October 07, 2011

What the heck is "Hi10P"?

I've seen some files coming out in a format called "Hi10P". I looked up the term in Wikipedia and wasn't illuminated. They made it sound like another name for H.264, but if that's all it is, why even bother with another name for it?

One of the files I downloaded which was in that format had all kinds of playback artifacts. Whether that's the fault of the format, or my codecs, or a poorly-done encode, I couldn't say, but I wasn't impressed.

Apparently I'm not the only one. On Hatsuyuki's home page, they proudly proclaim that they won't use the format.

So what is it? Why are some people embracing it? Why are others deliberately abjuring it?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:01 AM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
Post contains 122 words, total size 1 kb.

1 some shot at 1080p compression?

Posted by: Douglas Oosting at October 07, 2011 10:08 AM (sdWdc)

2 Nope, I sit corrected.  10-bit sampling hi-def H.264.  Wikipedia notes most consumer devices don't handle this.  Heck, I question the source material using 10 bit colors.

Posted by: Douglas Oosting at October 07, 2011 10:11 AM (sdWdc)

3

"10-bit sampling hi-def H.264". So what does that mean?

Sounds like it means they're using 10 bits per color instead of 8. Is that it?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 07, 2011 10:23 AM (+rSRq)

4 That's what I found...sounds more like a penile-measurement replacement instead of actual useful change; I question the fidelity of the original to make those extra 2 bits contain useful information--particularly given playback device limitations AND the limits of the human eye.

Posted by: Douglas Oosting at October 07, 2011 10:27 AM (sdWdc)

5 Some of the sub groups claimed superior compression rate achieved by this.  However, the playback codex combo isn't exactly stable.  The current version of CCCP.org package supports though. 

Posted by: BigFire at October 07, 2011 10:30 AM (Kwn4z)

6 It's been a while since I've updated CCCP, and that might explain all the weird color artifacts I saw.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 07, 2011 10:46 AM (+rSRq)

7 I was having much the same effect with some of the recent fansubs; in fact it's what prompted my decision to re-download and re-install everything.  I just didn't realize it was a new format.  Hadena and UTW seem to be using it as their subs are where I encountered the problem.  Hadena is doing C3, so small loss, but UTW us doing Fate/Zero.

Posted by: ubu at October 07, 2011 10:57 AM (GfCSm)

8

particularly given playback device limitations AND the limits of the human eye.

I doubt that LCDs can differentiate color that finely, either. Most LCDs are actually 6-bit color, and the display chips simulate an additional 2 bits by dithering.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 07, 2011 10:58 AM (+rSRq)

9 You know what's weird, I happen to know that under the right conditions a human eye can go beyond 8 bit, reproducibly. This is well known for radiologists, which is why they used 12-bit and 16-bit grayscale since the 1980s.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 07, 2011 11:15 AM (9KseV)

10 Oh, the human eye can pick up all sorts of things, particularly in the center of the field of vision; the question is whether the source material actually has any data there to preserve.

I'm going to call this one fansub e-peening, as useful as bragging about how clever your typesetter is with gaudy fonts and gratuitous animation.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at October 07, 2011 12:15 PM (2XtN5)

11

It may well be that some people can indeed see such fine gradations. The real question is whether such an encoding change actually results in a noticeably better viewing experience, and about that I am highly doubtful.

It would be doubtful even for material created with cameras, or rendered. For the kind of hand-drawn animation we all know and love, it's beyond doubt that it wouldn't make any difference whatever.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 07, 2011 02:43 PM (+rSRq)

12 Hi10p is not about displaying video in 10-bit colour. The 10-bit is only used to increase internal precission (although technically it would also work for 10-bit sources, of course, but there hardly are any). The increased precission makes several steps in the encoding process a lot more efficient, thus allowing for increased compression. It is especially helpful in scenes with strong banding; simply encoding in 10-bit has a natural dithering effect on those areas, so these scenes can look better in plain 10-bit than in 8-bit with a debanding filter applied.

10-bit video is already pretty widely supported: the latest versions of CCCP, VLC and MPlayer already support it, to name a few. CoreAVC does not yet have support, but it is apparently planned in version 3, which should be released "at some point".

Long story short: Hi10p allows for better video quality at similar filesizes, or smaller filesizes at the same quality (or something inbetween). If you're interested, have a look at this document:

http://x264.nl/x264/10bit_02-ateme-why_does_10bit_save_bandwidth.pdf

Posted by: Jordi Vermeulen at October 07, 2011 03:20 PM (AJZdn)

13 I can confirm that the newest version of CCCP works well with Hi10p.  Whether it leads to smaller file sizes however, I can't say yet.  UTW is doing Fate/Zero in the new format, and ep01 looked gorgeous, but better than the older way?  No clue.  Only reason I updated is because most of the shows I want to see this season are being done by fansubbers that have moved to Hi10p. 

