x264 is useless for HD DVD

X264 would be totally useless for HD DVD for two reasons

• h264 stream generated by x264 is not supported by DVD Studio Pro. There are two problems here – the encoder do not set 3:2 pulldown flag and do not set resolution properly, then mp4box tops it off muxing into incompatible .mp4. DVD Studio cannot work with anything but .mp4 or .mov, so the story pretty much ends here, however there is more
• x264 only encodes progressive frames. Since HD DVD spec (and/or DVD Studio) only support progressive at 23.978 with 3:2 pulldown to 29.97 that means that HDCAM captured 29.97i video would need to have FPS converted to 23.98 before encoding and this creates motion artifacts.

So despite being 2.5 times slower and a lot worse quality wise, Apple’s Compressor is still the only working HD DVD solution. It does stretch 480p SD to 16:9 (I wonder if 960x720 would be supported without stretching), so HD DVD is useless to store AVC encoded SD and thus, for SD the storage is still interlaced MPEG-2 encoded DVD and that still leaves open the question – what to do with PAL->NTSC and 25p 640x480 camera movies (and what to do with Tape captures).

BTW, my DVD player doesn’t play DVD-RW and XBOX do not properly work with 29.97i and 23.98p, so still need to burn test movie on DVD+/-R at 23.98p and check it.

Finally, EyeTV on Apple captures SD with audio problems (both out of sync and pop/click artifacts). So first do check Pinnacle captured SD to make sure there is no clicks (sync seems to be fine) and burn a DVD at 23.98p at about 4Mbps (2+hrs per single layer) which seems to be more then enough for Tape captures. (Both Pinnacle and EyeTV capture at 8Mbps max). And yeah, surprisingly enough TMPGEnc takes 0.5xRT (2xT) to do SD encodes or no faster then x264 could do H264.

HD DVD

It is only a matter of time now for them to come out with a program that would backup HD-DVD onto double layer DVD media to be playable on standalone HD-DVD player. Definitely HD-DVD would enter mainstream this shopping season.

For now creating 3x DVD involves

• transcoding using x264 at lower bitrates
• modifying stream a bit with x264info (adding 3:2 pulldown flag for 29.97i)
• building image with Sonic Scenarist
• burning ISO.

For progressive material I guess x264info step could be skipped. AC3 audio could just be copied, so I guess it all boils down to building image with Scenarist and transcoding from 3.5xT (0.285xRT) for 720p to 7.1xT (0.14xRT) for 1080p on the 2nd pass (on MacBook it would be 3xT(0.3xRT) and 5xT(0.2xRT) respectively), so 1.5 hour material would take upto 2*1.5h*3.5xT~10 hrs for 720p and 2*1.5h*5xT~15 hrs for 1080p to transcode. Again, computers gotta become twice as fast before that type of processing would become practical. It would be fun to try however – because the size would be limited by a bit less then 4GB (say 4.2GB – size of AC3 to be more exact) that means bitrates of upto 4000*8/(1.5h*60*60)~5.9Mbps – one could fit HD content on even single layer DVD.

Receivers

All of the “all in one” home theater systems do not yet do HDMI pass-thru and switching. They just started to have HDMI out for DVD output to HDTV and that is pretty much it. Phillips HTS3555/37 is a good example – it has just HDMI out and COAX IN, no TOSLINK and no HDMI-In. Samsung HT-X40 on the other hand doesn’t have COAX but has TOSLINK in (Samsung speakers are ugly too). It is a bummer that “all in one” doesn’t have meaningful digital audio-in because without it they are no more then a fancy DVD player with HDMI out and bunch of speakers.

Real receivers for most part are still lacking HDMI switching. $180 SONY STR-DG510 being an exception having HDMI (2 in 1 out) and component (2 in 1 out) pass-thru, 2 TOSLINK 1 COAX. Prologic decoding should be manually switched – just like on my old SONY and since they don’t switch between Component and HDMI that means that things like Wii (component only) couldn’t be hooked up to LCD monitor thru receiver. Thus “real receivers” are a bit better but useless as well because they cannot handle anything but a computer hooked up to one HDMI and say HD-DVD player hooked to the other. Plus, HDMI pass-thru do not do any True-HD and such decoding, so today “real receivers” would be useless in the future – read should be replaced soon…

The bottom line is – there is no reason to buy new receiver now. Mac Mini would plug into living-room replacing DVD player outputting to old TV thru Video Adapter. In the game-room emachine will have neither TOSLINK, nor COAX, so it could plug into old stereo. I should start building up game-room only once I get the Mini but then it would work in the living-room. So I should start building up game-room only if I get other computer to drive 24” LCD, but until I get that computer I shouldn’t be buying the panel and may be by that time they release “all in one” receiver with both TOSLINK and COAX-in.

New Mini vs. HP s3100y

Apple released updated Mac Mini (MB138LL/A) and once again I found many reasons not to buy one. This time around updated Mini has a lot going for it. It is finally 64-bit (1.83GHz Core Duo 2), has a Gig of RAM (vs. 512MB before) and 80GB drive (vs. 60GB before) – not that bad actually for $599 apart from the usual – DVD writer cost $200 more.

