Well, this is a turn-up for the books. I've been working on 1080p60 video game capture for some time; the only problem is that there isn't a delivery platform out there in the wild capable of running video at that resolution at 60fps. Note that I'm talking about 60 discrete frames here, as opposed to 60Hz output you'd get from any 1080p capable BD player.

h.264 on any console at 1080p60 is basically a write-off as the decoding effort required is just too high. VC-1 on the other hand isn't quite so heavy.

The good news is that PS3 VC-1 decoding is very, very quick. My clips run on PS3, but lose frames badly on Xbox 360 and indeed my own (non-hardware accelerated) QX6850-based computer.

So here's a sampler to download and try out on your PS3 - about 44 seconds of video, no audio, taken from the lovely PC version of Devil May Cry 4. If there are any dropped frames, it's down to the 8800GT-equipped PC I captured the video from. Right now I'd give my eye-teeth for Crossfired 4870s, then we could up visual effects to max, go to super high texture quality and add in 8x MSAA. But until then...

Download: Rapidshare (http://rapidshare.com/files/136609806/1080p60-vc1.zip.html), or Megaupload (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=83VOQCD0).

In case you have a naff flash drive, copying to hard disk is preferable. If someone can tell me how to easily host 500MB of data, I'll upload the entire sequence... with audio. Kudos to Capcom for a lovely bit of work on that intro by the way.

In terms of encoding for 1080p60, I'm using Windows Expression Encoder 2, but I'm very limited in terms of what aspects of compression I can use. For this clip, I'm using the in-loop, overlap and denoise filters, Luma Only chroma search, no B frames and I'm brute-forcing the quality through at 20mbps, though 15mbps is quite acceptable. Maybe more compression features could be used, but encoding time is so long that it's difficult to test out too many different things.

The biggest limiting factor is that I appear to be forced into using two pass CBR. When I use VBR, the VC-1 encoder seems to exceed the peak bandwidth I lay down. I tell it to use 35mbps max, but WMSnoop sees a big nasty spike to 62.5mbps. I can't get any VBR encode to work without judder, CBR works great but obviously has a quality impact on high motion scenes.

If there are any more experienced VC-1 compressionists here that can assist, that would be great.

Edit: Please see page 2 for AVC discussion of 1080p60 playback.

That's pretty cool.

Just a note on the sound encoding if you choose to do it. The PS3 can't decode WMA Pro for some reason, so if you do audio, it'll have to be in another format.

Nice going there. I know there is fair amount of interest in doing 60 fps on BD format these days.

Hopefully Ben sees this thread and can help with the encoder.

In general, CPU usage is proportional to bitrate. So if the peak did hit 60 mbit/sec, that would explain it struggling there.

Good work, just to comnfirm you're capturing on the same PC as your running the game on correct?

If so what software and capture settings are you running? and what's you full PC specs?

Just checking as we struggle to get a solid 30fps when capturing flash animations at 1080p.

1080p60 avc might be another beast, altogether, but I know I have run avc encodings of straight white noise at 480p that went out to 60 Mb/s on my ps3. As for skipped frames, I have no idea (watching frames of noise doesn't lend itself to distinguishing full motion ). ;) It didn't look strained to do it, I guess.

Then there is also one of the psn trailers (Fallout3). It is in 1080 and has a very brief moment of whitenoise towards the beginning (that was the artistic intent, at least- it's probably just a synthetic sequence). Anyways, it peaks out to close to 100 Mb/s, right in that area. It's a very brief moment, of course (so still not quite the same as what is being suggested in this topic).

...Just thought I'd offer the info! :)

Delineating this upper bound sounds intriguing, though.

Nice going there. I know there is fair amount of interest in doing 60 fps on BD format these days.

Hopefully Ben sees this thread and can help with the encoder.

In general, CPU usage is proportional to bitrate. So if the peak did hit 60 mbit/sec, that would explain it struggling there.

I only appear to have trouble when I use VBR encoding. Sticking to two-pass CBR definitely helps, I just need to find the upper level.

I am finding that even when using the WMV Powertoy, the Expression Encoder is producing considerably better results than Windows Media Encoder.

Good work, just to comnfirm you're capturing on the same PC as your running the game on correct?