*shrug*  My five year old computer is handling it perfectly well, too.

Posted by: Wonderduck at October 07, 2011 03:53 PM (o45Mg)

14 Jordi, if it doesn't work with the hardware-accelerated h.264 decoders used in portable devices (including many lower-end laptops), it's a giant step in the wrong direction.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at October 07, 2011 05:25 PM (2XtN5)

15 re: J Greely

Keep in mind what the sub groups want are two things, easier encoding and less bandwidth (in this case, size of the file).  Portable device decryption is not high on their priority.

Posted by: BigFire at October 07, 2011 06:38 PM (jSRcl)

16 I think they're mainly going to be using this on high-res files, which won't play on low-end devices anyway.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 07, 2011 06:41 PM (+rSRq)

17 For example, the first episode of Fate/zero as encoded by Commie & UTW.  This is a double episode, so you'd expect the file size to be double, and UTW encoding comes up to be about 501MB.  Commie version come to 320MB, and both encoude quality are about the same.

Posted by: BigFire at October 07, 2011 07:07 PM (jSRcl)

18 Steven, 1080p plays just fine on my inexpensive Atom-based netbook, thanks to the hardware-accelerated h.264 decoding. Tablets do a pretty fair job at it, too, although for simple storage reasons most people will download the 720p versions instead. 

Also, see the linked FAQ for snark about the PlayStation 3, which of course handles 1080p h.264 just fine, and tends to be hooked up to nice big television sets where quality matters.

Bigfire, the net effect of what they're doing is creating the need for multiple torrents of each release, increasing encoding time, complexity, and bandwidth, and reducing the chance that torrents will remain seeded after the initial rush. After reading up on it, I think e-peening is still the most likely explanation, closely followed by speculation on who benefits from the adoption of incompatible codecs. The arguments in its favor seem to come down to "less artifacts when we add our logo to someone's video and re-compress it, instead of just distributing softsubs". 

-j

Posted by: J Greely at October 07, 2011 07:16 PM (2XtN5)

19 Hi10p seems like .mkv and H264 all over again to me.  If there are real benefits to quality and compression, even at the cost of some performance it'll eventually become the standard.  Partly due to the aforementioned benefits, but also because processing power and support will catch up sooner rather than later.  It's inevitable that transitions between generations of technology will never be smooth, but that's how the world works.

Personally, I needed a codec pack update badly anyways (mp4s were desynchronizing and forcing me to use VLC or WMP), so Hi10p debuting was actually a welcome chance for me.

Posted by: SlashZero at October 08, 2011 12:03 AM (cNSGg)

20 People had the same kind of complaints when we shifted from XviD to H.264. At least for the time being, most fansub groups release a "normal" version as well, albeit at a lower resolution.

The thing you need to keep in mind is that most fansub groups don't really care if the change to a new standard will cause some people to be unable to play their files. Many fansubbers have a mentality of just wanting to have a good quality version at a reasonable filesize for archivation purposes. They will encode something the way they prefer themselves, and then just make it available to the public. Very few of them have the goal to make as many people able to play the videos as they possibly can.

More can be read in the bakabt forums here: http://forums.bakabt.me/index.php?topic=31033.0

Also, just a small note: my statement that CoreAVC 3 has not been released yet was misinformed. 3.0.1 is available from their website, supposedly with full Hi10P support.

Posted by: Jordi Vermeulen at October 08, 2011 01:19 AM (AJZdn)

21 I dunno, I am old enough to remember when .jpg first came out and people ruined their large collections of well-made gif files by converting them to .jpg with the compression way up so they could fit more on their expensive floppies.

Posted by: Mauser at October 08, 2011 01:47 AM (cZPoz)

22 Bah, that's nothing.  You should have been around when we transitioned from stone knives and bear skins to Paper 1.0.  I thought the tanners were never going to stop bitching.

Posted by: ubu at October 08, 2011 02:42 AM (GfCSm)

23 ubu, don't get people started on the whole paper vs vellum thing.  You know how much our host hates topic-derails... 

Posted by: Siergen at October 08, 2011 02:33 PM (oK555)

24 Alright. Knock it off.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 08, 2011 02:41 PM (+rSRq)

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