4k Video Encoding for Stable Watchout Playback

[orfischer]

Hi All,

Looking for your advise regarding the recommended specifications to encode 4k videos for stable playback.

From my understanding, the recommended software is ffmpeg, but couldn't find the recommended export specifications. Would also love to hear success stories with other encoding softwares.

I have tried to export through ffmpeg to mpeg2 and mpeg4 - the funny part is that the video get stuck for a second about every 15 seconds of playback, but when we set the video to "loop" on Watchout 6.2.2/6.3 the video plays smoothly and we can achieve 4x 4k playback.

Would appreciate if you (Dataton) publish recommended encoding sheet and guide to encoding 4k videos for Watchout, it looks like the last one published was back in 2015.

[Walter]

I would never use mpeg2 or mpeg4 for 4K playback. 

Please use HAP codec for this and all will be fine (imo). 

I use adobe media encoder with repetitive success. The latest version appears to have lost the Native HAP support, but if you have a subscription, you can always install the CC2017 version. Otherwise, there is a third party solution available for this, by Disguise. 

[Badry]

Personally, I've had nightmares with .mpeg

Sometimes the .mpeg media doesn't respond to the cue, never playback or even damage decoding of concurrent videos on other layers (in my case, the embedded audio of a video played-on-background stopped working)

I tested the same project on different servers and got back similar results (the screen-corner-timer video just never started to play)  

My advice: find a good RAID option and stick to HAP

 

Cheers 

[keitht]

I have had good success making 4K MPG2 in FF.
HAP is great - and the performance is unworldly, but sometimes I need either smaller files sizes or better image quality (yes, I find MPG2 quality better than HAP for many types of media).
I find MPG2 performance vs quality far superior to MPG4.

Here are my FF settings:
-c:v mpeg2video -g 15 -bf 0 -pix_fmt yuv422p -b:v 80000k -minrate 80000k -maxrate 80000k -bufsize 80000k

[orfischer]

2 hours ago, keitht said:

I have had good success making 4K MPG2 in FF.
HAP is great - and the performance is unworldly, but sometimes I need either smaller files sizes or better image quality (yes, I find MPG2 quality better than HAP for many types of media).
I find MPG2 performance vs quality far superior to MPG4.

Here are my FF settings:
-c:v mpeg2video -g 15 -bf 0 -pix_fmt yuv422p -b:v 80000k -minrate 80000k -maxrate 80000k -bufsize 80000k

Thank you so much Keitht, this is what I was looking for.

How would the command will be different if we wanted to export HAP, or HAP Q?

[jfk]

We see greatly varying results with mpeg all to often. The issue is, simply stating mpeg2 or mpeg4 is still to vague.

There are numerous settings available within the mpeg codec that significantly impact results. When those settings are optimized, the results are quite good and stable. When those settings are less than optimal, then the results can be less than satisfactory.

Typically, default mpeg settings in most encoding tools will provide poor results in WATCHOUT - the defaults are typically focused on plastic discs where space is at a premium [DVD / Blu-ray which rely on dedicated hardware decoding] or web usage [where the smallest data size is desired]. HAP would be a poor choice for either of those usages (yes, i know it is not an option for plastic discs, but you get the point). WATCHOUT uses software decoding and storage space is less critical, so the best settings for WATCHOUT are quite different. One of the advantages of HAP is there are fewer variables, the only one of significance is chunks depending on the overall pixel dimensions of the movie. For 1080p or smaller, even that setting is insignificant. That simplicity contributes to the higher success rate of HAP.

Keith addresses the mpeg2 variables by including info on the exact settings he uses with success. The  -bf 0 switch (no bi-directional frames) is very significant, it has a greater impact than any other setting, although all of them contribute to the best results, you could get all the others correct except for b frames and still have bad results. Also note, the information on avoiding B-frames is not mentioned in the 2012 encoding recommendations document (because we discovered this detail 2 years after the document was published, thanks to Keith's assistance, he spent 2 days of his time working with Dataton support and I to discover the impact of B-frames).

6 hours ago, Badry said:

Personally, I've had nightmares with .mpeg

Sometimes the .mpeg media doesn't respond to the cue, never playback or even damage decoding of concurrent videos on other layers (in my case, the embedded audio of a video played-on-background stopped working)

I tested the same project on different servers and got back similar results (the screen-corner-timer video just never started to play)  

My advice: find a good RAID option and stick to HAP

 

Cheers 

 

2 hours ago, keitht said:

I have had good success making 4K MPG2 in FF.
HAP is great - and the performance is unworldly, but sometimes I need either smaller files sizes or better image quality (yes, I find MPG2 quality better than HAP for many types of media).
I find MPG2 performance vs quality far superior to MPG4.

Here are my FF settings:
-c:v mpeg2video -g 15 -bf 0 -pix_fmt yuv422p -b:v 80000k -minrate 80000k -maxrate 80000k -bufsize 80000k

 

[jfk]

8 minutes ago, orfischer said:

Thank you so much Keitht, this is what I was looking for.

How would the command will be different if we wanted to export HAP, or HAP Q?

That information has been posted in this forum in the past. Give me some time to search for it and I will post links.

[jfk]

2 hours ago, orfischer said:

Thank you so much Keitht, this is what I was looking for.

How would the command will be different if we wanted to export HAP, or HAP Q?

 

 

 

[keitht]

On 11/14/2018 at 2:06 PM, orfischer said:

Thank you so much Keitht, this is what I was looking for.

How would the command will be different if we wanted to export HAP, or HAP Q?

I would NOT recommend using FFMPEG to make HAP files.  The image quality is not as good as other methods.  

If you can install AME 12.0.1 and the normal HAP QT plugin, use AME

Here is a link to alpha versions for AME plugin for versions greater than 12.0.1:
https://github.com/disguise-one/hap-encoder-adobe-cc/releases

 

[orfischer]

Thank you All for the insightful information.

Some additional information that I would like to share with others seeing this thread:

"There are four different Hap codecs to choose from:

Hap offers the lowest data rates for playing back the most clips at a time,

Hap Alpha is similar to Hap with support for transparency

Hap Q and Hap Q Alpha offer improved image quality at a higher data rate"

Hap Version 12 Download Link: https://github.com/vidvox/hap-qt-codec/releases

 

 

[jfk]

13 hours ago, orfischer said:

... "There are four different Hap codecs to choose from: ...

And only three of those are supported in WATCHOUT.

13 hours ago, orfischer said:

Hap offers the lowest data rates for playing back the most clips at a time,

Hap Alpha is similar to Hap with support for transparency

Hap Q ...

And those are the three supported by Dataton WATCHOUT.

13 hours ago, orfischer said:

...  Hap Q Alpha offer improved image quality at a higher data rate"...

And is not supported by Dataton WATCHOUT.