No, this is a hardware-based capture unit (Digital Foundry TrueHD) - one PC capturing another. The files are captured in the CineForm HD codec. A Q6600 CPU overclocked to 9x333MHz (3.0GHz) is good enough to run our capture software with scalable preview window and CineForm's encoder in realtime, although I use the non-overclocked equivalent, a QX6850. A Q9550 would probably be just as good.

Using something like FRAPS wouldn't work simply due to the stress on hard disk alone. 1080p60 YUY2 is 248MB/s uncompressed. CineForm compresses at around 8:1 or better - much better in the case of the Devil May Cry capture. The entire 3:44 Devil May Cry 4 intro sequence is 3.6GB in CineForm with virtually lossless quality.

CineForm vs 24-bit RGB lossless uncompressed capture can be found here (http://insidethedigitalfoundry.blogspot.com/2008/04/truehd-proof-of-pudding.html). Suffice to say that without CineForm, I don't think 1080p60 capture would be possible.

1080p60 avc might be another beast, altogether, but I know I have run avc encodings of straight white noise at 480p that went out to 60 Mb/s on my ps3.

Bandwidth with AVC is irrelevant - it simply can't pump out enough frames on any kind of challenging material whatsoever. I couldn't even do it at 10mbps. The demo I uploaded is 20mbps.

Nice find OP.

Experts,

Do you think MPAA will make amendments to shift from standard motion picture film frame rate to enhanced video frame rate for Blu-ray ?

Here's the full thing to download:

Download: Megaupload. (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O99FDZOZ)

The PC running the game is a Shuttle SG33G5 with Q6600 and 8800GT. Game settings are 1920x1080, no AA, high quality textures and effects, shadows at high quality.

If I lower the basic effects, the whole thing runs at 60fps and I can run at 8x MSAA. In a couple of scenes I've swapped in the lower quality, AAed version to maintain a smoother framerate. As I said, I'd kill for those Crossfired 4870s...

To hear sound, you need to Enable WMA Audio on the XMB under the system settings.

I'd like to run this outside of the WMV container and use AC3 audio. That would involve using the .ts or .m2ts wrapper but this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=136148) conversion method didn't work for me. If any one can get this working with AC3 audio, that would be very valuable to me. I'm assuming you can't mux AC3 or DTS into a WMV.

Nice find OP.

Experts,

Do you think MPAA will make amendments to shift from standard motion picture film frame rate to enhanced video frame rate for Blu-ray ?

Conceivably BD players powerful enough to decode 1080p60 could have a firmware upgrade to enable them to do so, but I'm not sure all of them have the required horsepower.

To clarify an earlier comment, Xbox 360 can't decode this file fast enough, but it's worth noting that the dashboard WMV decoder isn't the same code as the HD DVD VC-1 decoder. The dash decoder is multithreaded, but uses the CPU only. If my information is correct, the HD DVD decoder uses both GPU and CPU in concert. The reason that decoder isn't used on the dashboard is that it is optimised entirely for HD DVD spec VC-1 streams, whereas the dash decoder works with any WMV.

Conceivably BD players powerful enough to decode 1080p60 could have a firmware upgrade to enable them to do so, but I'm not sure all of them have the required horsepower.
I have checked specifically on this and the answer unfortunately is different. Reason is that the decoding is done in hardware. The firmware is only there to handle misc/non-computing tasks in silicon. That hardware in the cases I have checked, is limited to the frame rate in the spec.

Experts,

Do you think MPAA will make amendments to shift from standard motion picture film frame rate to enhanced video frame rate for Blu-ray ?
I don't think movie frame rate will change for a long time, if ever. There is however interest from the broadcast side to encode and deliver 60 fps.

Gaming technology and cameras seem to be diverging at the top-end. Cameras are going for 2K and 4K resolutions and sticking to 24fps. Gaming of course will always be 60Hz. Personally once you reach 1080p resolution, I'm more concerned about frame rate over additional resolution, though of course both are welcome.

However, products like JVC's GZ-HD6 and GZ-HD5 (http://www.jvc.com/press/index.jsp?item=643&pageID=3&PressKitID=14) while not recording at 60fps, do acquire 1080p60 from the lens and output it from the HDMI port.

