[Lossless] Ut Video Codec

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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Zarxrax » Sun Sep 26, 2010 1:38 pm

Here are some hard numbers on the performance of this codec.
Test video is the movie My Neighbor Totoro, 848x480. I think this is a good real-world test clip.

UTvideo (better decoding speed)
Size: 30.1GB
Decode time: 187fps

UTvideo (better compression)
Size: 24.1GB
Decode time: 177fps

Lagarith
Size: 22.5GB
Decode time: 68fps

Huffyuv (Plane)
Size: 24.9GB
Decode time: 158fps


As you can see, UTvideo gives you quite some flexibility with its two different modes. The fast decode speed version was about 25% larger than the high compression version. The high compression version was about 7% larger than lagarith. This *might* be a big deal for some people, but I think at the large filesizes we are working with here, a 7% difference isn't very major.

As for decoding speed, the difference speaks for itself. For UTvideo, I strongly suspect that for both files, it was in fact being limited by the transfer speed of my hard disk. In other tests I have done, the high decode speed version actually outperforms the high compression version by about 30%.

Because both UTvideo clips maxed out my hard disk, there is absolutely no reason for me to even consider the fast decoding one. The high compression version is plenty fast already. Note that UTvideo performed 260% faster than Lagarith.
The high compression version of UTvideo also outperforms Huffyuv in both speed and filesize.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Sun Sep 26, 2010 2:25 pm

Thanks for the numbers, Zarx! I probably wouldn't have run tests on that myself. This means I can stop using the fast decode option. :up:

Although thinking about it, if you're doing a lot of heavy editing with effects taking a lot of CPU time, it might be nice using the fast decode over compressibility.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Mon Sep 27, 2010 5:53 am

Just an update, UTVideo 422 plays smoothly in Vegas (I'm using Vegas Movie Studio 10).

I haven't tried 420 because of various issues, but 422 is not having the same speed issues as I had with other YUV codecs in Vegas. Huzzah!
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Mister Hatt » Mon Sep 27, 2010 2:58 pm

Something worth noting seeing as people are using lossless and this kinda makes lossless entirely not worthwhile: when you resample your chroma in smaller blocks (2x1 blocks of chroma rather than 2x2 - it's what happens when you 4:2:2 instead of 4:2:0), you are doing so losslessly as it just uses the same chroma value. However any effects and whatnot that you apply will be rendered in a 4:2:2 chroma space, which when you encode is resampled to 4:2:0 and you thus lose colour definition. This can cause anything from blocky jaggies to banding to blurring on any chroma edges. If you are exporting, make sure you render your effects at 4:2:0. x264 CAN support 4:2:2 but at this point in time it doesn't. Just a heads up.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Tue Sep 28, 2010 1:02 am

Thanks for the good advice, Mister Hatt.

That kinda messes up the way I was planning on doing things moving forward. :( From what I can tell, Vegas processes everything internally in RGB, but if I understand correctly it will pass unprocessed YCbCr stuff straight through. So basically as long as I just do straight cuts and no effects (lol) it will maintain the original quality. That really sucks... not to mention the color inconsistencies created when some stuff is processed and other stuff isn't. I'm starting to see why some people don't like Vegas. At the risk of getting slightly off-topic, does Premiere do this any better? I also read that After Effects processes in all RGB as well.

Lastly (and more on topic), UTVideo 420 seems to be working fine for me now, so hurray for smaller files!
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Mister Hatt » Tue Sep 28, 2010 1:19 am

I have no idea how Premiere does it but I could ask around. Obviously it will have the same resampling problems as there is no way around that, but as far as RGB conversions go I would imagine that it picks a matrix either arbitrarily or based on vertical resolution and is consistant with that.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Tue Sep 28, 2010 4:20 am

I stumbled upon what I think is the reason UTVideo 420 wasn't working for me. Neither 420 nor 422 will play back in anything aside from VirtualDub for me if they are not mod16. Tested using a 720x480 video clip, cropped it to 712x480 and 704x480 and saved both with the same UTVideo settings (actually, I saved them both twice, with 420 and 422). The 704x480 files will all play normally, but none of the 712x480 files will play in anything other than VirtualDub.

Is it specified somewhere that UTVideo resolution must be mod16?
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby mirkosp » Tue Sep 28, 2010 8:19 am

Mister Hatt wrote:I have no idea how Premiere does it but I could ask around. Obviously it will have the same resampling problems as there is no way around that, but as far as RGB conversions go I would imagine that it picks a matrix either arbitrarily or based on vertical resolution and is consistant with that.