In the meantime HP came up with their small PC - s3100y that I almost bought for $200 + $70 S/H. The deal was too good to be true and as always Office Depot didn’t have a computer to sell me (they were sold out for one, but apart from that delivery was 40 days out), so realistically s3100y could be picked up without $250 rebate, but say with $150 for $299+$70 S/H~$350 - $400 with 15” monitor and a printer. So what $400 vs. $600 would buy apart from a monitor and a printer? 32-bit 1.6GHz Core Duo in 775 socket on 800MHz FSB with no TV-out, but SPDIF, same Gig of RAM and 160GB SATA drive. Asus motherboard could be run at 1066MHz which made that HP box interesting, but as is the box has about “half” the CPU and twice the disk space (DVD-RW goes without saying). Upgrading to Core Duo 2 2.2GHz E4500 processor would cost $140 from HP or MicroCenter, thus Mac Mini rival from HP would cost $500-$550 or the same as Mac Mini with $50 rebate. HP differential to upgrade from 15” LCD to 24” is $470 and from 15” to 22” - $200 or the same as buying either 24” or 22” Acer monitor, so as always, the only thing that would come with HP for free is a printer.

The bottom line is that I should wait for Leopard to be bundled with the Mini after it is released in October, but I guess I would be buying just when Amazon would slap $50 rebate on it. First however I need to ebay Apple’s DVI to Video Adaptor ($19+$4 from Apple Store) to hookup Mini to TV using either composite or S-video..

FreeNAS or 1TB for $150

My total capacity is 186.31GB+76.33GB+74.53GB=186.31+150.86=337.17GB. Two more 320GB SATA drives for $60/each (or another $20 off on each) + $30 IDE/SATA RAID card with RAID 5 would make about 1TB for $150 in 3 IDE + 2 SATA drives (i.e. I could still keep 25GB raid and extra IDE channel for CF-IDE if I buy power cable splitters). I could make 0.5T for $100 with 2 more 160GB drives at $30 (need just one really so it is $60 for 0.5TB, but then I need a drive for emachine) in 3 IDE = (150 + 180GB) + 1 SATA for overall 0.45TB. Using 25 GB in 13GB RAID (I still have 3 IDE channels left, but again just 5 overall drive slots and power supplies) I could probably boost it to 3*180=0.54TB, so 0.5TB for $100 is more doable then 1TB for $150 that would still need a drive for emachine (13GB just wouldn’t cut it you know)

The biggest problem is to back up the data when building the raid, thus the need for big drive to be left with emachine. So if I buy another box with 160GB or they would have 160GB drives for $30 before they would have 320GB for $60 it would be 0.5TB for $100, otherwise with 320GB drives for $60 it would be 1TB for $150… that would start as a 0.32GB RAID (one 320GB drive goes into FreeNAS and one into emachine) that would get upgraded to 1TB RAID 5 once $30 drives would be in 0.5TB range…

The Future of HD

720pSD is 2.25x 480pSD, 720pHD is 1.33x 720pHD and finally 1080pHD is 2.25x 720pHD. Since every pixel needs to be processed those ratios pretty much determine how much slower it would be to encode 720pSD then 480pSD and so on. Since AVC do not encode every pixel, relationship between bitrate needed and picture size would not be linear as with encoding times. Here is the table to demonstrate that on single pass mencoder encodes on overclocked eMachine that roughly corresponds to 1.6GHz Core Duo.

Size	kbps	H264		kbps	XVID
480pSD	750	1.43xT-1.66xT (0.6xRT-0.7xRT)		850	1.85xT??? (0.54xRT???)
		17fps	43fps		16fps
720pSD	800-900	2.3xT-3.0xT (0.33xRT-0.43xRT)		1000	1.76xT(0.56xRT)
		10fps	25fps		18fps
720pHD	1250	3.5xT (0.285xRT)		1500	3.0xT(0.33xRT)
		8.55fps			10fps
1080pHD	2000+	7.1xT (0.14xRT)		2500	4.3xT(0.23xRT)
		4fps			7fps

So in reality it is not quite 2.25, 1.33, 2.25 but more like 1.5, 1.5, 2.0. Still it doesn’t change the picture that much… Today only 480pSD is about real time and 720pSD would need more then Core Duo2 to become practical that still would make 720pHD a bit better then half the real time and 1080p still way too slow to be practical. I guess there is no real reason for me to get Core Duo2 unless it is Quad and even then we could hope for 720pHD to be not too much slower then real time, but still slower. No need for more then XBOX or flat screen TV either – we are still in 480pSD world until I get that Quad.

P.S. I did run some test on 2.66GHz Core Duo2 MacBook and 720x304 DVD with Handbrake are about twice as fast then D805 at about 100fps/23.97~4xRT (0.25xT) vs. 29fps/23.97~1.23xRT(0.8xT). Upscaling to 720pHD on D805 it was 10fps/23.97~0.4xRT(2.4xT) vs. 12fps/23.97~0.5xRT(2xT) on MacBook under Windows or 14fps/23.97~0.6xRT(1.7xT) under OSX - OSX is more optimized, but still 2hr movie would take more then 2*3.5=7 hours to upscale to 720pHD and 2-pass encode. Definitely, HD is not here even with fastest Apple hardware.

Transcoding ATSC also was well just 15-40% faster 5.87fps/29.97~0.2xRT(5xT) vs. 4/29.97~0.14xRT(7xT) for 1080pHD and 9.63/29.97~0.3xRT(3xT) vs. 8.55/29.97~0.28xRT(3.5xT) for 720pHD, and as predicted, 480pSD was faster then RT at 69.25/59.94=1.15xRT or upto 75/59.94=`.25xRT on OSX. Two pass encodes of SD tapes with x264 under Vista run 53.70/30.25 or about the same as on Quad Xeon 3.4GHz Dell - 49.70/30.58. Finally comskip did run under wine faster then on Vista (250 fps vs. 192 fps).

P.P.S. There is a problem with ffmpeg and x264 muxer making .mp4 unplayable in QT. To fix it need to extract to raw with mp4box (06/2007 build) and remux (with -fps switch for 29.97). Also Sonic DS filter for MPEG-2 is way too slow - use Mainconcept.