Returning to the topic at hand, I've done some further encodes using Windows Media Encoder with VC-1 tweaked via Zambelli's WMV Power Toy and it seems that the VBR issue is more PS3 related than encoder-related. Any VBR encode gives me judder issues, every CBR encode at practically any bitrate works beautifully as per the posted examples (up to 30mbps so far with no problem, trying 40mbps now)

Edit: 40mbps CBR encode plays beautifully - getting very close to the quality of the original CineForm file now. Time to try some more demanding material, like Ridge Racer 7 for instance.

Gaming technology and cameras seem to be diverging at the top-end. Cameras are going for 2K and 4K resolutions and sticking to 24fps. Gaming of course will always be 60Hz. Personally once you reach 1080p resolution, I'm more concerned about frame rate over additional resolution, though of course both are welcome.

However, products like JVC's GZ-HD6 and GZ-HD5 (http://www.jvc.com/press/index.jsp?item=643&pageID=3&PressKitID=14) while not recording at 60fps, do acquire 1080p60 from the lens and output it from the HDMI port.

Returning to the topic at hand, I've done some further encodes using Windows Media Encoder with VC-1 tweaked via Zambelli's WMV Power Toy and it seems that the VBR issue is more PS3 related than encoder-related. Any VBR encode gives me judder issues, every CBR encode at practically any bitrate works beautifully as per the posted examples (up to 30mbps so far with no problem, trying 40mbps now)

Edit: 40mbps CBR encode plays beautifully - getting very close to the quality of the original CineForm file now. Time to try some more demanding material, like Ridge Racer 7 for instance.

Keeps us posted and keep posting those clips! :-)

Did you actually try the h.264 encoding?

PlayStation 3's XMB implementation of h.264 is lacking some features when it comes to HD (though you can use them at SD resolutions). Even at a mere 10mbps, PS3 couldn't run a 1080p60 encode of Geometry Wars 2 without dropping frames. The closest I ever had to 60fps in h.264 was 1440x1080 using Quicktime Pro's encoder. But quality was shockingly awful and it still dropped frames. I use MeGUI for x264 these days and get far superior results, but for 1080p you can't exceed 30fps.

Going back to VC-1, I put together a real stress test edit using Ridge Racer 7 and it dropped frames pretty badly; I knocked it down to 1440x1080 and it fared much better, but there are still dropped frames and macroblocking on certain scenes even at 40mbps! I'm going to try another couple of encodes and then I'll upload the best one. I was, however, very impressed with the horizontal scaling - looked very close indeed to the full 1920 wide resolution and the decrease in resolution made for less macroblocking.

I'm not a compression expert though so although Expression Encoder 2 gives you good info on what each feature does, it's difficult to know how to use each of them and often the results seem random any way. For example, I engaged dequant on I, P and B frames and it introduced square artefacts throughout the entire encode.

I don't think movie frame rate will change for a long time, if ever. There is however interest from the broadcast side to encode and deliver 60 fps.
Have you heard much interest from the British/European broadcasters of recording & broadcasting at 1080p50?

What about when these programmes are released on Blu-ray? Blu-ray is supposed to be superior to broadcast, especially given the increased bandwidth, but if the one broadcast in the US is 1080p60 and the one broadcast in the UK/Europe one day is 1080p50 (say via satellite/cable?) then the one released on Blu-ray will be inferior at only 1080i60 or 1080i50 (and even worse for the UK/Europe if they convert their 1080p50/1080i50 version to 1080i60 so it's compatible with the USA, even though they could release 2 versions :(). I mean 1080p50 cameras already exist, and people always complain about interlaced and how it's not full HD no matter what the frame rate, yet we can't have 1080p30/50/60 on normal Blu-ray with commercial discs.

It seems the movie industry is stuck in the past, even when, for some scenes, a higher rate could give a superior product.

PlayStation 3's XMB implementation of h.264 is lacking some features when it comes to HD (though you can use them at SD resolutions). Even at a mere 10mbps, PS3 couldn't run a 1080p60 encode of Geometry Wars 2 without dropping frames. The closest I ever had to 60fps in h.264 was 1440x1080 using Quicktime Pro's encoder. But quality was shockingly awful and it still dropped frames. I use MeGUI for x264 these days and get far superior results, but for 1080p you can't exceed 30fps.

