[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Fixing libx264.c

Jason Garrett-Glaser darkshikari
Fri May 22 03:57:41 CEST 2009


I am sick of complaints of crappy quality, crappy streams, and general
brokenness from the ffmpeg libx264 encoder.  This gets worse with
ffserver, which doesn't pass all of the x264-appropriate options, so
you can't even fix the options even if you know every single one of
them. Per-codec defaults would solve the problem, but hardly anyone
seems to want to back Baptiste in promoting this.  I could also cause
ffmpeg to terminate if libx264 is selected as vcodec without an
appropriate preset, but that would be obnoxious and would break
ffserver.

I could also modify x264 itself to insta-terminate if it detects
ffmpeg-level broken options, which may result in enough complaints
that it gets fixed.  But that would be even more obnoxious.

I am all-ears for other ideas--but here's my list of problems and
proposed solutions.  I have patches for these already, but there's no
point in posting them until something is agreed upon, as they are
trivial.  I do maintain libx264.c, but this needs discussion before I
unilaterally modify tons of stuff.

1.  ffmpeg sets the scenecut threshold to zero (disabled).
Why it's broken currently: scenecut threshold at zero implies no
scenecut detection.
Solution: Set the default to something sane, or disconnect the option.
 Does this affect the core mpeg encoder?

2.  ffmpeg sets qmin/qmax to 2/31.
Why it's broken currently: qmax at 31 prevents proper ratecontrol at
low bitrates.
Solution: Disconnect the options.  Nobody is ever going to need to
mess with these.

3.  ffmpeg sets directpred to "temporal".
Why it's broken currently: directpred temporal breaks horrifically
when b-pyramid is applied, so it's easy to mix the two improperly
(spatial is a better default anyways, and is the one x264 uses).
Solution: set the default to spatial in options.c (which it should be).

4.  ffmpeg turns off chroma ME.
Why it's broken currently: It's forced off below subme=5 anyways, and
above it's practically always useful.
Solution: Disconnect the option.

5.  ffmpeg turns off fast pskip.
Why it's broken currently: This should practically always be on; it
costs a lot of speed to leave it off (for no real benefit).
Solution: Disconnect the option, or if only x264 uses the option, set
it on by default.

6.  ffmpeg sets bitrate tolerance to a single default value regardless
of input bitrate.
Why it's broken currently: x264's ratecontrol doesn't like it when you
start applying extremely small values to bitrate tolerance.  It's easy
to set a very high bitrate and leave the low bitrate tolerance in, and
the results can be rather crappy.
Solution: Disconnect the option, or set it in ffmpeg.c in the same
manner in which rc_initial_buffer_occupancy is set (see lines
3139-3140).  This would affect other encoders.

7.  ffmpeg messes with ipratio/pbratio.
Why it's broken currently: The values are tweaked for MPEG quant
scale, not H.264.
Solution: Disconnect the option (it's not very useful) or ignore it,
since the values aren't too badly off.

8.  ffmpeg turns off adaptive b-frame placement by default.
Why it's broken: Non-adaptive B-frame placement seriously sucks.  But
this option is actually useful (0-off, 1-fast, 2-optimal), so I don't
want to disconnect it.
Solution: This is very important, but I can't come up with one.

9.  Partitions are all off by default.
Why it's broken: Turning off all partitions cripples compression.
Partitions are actually useful to tweak, but the defaults should be
"all on except p4x4," not all off.
Solution: Adjust options.c to force the defaults correctly, since only
x264 uses the partition options.

10.  Loop filter is off by default.
Why it's broken: Nobody should be turning it off except maybe to
encode for some really slow CPU or something.  Critical for
compression quality, costs nearly no speed.
Solution: Turn it on by default?  Might affect other codecs.  Or
disconnect the option.

There are other issues, but these are the primary ones.

Also, before anyone uses the logic "the fastest settings should be
default", subpel refine is 8 by default, which is the second-slowest
available in x264.

Comments?

Dark Shikari



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