Premiere acts a bit differently. Some effects are YUV and others are RGB (from what I saw of CS5, this is especially stated for each effect), so depending on the colourspace of the clips and effects you use, you might be able to get the whole thing through without a colourspace correction.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby BasharOfTheAges » Tue Sep 28, 2010 8:52 am

How noticeable would these conversions be? Are we talking the visual equivalent of an audiophile claiming to be able to tell which kind of speaker wire you're using? Something that'd be less important than the temperature of your monitor (or even the lighting in the room) on color? Or something normal people would actually notice?
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Zarxrax » Tue Sep 28, 2010 8:59 am

BasharOfTheAges wrote:How noticeable would these conversions be? Are we talking the visual equivalent of an audiophile claiming to be able to tell which kind of speaker wire you're using? Something that'd be less important than the temperature of your monitor (or even the lighting in the room) on color? Or something normal people would actually notice?

Normal people can't even notice an incorrect aspect ratio, so I think this is not a problem :asd:
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby mirkosp » Tue Sep 28, 2010 9:05 am

BasharOfTheAges wrote:How noticeable would these conversions be? Are we talking the visual equivalent of an audiophile claiming to be able to tell which kind of speaker wire you're using? Something that'd be less important than the temperature of your monitor (or even the lighting in the room) on color? Or something normal people would actually notice?

It can get noticeable depending on how it's done. If it's done properly, it won't be an issue at all. If done wrong, it does get obvious. Done wrong aka using the wrong colourmatrix when doing the conversion, because greens and reds will get shifted in colour. Unfortunately I don't know how well NLEs handle the conversions...
Of course, if you haven't seen how the original colours were, chances are you might not notice anything wrong (unless different parts of a scene have been split and have had different effects applied in the editing, which might cause a colour flicker depending on what is done... somewhat of a limit situation, not exactly common).
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby BasharOfTheAges » Tue Sep 28, 2010 10:47 am

mirkosp wrote:It can get noticeable depending on how it's done. If it's done properly, it won't be an issue at all. If done wrong, it does get obvious. Done wrong aka using the wrong colourmatrix when doing the conversion, because greens and reds will get shifted in colour. Unfortunately I don't know how well NLEs handle the conversions...
Of course, if you haven't seen how the original colours were, chances are you might not notice anything wrong (unless different parts of a scene have been split and have had different effects applied in the editing, which might cause a colour flicker depending on what is done... somewhat of a limit situation, not exactly common).

Well, The question was framed in the parameters of within an NLE. Premiere or Vegas for example. I guess the greater question would be is this something noticeable when you spit your timeline out of premiere. Or, even more to the point, is it even something worth worrying about in the first place? Would it stop you from suggesting people use the codec in Premiere or Vegas because of it?

Zarxrax wrote:Normal people can't even notice an incorrect aspect ratio, so I think this is not a problem :asd:

Stop making me so depressed. I want to smack people watching SD broadcasts in 16:9.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby mirkosp » Tue Sep 28, 2010 11:09 am

BasharOfTheAges wrote:Well, The question was framed in the parameters of within an NLE. Premiere or Vegas for example. I guess the greater question would be is this something noticeable when you spit your timeline out of premiere. Or, even more to the point, is it even something worth worrying about in the first place?

Depends... generally not, you only have to look out on specific scenes depending on what you're doing, I guess, but again, rare occurences, and if conversions are kept to a minimum, possibly unnoticeable even if wrong.
Would it stop you from suggesting people use the codec in Premiere or Vegas because of it?

It's less about the codec and more about quit using them entirely if you really start worrying at that point, because they do conversions with any input at one point or the other, depending on the effects you apply and the format you output to. So yeah, I don't think it's worth hitting the head over.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Tue Sep 28, 2010 2:48 pm

A conversion from say YV12 to RGB is unnoticeable if done correctly, especially when you consider that viewing on a monitor it must be changed to RGB eventually, since that is how your monitor works. Problems arise when one part of a clip may have effects applied, but another part doesn't, and this could introduce color flicker as Mirko said, or you could also see degradation if conversions are done multiple times. As with any lossy process, you lose information every time it's done. If you start with a DVD source and your NLE does do a conversion to RGB, at minimum you will go YV12 -> RGB -> YV12 (distribution encode) -> RGB (viewing on a PC monitor). I think this is generally an acceptable number of conversions, and you'll see way more loss of detail/color information from the final encoding process than from the colorspace conversions in this case. I think the main point is you should try to maintain original quality as long as possible, which is the reason for using a lossless codec to begin with.

I think in the case of Vegas, if I know I'm going to use an effect in a certain scene, I might as well change colorspace in Avisynth beforehand to make sure everything stays correct and, most importantly, consistent. Now I have to test the UTVideo RGB modes...
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Mister Hatt » Tue Sep 28, 2010 6:26 pm

BasharOfTheAges wrote:Stop making me so depressed. I want to smack people watching SD broadcasts in 16:9.
I want to smack people who think that SD can't be widescreen.
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