Going back to VC-1, I put together a real stress test edit using Ridge Racer 7 and it dropped frames pretty badly; I knocked it down to 1440x1080 and it fared much better, but there are still dropped frames and macroblocking on certain scenes even at 40mbps! I'm going to try another couple of encodes and then I'll upload the best one. I was, however, very impressed with the horizontal scaling - looked very close indeed to the full 1920 wide resolution and the decrease in resolution made for less macroblocking.

I'm not a compression expert though so although Expression Encoder 2 gives you good info on what each feature does, it's difficult to know how to use each of them and often the results seem random any way. For example, I engaged dequant on I, P and B frames and it introduced square artefacts throughout the entire encode.

Hmm, i tried some 1080i encodes (50i) im gonna check the bitrate, worked flawless. I used Apple Final Cut plus compressor, a bit in doubt if it was MPEG2 to be honest. It was just a quick test on some HiDef stuff we did on a HD truck. All the h.264 stuff that i have thrown at the PS3 have performed flawless, but nothing was 60p.

Well the difference between 1080i60 and 1080p60 is basically that the latter uses double the bandwidth - 1080i60 is outputting 30 full frames per second, hence half the load. There is no problem with 1080p30 with h.264.

Been doing some more encodes and essentially there are three major issues.

1. No VBR
PS3 just doesn't seem to like it, or else it doesn't work well with 1080p60 in particular

2. No B frames
A useful tool for lowering bandwidth requirements, but using B frames causes video to go into slow-mo in this case and audio drops out of sync, but on the plus side the in-loop, overlap and denoising filters work fine

3. Choice of material
Anything too detail rich and fast moving and you need to drop down to 1440x1080. The Devil May Cry 4 intro is perfect for full 1080p60 VC-1 though in that its relatively easy to compress for the most part and the fast action bits are blurred any way. I do think that non-games footage would work well though - the problem with games video is that there's an infinite depth of field; everything is in focus, there's no blur - no shortcuts for the compressor!

I'll get a couple more clips up later.

It must be the combination of 1080p60 that is causing the problems, because I have been able to make all sorts of avc videos (1080p24 and lesser resolutions in p60/i60/p30) using b-frames and vbr w/o encountering problems.

I've notice that ps3 can play finicky with certain "flavors" of encoder, as well. Seems like it shouldn't matter if a standard container is a standard, but somehow it can tell. Usually, it manifests as an outright unrecognizable file, though, rather than difficult playback. I guess if the former is possible, the latter wouldn't surprise me, given the right instances.

I look forward to your vg clips!...

Interesting. This largely agrees with my results. I've used the amazing (and extremely slow) McBob deinterlacer to convert 1440x1080 29.97 fps HDV footage to 60p. I was able to create a PS3 playable 60p WMV file but my 60p AVC encodes seemed to run in slow motion. Maybe I'll try an encode without b frames.

That said, I get the best PS3 playback results for this type of footage by encoding interlaced AVC with x264 (you need the experimental x264 builds). Interlaced WMV is second followed by XVID and MPEG2. I wonder how it would look if you took your 60P game footage and weaved it into 60i AVC using avisynth. It would be technically inferior but you might be surprised how good it looks. By the way, my PS3 is set to 24p output.

Have you heard much interest from the British/European broadcasters of recording & broadcasting at 1080p50?
Yes, a few years ago. But I have not kept touch with those people recently.

It seems the movie industry is stuck in the past, even when, for some scenes, a higher rate could give a superior product.
It took us what, 50 years to go from analog standard definition to digital HD? The entire industry moves super slow!

Someone needs to invent a TV which dies every 5 years and then we can have innovations at a faster pace! :D

Interlacing is the work of Beelzebub ;) Especially in detail rich game footage. I'm uploading a clip later that would die horribly were it to be interlaced. I'd sooner drop down to 1440x1080 and retain progressive scan and 60fps, and for PS3, that means VC-1. The 'no b frames' comment is relevant only to VC-1.

