sx264 - qt based x264 gui (Linux&Windows)

[Selur]

rev518

*changed*
- calculating framecount if mediaInfo analyser missed it but has frame rate and length
- keeping temp files if output was not created during muxing
- behaviour when target bitrate collides with restrictions
- .m2ts overhead calculation (lower video, higher audio overhead)
- using lavcopts again, which should help multihreading when filtering
- audio delay handling

*cosmetics*
- changed job manager view

*fixed*
- mplayer analyser audio and .dvr-ms handling
- .stats file naming
- problem when muxing with tsmuxer

*added*
- drag&drop support for video input
- mutlifile input support (using settings selected for 1st file)
- option to downsample dts-hd to dts when using tsmuxer as muxer
- option to automatically create the outputname: 'default output path'+'input filename'+"."+'default extension'
- 'default output path' can be set under: Misc -> Paths
- 'default extension' can be set under: Misc->Encoding, Compatibility and Output->Output Settings->Standard output container
- additional framerates for framerate convertion

-> updated downloads in first post

[Riki]

Amazing! I cant tell you how much time this saves me, I highly recommend this app.

On a side note, I attached the settings I use for streaming on the web if anyone wants to check them out. I found them to work very well.

Could you or anyone take a look and let me know if there is anymore I could do to improve my output?

My goal is: Smallest filesize possible, Highest Quality possible, and fast playback. I dont care about encoding time because I have a mac pro with 8 cores and it seems to encode very fast, around 20fps with my current settings.

Here are a few things I did and would like some advice on because some of this I dont quite understand.

1. I decreased the reference frames and bframes because there were some playback issues in quicktime (image would get all messed up during playback) and also to increase playback speed.

2. Im going with a 28.00 constant rate because its hard to choose a bitrate and have it fit all the different types of videos. Some have tons of fullscreen motion and others have none and even others are mixed.

3. Increasing Chroma Boost to 12 seemed to make the filesize go down, and I dont seem to see any quality differences.

4. I went with main profile 3.1 to increase playback speed. This actually made a HUGE difference compared to high.

5. I dont understand settings like Quantizer min/max, Quantfactor I P and B, Max quantizer different, Deadzone, and all the Rate Control Settings. Perhaps there are some tweaks in there to help?

[Selur]

About the settings: it might helpt if you open x264 commandline view and post your settings. (so others don't have to wait for a moderator to approve the attachment )

Cu Selr

[Riki]

oops, Im not sure if this is correct but..


x264 --crf 28 --level 3.1 --ref 3 --keyint 250 --min-keyint 25 --scenecut 40 --bframes 10 --b-bias 0 --b-pyramid --weightb --direct spatial --b-adapt 2 --cplxblur 20 --qcomp 0.6 --qblur 0.5 --qpmin 1 --qpmax 51 --qpstep 4 --ipratio 1.4 --pbratio 1.3 --chroma-qp-offset 12 --partitions i4x4,p4x4,p8x8,b8x8 --me esa --merange 16 --mvrange 512 --subme 9 --mixed-refs --trellis 2 --no-fast-pskip --no-dct-decimate --aq-mode 1 --aq-strength 1 --deadzone-inter 11 --vbv-maxrate 14000 --vbv-bufsize 14000 --threads auto --filter -1,-1 --no-psnr --no-ssim --progress --fps 12 --output

[Selur]

here some comments from me:
"-me esa" is probably overkill umh (multi-hexagonal) should be fine and a lot faster (for most sources one really can't tell the difference when viewing)
"--direct spatial" personally I would select 'auto'
I would also set "--psy-rd" to "1:0.3" (Psy RD/trellis strength)
You can also try to enable 'Allow P4x4 for all levels' under misc->compatibility + p4x4 under Macroblock settings, which might help a bit and will probably cause no problem with quicktime (haven't tested).

Cu Selur

[Riki]

Thanks, Ill try that and let you know the results

[Selur]

rev519

*fixed*
- delay moved to muxing when using neroaacenc
- collision when multiInput met parallel encodings

-> updated downloads in first post

[Riki]

Thanks, all of that is great, except for this

I would also set "--psy-rd" to "1:0.3" (Psy RD/trellis strength)

That made the fielsize significantly bigger.

I found a small bug. When loading a profile the resize only resizes the height, and the auto width doesn't get propagated. I have to toggled the mod setting to get it to update.

Do you accept donations?

[Selur]

Do you accept donations?

Thanks, but none needed (software is not even beta) atm.

When loading a profile the resize only resizes the height, and the auto width doesn't get propagated. I have to toggled the mod setting to get it to update.

Will have a look at it tomorrow. (got a lot to do today, so won't probably find any time )
Would be nice If you could specify a bit more what you did and may be send me a profile with the problem via PM.
It's probably only a small bug. -> think I would the problem, will send you a pm

Cu Selur

[Riki]

Thanks, Im doing a huge test right now with compressing around 200 files. One thing that would help me but it is a minor thing, is to be able to select an output folder and have the files get dumped into there, but inherit the filename.

The reason is some of the files I encode are already mp4 so I get the _reencode suffix.
Its not really a huge deal because I use Directory Opus as my explorer and it has a renaming function to remove characters.

Ill send you a pm about the other fix you sent.

