 10-bit encode.

  • Wanderer

    8bit-depth: tv releases for watching.

    10bit-depth: bd releases for archiving.

    then just go 10-bit crazy when it’s widely supported.

    CoreAVC 3.0 is the culmination of over 2 years of work and brings many
    new features:

    – Full DXVA 1 / DXVA 2 support

    – DXVA Fallback

    – AVC 10-bit decoding support

    – 4:4:4 profile support (in a later 3.x release)

    – Additional hardware support (more info the 3.0 press release)

    Discount code: SUMMER2011

  • darkness2199

    i prefered when xvid was still used because with h264 i have to keep updating the cccp also i don’t feel the need to upgrade my computer it’s good enough and i rather waste the money on new computer when my computer is still usable

  • Lagwin

    I’m for it tbh, Just tested the difference on break blade from GG their normal 720p is 960mb and the 10bit is 479mb and other than a slight increase in processor load 10% norm 16% to 20% in 10 bit, there is no difference i can see in quality. And VLC player ran it fine.

    • Index

      >Just tested the difference on break blade from GG their normal 720p is 960mb and the 10bit is 479mb

      the 10-bit of gg’s Break Blade was actually re-encode, so it was invalid. nothing’s gain from re-encode such as 8-bit to 10-bit.

      and it was unofficial, and sucked

      • Lagwin

        I dont think it realy matters…i DL’d it to see if
        a. i could play it(i could and havn’t updated codecs in months)
        and b. to see if the quality was the same(which it was)
        Even if it is a re encode from an 8 bit encode its still half the size with no quality loss and if anything taking a BRay rip to encode would probably turn out better

        • Index

          if it was about size, okay. it will be smaller

          but

          >there is no difference i can see in quality

          u can read in previous comments that using 10-bit mean less banding, etc…..
          but if you re-encode from 8-bit to 10-bit, nothing gain except smaller size

  • hell X

    stick with 8bit not 10bit because is lame save only few mb need so many thing to support 10bit is very lame!!!

    • adsl

      10bit is not disk space saver only
      it has a lot of other good points (read the 3 links in the post and watch some OFFICIAL 10bit encodes to see what the good points are)

    • NakkiNyan

      It is not a “few MB” it is 30-50% of the file size. It also reduces banding and excess graininess caused by artifacts in the raw. I am tired of seeing the 3GB, lower quality, single episodes from groups when they could be half that for the same or better quality.

  • lol

    Suggest u put poll box to vote!!!

    not recommended for 10bit h264 not worthly!!!

    720p h264 8bit is already very best of best no need to extreme super duper highest quality 10bit

    • NakkiNyan

      8bit is not “very best of best”, if you can’t play 10bit don’t download that version and get the LQ version. A significant portion of us would like to move on to something better while saving space at the same time instead of idiots increasing the file sizes to 4GB just to keep your 8bit fetish satisfied.

  • adsl

    yes it is needed

  • >Hurr Durr I have an old computer or rely on hardware decoding like an idiot

    This is what I got from this post. Hardware decoding is retarded to rely on, and its a bonus that comes with your card anyway. Hell The i7 in my HTPC is cooled by a low rpm fan and could easily do 10 bit 1080p and the whole box probably cost the same as yours since I didn’t waste any money on a GPU as well as being as silent without it.

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