Don't get me wrong, h.264 is brilliant, and the x264 encoder is beyond awesome. It works great at 1080p30. Here's a compendium of GT5 Prologue intro footage (the only bit of the game actually running at 1920x1080 btw, and locked to 30fps):

Download: Megaupload. (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KW3PGD7D)

Not bad at all for 8mbps - that's sub-DVD bandwidth, and I've not been able to get as good results with VC-1 due to the VBR situation. But nooooo way can h.264 on PS3 do what VC-1 in terms of the extreme resolution and frame rate stuff seen in that Devil May Cry video.

By the way, I'd still like to strip out the VC-1 video stream and re-mux with AC3 audio. It would make the vids playable without the user having to muck about with enabling WMA audio on the XMB. Can any one help?

It took us what, 50 years to go from analog standard definition to digital HD? The entire industry moves super slow!

Someone needs to invent a TV which dies every 5 years and then we can have innovations at a faster pace! :D

Well the thing is here that the TVs wouldn't need to change at all, as all current 1080p sets can accept a 60Hz input :) It's just that everything else would have to change.

Well the difference between 1080i60 and 1080p60 is basically that the latter uses double the bandwidth - 1080i60 is outputting 30 full frames per second, hence half the load. There is no problem with 1080p30 with h.264.

I am very well aware of that, and it was 50i btw, Europe for the win.
I checked the encodes, i used a pretty hefty bitrate but it was only MPEG2.

I think the issue is more related to the h.264 decoding and implementation than running out of CPU.

Also, I wanted to add that sometimes the particular muxer part of the process can have incompatibilities when b-frames are present.

Interlacing is the work of Beelzebub ;) Especially in detail rich game footage. I'm uploading a clip later that would die horribly were it to be interlaced. I'd sooner drop down to 1440x1080 and retain progressive scan and 60fps
Be careful with your wishes. Here in Germany some TV stations are planning to broadcast in 720p50 instead of 1080i50 (once they finally begin broadcasting in HD <sigh>). That sounds good for ya interlaced haters. It may be a good idea for sports. But what happens with movies? 1080i50 is MUCH better for movies than 720p50. And 1080i60 is MUCH better for movies than 720p60. For two reasons: (1) The resolution is higher without any disadvantage (if the deinterlacer is working properly). (2) With proper deinterlacing it's possible to convert 1080i60 movies losslessly to 1080p24 and 1080i50 movies to 1080p25. That's a good thing because having a 24Hz video signal allows you to get rid of the 3:2 motion judder. And having a 24Hz or 25Hz signal allows the display to refresh at 72Hz or 75Hz, which is the best display mode for e.g. Pioneer plasmas. That wouldn't be possible with a 50p or 60p signal.

IMO broadcasting should be done in 1080p24 or 1080p25 for movies and 1080p50 or 1080p60 for sports (and music concerts etc). That would be the optimal solution. But somehow I doubt that will come true. It seems that broadcasters have problems switching between different refresh rates. Because of that reason I prefer 1080i50 and 1080i60 broadcasting over anything else because it's the best we can reasonably get for movies (which is what I care about most)...

I just tested the Wipeout HD trailer (WO HD English) which can be downloaded from the psn. Fairly sure this is a 60fps clip (I have a 1080i display so can't really confirm).

It reports as AVC and peaked at 49.1Mbps during playback.

Info on the XMB reports the file as -

File type - MP4
size - 255MB
Resolution - 1980 x 1080
Video codec - AVC 20.00 Mbps
Audio codec - AAC 160 Kbps

Not bad at all for 8mbps - that's sub-DVD bandwidth, and I've not been able to get as good results with VC-1 due to the VBR situation. But nooooo way can h.264 on PS3 do what VC-1 in terms of the extreme resolution and frame rate stuff seen in that Devil May Cry video.


On the PS3 that's true (for now). On the PC, h.264 is the only way to go in my opinion. A good video card can decode 60p AVC with very little CPU overhead. I haven't tested the "professional" VC-1 solutions but I haven't been able to match the quality of x264 using the free stuff.

wow never knew that.

I just tested the Wipeout HD trailer (WO HD English) which can be downloaded from the psn. Fairly sure this is a 60fps clip (I have a 1080i display so can't really confirm).

It reports as AVC and peaked at 49.1Mbps during playback.