[Riki]

Im not sure if I asked this already but is there a way to set the audio to be mono? I dont seem to see the option and not sure if it has been removed or was never there.

[Selur]

you can select the output folder by setting a default ouput folder.

void X264Model::autoNameOutput(){
	if(this->isClone || !this->findChild<NBoolValue *>("autoOutput")->boolValue()) return;
	emit sendMessage(DEBUG, "autoNameOutput called");
	if(!this->findChild<NBoolValue *>("dvdInput")->boolValue()){
		QString path = this->findChild<NValue *>("defaultOutputPath")->value();
		QString input = this->findChild<NValue *>("videoInput")->value();
		QString videoInput = input;
		emit sendMessage(DEBUG, "autoNameOutput input: "+input);
		input = input.replace("\\", "/");
		input = input.remove(0, input.lastIndexOf("/")+1);
		input = input.remove(input.lastIndexOf("."),input.size());
		input = QDir::toNativeSeparators(path+QString((path.isEmpty()) ? QString("") : QDir::separator()))+input;
		input +=".";
		QString container;
		switch(this->findChild<NRangeValue *>("outputContainer")->intValue()){
			case 1 : container = "mkv"; break;
			case 2 : container = "m2ts"; break;
			case 3 : container = "264"; break;
			default : container= "mp4"; break;
		}
		input += container;
		if(QFile::exists(input)){
			input = input.replace("."+container, "_reencode."+container);
		}
		emit sendMessage(DEBUG, "autoNameOutput output: "+input);
		this->findChild<NValue *>("out")->setValue(input);
	}
}

Im not sure if I asked this already but is there a way to set the audio to be mono?

haven't implemented any downmix since ffmpeg can't downmix audio and mencoder normally doesn't handle audio raw well. (it's possible but kind of a pain)

[Emess]

Originally Posted by Riki

Im not sure if I asked this already but is there a way to set the audio to be mono? I dont seem to see the option and not sure if it has been removed or was never there.

You should be able to demux your audio from your source and open it in say, Audacity, downmix to mono, and then add it as an external audio file.

Originally Posted by Selur

Haven't found the time to investigate how to write a .desktop file with an icon.
iirc the .desktop file should look like e.g.:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=sx264
Type=Application
Icon=sx264.png

but I'm not sure where to but the png file or if a .png file is even allowed as icon

Cu Selur

Windows won't like it (unless it's changed since win2k) but *nix is fine with PNG icons. The default location iirc is /usr/share/icons, however you can use a full path in the .desktop file like $sx264dir/icon.png where sx264dir is the directory where profiles and whatnot are in ~/.sx264. If using /usr/share/icons, be aware that it generally likes multiple sized copies of your icons in the hicolor directory, at least last I checked.

Request: Ability to open named pipes as video sources. I like to use avs2yuv for example to load avisynth scripts in x264 or mencoder, or sometimes I use mplayer and -vo yuv4mpeg:file=mypipe.y4m, is there a way sx264 could maybe buffer the first frame to get the resolution? Obviously there would be no audio and the user would need to set the framerate themselves.

E~

[Selur]

resolution wouldn't be enough, length, framerate, par, famecount would also be needed, if mplayer an open such a pipe through 'mplayer and -vo yuv4mpeg:file=mypipe.y4m' and it's able to provide all the needed infos via mplayer -identify -vo yuv4mpeg:file=mypipe.y4m, integration into sx264 would probably not much of a problem.

[Riki]

The strange thing about the audio is the input source is already mono, and the nero encoder converts it to stereo, is there any way to leave it mono?

As for the output path, thanks! When I saw it greyed out I thought it wasnt an option, now I see the checkbox at the top.

[Selur]

Strange, does sx264 recognize the file as mono? (audio channels = ?)
Got no mono file here, but if you upload it somewhere and send me link via pm I'll look into it tomorrow.

[Riki]

yeah sx26 says 1 audio channel. I did a test with an existing mono audio file and the filesize ended up being exactly the same, so Im not worried about it. I was getting the info from mediainfo. I thought it may have been forcing it to 2 channels and bloating the filesize, but its not.

[Riki]

Here is something else interesting. I unchecked MP4 hinting and it made the filesize lower and still works just the same on a streaming server. I thought for sure this was needed but I guess its not.

[Selur]

@Riki: if you need mp4 hinting or not depends on the streaming server you need, some hint the content on the fly iirc.

just tested the mono audio thing with neroaacenc:
got no problem here, reencoding the mono audio creates a mono aac output,..-> if your system gives stereo output it's probably the fault of the decoder used.

@Emess: About y4m pipe/input: The problem is mplayer doesn't give any infos about length or framecount. Without framecount or length size calculation, showing progress during muxing/encoding etc. isn't possible. I probably could write some workarounds to force mplayer as analyser, mencoder as decoder, only allow 1pass encoding, showing no process and ignoring the missing length and frame count, but would it be worth the effort?
Since I don't use wine under linux I'm not sure, but if mplayer can playback avisynth files as input I can tweak sx264 to accept .avs input under linux too. (might even work atm., with some small bugs, when selecting mplayer as analyser and mencoder as decoder)

Cu Selur

[Selur]

rev520

*fixed*
- auto adjusting resolution on profile load (with auto adjust hieght/width)
- mkv delay handling

-> updated downloads in first post