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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
plonk420 @ Sep 22nd 2008 10:00PM
H.264 is power... (some) anime (soft subbed) can be encoded perceptually losslessly at 200-300kbps .. potentially a lower bitrate then the AC3 audio...! of course this needs a simple (not too many odd visual effects or crazy motion), clean (minimal-to-no non-digital intermediaries before it hits broadcast or mass produced distribution format (DVD, blu-ray)) anime series. my test case was Azumanga Daioh. other than a few scenes that picked up noise somehow, it was perceptually lossless (compared to the DVD).
plonk420 @ Sep 22nd 2008 10:03PM
(oops, forgot to add)
...it's a pity that considering how long the mandated switchover took, that the gov't didn't mandate ATSC 2.0 compatibility to be in the CECBs.
i'm sure most standard def content could be done in 2-4mbit with ease (it can be done 1-1.5mbit and look perfect in 2pass encoding .. with a good enough encoder).
EatingPie @ Sep 22nd 2008 10:41PM
Okay, I'm all for "perceptually lossless" but your test case is the epitome of horrible, limited motion animation. And since codecs use reference frames and encode differences from that, tons of static imagery is going to give you great results.
But give that a shot on something like Howl's Moving Castle, which looks beautiful in HD (MPEG2, 18mbps). It would not be possible. And your stated 2mbps for regular old anything is way beyond optimistic. Check the rates on DirectTV if you want to know what's what. My nice looking Three Amigos H264 is 15mbps average, and it's one of my "perceptually lossless" caps.
So to put it bluntly, your numbers are way off the mark. Take a look at Lady in the Water on Blu-ray or HD-DVD, VC-1 (claimed by MS to be more efficient than h264) but compressed to smitherenes, to see how bad things get even when the encode is done very very carefully. And that averages near 10mbps.
-Pie
Andy @ Sep 23rd 2008 12:46AM
VC-1 is not more efficient than h264. Microsoft is just trying to get people to accept their codec that barely anyone uses.