Info on the XMB reports the file as -

File type - MP4
size - 255MB
Resolution - 1980 x 1080
Video codec - AVC 20.00 Mbps
Audio codec - AAC 160 Kbps

PS3 test units can't access the PlayStation Store, so I can't look at this file. If someone wants to upload the file for me to look at, I can see what's going on there. I tried one of my clips using the basic AVC Main Profile and it was a total waste of time.

On the PS3 that's true (for now). On the PC, h.264 is the only way to go in my opinion. A good video card can decode 60p AVC with very little CPU overhead. I haven't tested the "professional" VC-1 solutions but I haven't been able to match the quality of x264 using the free stuff.

Microsoft Expression Encoder 2 is built on the VC-1 SDK and has a free 30 day trial.

PS3 test units can't access the PlayStation Store, so I can't look at this file. If someone wants to upload the file for me to look at, I can see what's going on there. I tried one of my clips using the basic AVC Main Profile and it was a total waste of time.

I don't think its possible to extract psn videos from a retail PS3?

http://www.wipeouthd.com/

In the video section is a 1080p download (252MB zipped) which is probably identical to the psn version. I haven't downloaded it, so no idea how its encoded sorry.

Thanks, that's a beautiful video, but regardless of the trailer's blurb, the video itself is 30fps, not 60fps. I'll admit it looks mighty fine though and I thought it was 60fps myself for a while, though the gameplay footage (screen tear and all) looks a bit suspicious.

A couple more VC-1 vids to show the brickwalls I've hit now. It's worth pointing out that only games video could produce this insane level of detail - I reckon that real life camera-shot video or even CG would playback at 1080p60 with no problem.

Firstly, some random Devil May Cry 4 PC gameplay:

Download: Megaupload. (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HR0V46FG)

Encoded at 40mbps CBR. Runs for the most part at 60fps, but there are some 'jumps' which are not present in the original capture. These jumps remain there no matter what bitrate I use. There are some insane levels of detail here, so I'm surprised it runs as well as it does to be honest.

Secondly, some Ridge Racer 7:

Download: Megaupload. (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2KAAU7RR)

At 1920x1080, this clip just doesn't work. Here we drop down to 1440x1080 with rectangular pixels and whilst it's bearable, it still drops frames and the artefacting in places is very disappointing. Again, this is 40mbps CBR.

Fwiw, I upscaled one of my 720p60 videos to 1080p60 (avc, 2-pass, 3 b-frames, 50 Mb/s), yesterday evening, and tried it on my ps3. It seemed to work fine. :confused: Can't really say how smooth it looked or if there were dropped frames. The motion in the video has never looked particularly smooth (just by the nature of the content), anywhere I've tried to play it. It's a bunch of people running en masse through a park.

Just for kicks, I also tried a 720p120 version of the same video. That seemed to run fine, as well (people running in fast motion).

Could it possibly be some sort of debugging hook in the test ps3 that is blocking? Have you also tried encoding a sample using a different software, just to see if it behaves differently?

The video decoding is identical between debug and retail units. What encoder are you using? Why don't you try re-encoding my Devil May Cry 4 gameplay clip into AVC?

I've got 1080p60 working with AVC, but it requires *everything* turned off, resolution cut down to 1280x1080, then big hunks of bandwidth thrown at it.

How many slices are you using on the AVC? You may get better playback perf if you try more slices. BD seems to use 4. More B frames may also help in playback.

You may also want to resize down to 720p60 and encode for the fun of it.

If you can point me to the source, e.g. Cineform, I can encode a VC-1 elementary stream for you. You can probably mux it into a TS with AC3.

What settings are you using in Expression Encoder?

The video decoding is identical between debug and retail units. What encoder are you using? Why don't you try re-encoding my Devil May Cry 4 gameplay clip into AVC?


I'm only playing around (still learning as I go, of course) with shareware stuff- Mediacoder, MpegStreamclip, FFMpeg.

I was looking forward to your clips, but I am firewalled at work from accessing your sharing site/software. I'm not exactly a "PC-shop" at home, either, so I don't expect I will be able to access the software/files there, either. So I guess I am outta-luck on this endeavor. :(

How many slices are you using on the AVC? You may get better playback perf if you try more slices. BD seems to use 4. More B frames may also help in playback.

You may also want to resize down to 720p60 and encode for the fun of it.

Hi, not sure what you mean by 'slices' in terms of MeGUI profile settings. To get the speed up and make 1280x1080 possible I had to turn off macroblock options, take b frames down to 0, kill CABAC and all quant options, and turn off ME too.

I've never had any problem with 720p60 and 1080p30 encoding with the appropriate MeGUI PS3 profile.

If you can point me to the source, e.g. Cineform, I can encode a VC-1 elementary stream for you. You can probably mux it into a TS with AC3.

What settings are you using in Expression Encoder?

I've PMed you with FTP details for a 1080p60 CineForm you can toy with, though it's probably more extreme than any of the samples posted; it's the clip I use to impressive people who want 1080p60 capture.

Settings are two pass CBR (any amount of bitrate will work up to 40mbps, maybe higher). Video profile is set to 'Profile Adaptive'. Advanced codec settings are:

Adaptive Dead Zone: Aggressive (though anything works)
DQuant: usually I and P frames although anything works
In-loop, overlap filters on - I use denoise if there's excess artefacting (though I only need to use it on the Ridge Racer clip)
B Frames are at 0 - using B frames introduces lag/slowdown
Chroma Search - Luma only (other options work but take waaaay too long)
Match Method and Search Range at Adaptive

I use Video Complexity: Normal (3)

Are you using "Main profile - level 4.0" for avc, or would that make any difference?

Thanks, that's a beautiful video, but regardless of the trailer's blurb, the video itself is 30fps, not 60fps. I'll admit it looks mighty fine though and I thought it was 60fps myself for a while, though the gameplay footage (screen tear and all) looks a bit suspicious.

Thanks for the tip on the copying from PS3 to USB flash drive.
I've copied the psn version over to the pc and it reports in at 59.94fps and 20Mbps.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/faranheit/WipeoutHD_details1.jpg

Can't seem to find out what profile and level were used.
The 360 tries to play it. It just presents a black screen for 30 seconds and then the audio starts playing sans-picture.

Yes, the WipEout trailer is indeed 1080p60... my mistake there, based on the sub-optimal gameplay footage which might as well be running at 1080p30 based on the amount of v-lock screen tear.

I exported the video to an uncompressed 24GB AVI file via Quicktime Pro's Export AVI feature and confirmed the frame rate and resolution. However, the quality of the actual encode leaves a lot to be desired when scrutinised close-up.

Sharktooth on the Doom9 Forum has recreated the settings used to generate the WipEout HD video. According to his analysis, it's level 4.2, main profile, CAVLC with 2 reference frames, no weightb , no 8x8 dct.

However, an equivalent x264 profile still doesn't work. Turns out that the WipEout video uses eight slices (something x264 doesn't support) and PS3 most likely decodes them in parallel across the SPUs.

Yes, a few years ago. But I have not kept touch with those people recently.


It took us what, 50 years to go from analog standard definition to digital HD? The entire industry moves super slow!

Someone needs to invent a TV which dies every 5 years and then we can have innovations at a faster pace! :D

Take heart, it sometimes seems that some manufacturers and working on just that very thing lol.

Cheers

OK, 1080p60 with AVC is confirmed, so time for a thread title change :)

You can use an AVCHD encoding profile, up the slices to 8, the frame rate to 59.94 and to ensure smoothness you need to turn off CABAC ( :( ). Variable bitrate encoding is confirmed, as is use of the .mpg container with AC3 sound.

Mainconcept Reference is the encoder I used, but I'd be interested in other encoders which use slices (x264 doesn't unfortunately) and which are cheaper and a bit more advanced. $1,900 for the Main Concept AVC encoder is hardly value bearing in mind that if x264 had slices support it would kill MC in pretty much every single regard.

Are you using "Main profile - level 4.0" for avc, or would that make any difference?

The spec says with HighProfile L4.1, you need four slices, but all players I tested ignore that spec and play fine with a single slice.

If anyone is a stickler for specs, use L4.0, but I doubt it makes a difference.

As for Main Profile, don't use it for highdef resolutions. You lose the highprofile extensions that actually do improve quality for 1920x1080 resolutions. ie: the adaptive 4x4 and 8x8 transform mainly was designed for the higher res pictures, and the weighted quant (in some cases, but mostly for low bitrates).