¦Overscan
¦Video Format
¦Color Primaries
¦Transfer Characteristics
¦Color Matrix
¦Chroma Sample Location
¦Full Range Samples
Unavailable x264 options in Avidemux
¦AQ Mode - currently Avidemux sticks with AQ mode 1, mode 2 isn't available yet.
¦Sub-ME 10 - currently the highest Sub-Me mode available in Avidemux is 9, mode 10 (aka “QPRD”) is not available yet.
¦Psy-Trellis - currently Psy-Trellis will be disabled in Avidemux (Psy-RDO is available though!)
¦Progressive Intra Refresh
¦PSNR and SSIM calculations
Obsolete x264 options
¦B-RDO: RD based mode decision for B-Frames. This option has been removed in r996. It's now enabled implicitly at Sub ME 7 or higher.
¦Pre-Scenecut: Since r1117 x264 will always use Pre-Scenecut, because it's generally better than regular scenecut in terms of accuracy and regular scenecut didn't work in threaded mode anyways.
¦Bidirectional ME: Jointly optimize both motion vectors in B-Frames. This option has been removed in r996. It's now enabled implicitly at Sub ME 5 or higher.
¦AQ Sensitivity: This option never existed in official x264. It was used only in experimental Adaptive Quantization patches. Current AQ doesn't use it.
H.264/AVC Profiles and Levels
The H.264/AVC specifications define a number of different profiles. Each profile specifies which features of H.264 are allowed (or not allowed). If you want your H.264 video stream to be compliant to a certain profile, then you may only enabled features allowed in this profile. Profiles are needed to make sure your video file will play fine on a certain decoder. For example a “Main” profile compliant video will play 100% fine on every “Main” profile capable decoder/player. When working with the x264 encoder, there are basically two profiles you have to take care of: the “Main” profile and the “High” profile. Nevertheless x264 is missing the Error Resilience feature from the “Baseline Profile” as well as the Interlacing Support from “Extended Profile”. If you want to play your video on software players, then you don't need to care about profiles that much. The H.264 decoder from “libavcodec”, which is used in MPlayer, VLC Player, ffdshow and many more, supports all of x264' features, including the “High” and “Predictive Lossless” profile features. Same for proprietary decoders, such as CoreAVC. Nevertheless if you are targeting a hardware player, then profiles are very important, as hardware players are very restrictive on what profile they support.
In addition to the profiles, the H.264/AVC specifications also define a number of levels. While profiles define which compression features of H.264 may (or may not) be used, the levels put further restrictions on other properties of the video. These restrictions include the maximum resolution, the maximum bitrate, the maximum framerate (for a given resolution) and the maximum number of reference frames (indirectly limited though MaxDPB). In order play your H.264 video on a specific hardware player, that player must not only support your videos profile, but also your video's level (or a higher one). Again software players usually don't have such restrictions, as long as you CPU is powerful enough.
Note: The common notation for Profiles and Levels is “Profile@Level”, for example
[email protected]. Furthermore there is no way to directly encode your video to a specific level and/or profile. If you want your video to comply to a certain profile/level, you must choose the encoder settings accordingly. Presets may be helpful to find the correct settings. Anyway, it may still be necessary to resize your video and/or change the framerate.
List of all H.264/AVC Profiles
Baseline Extended Main High High 10 High 4:2:2 High 4:4:4 Predictive
I and P Slices YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
B Slices NO YES YES YES YES YES YES
SI and SP Slices NO YES NO NO NO NO NO
Multiple Reference Frames YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
In-Loop Deblocking Filter YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
CAVLC Entropy Coding YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
CABAC Entropy Coding NO NO YES YES YES YES YES
Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) YES YES NO NO NO NO NO
Arbitrary Slice Ordering (ASO) YES YES NO NO NO NO NO
Redundant Slices (RS) YES YES NO NO NO NO NO
Data Partitioning NO YES NO NO NO NO NO
Interlaced Coding (PicAFF, MBAFF) NO YES YES YES YES YES YES
4:2:0 Chroma Format YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
Monochrome Video Format (4:0:0) NO NO NO YES YES YES YES
4:2:2 Chroma Format NO NO NO NO NO YES YES
4:4:4 Chroma Format NO NO NO NO NO NO YES
8 Bit Sample Depth YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
9 and 10 Bit Sample Depth NO NO NO NO YES YES YES
11 to 14 Bit Sample Depth NO NO NO NO NO NO YES
8?8 vs. 4?4 Transform Adaptivity NO NO NO YES YES YES YES
Quantization Scaling Matrices NO NO NO YES YES YES YES
Separate Cb and Cr QP control NO NO NO YES YES YES YES
Separate Color Plane Coding NO NO NO NO NO NO YES
Predictive Lossless Coding NO NO NO NO NO NO YES
Baseline Extended Main High High 10 High 4:2:2 High 4:4:4 Predictive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of all H.264/AVC Levels
Level number Max macroblocks per second Max frame size (macroblocks) Max video bit rate (VCL) for Baseline, Extended and Main Profiles Max video bit rate (VCL) for High Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 10 Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 Predictive Profiles Examples for high resolution @ frame rate (max stored frames) in Level
1 1485 99 64(nbsp)kbit/s 80(nbsp)kbit/s 192(nbsp)kbit/s 256(nbsp)kbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(8)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
1b 1485 99 128(nbsp)kbit/s 160(nbsp)kbit/s 384(nbsp)kbit/s 512(nbsp)kbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(8)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
1.1 3000 396 192(nbsp)kbit/s 240(nbsp)kbit/s 576(nbsp)kbit/s 768(nbsp)kbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(9)
[email protected](nbsp)(3)
[email protected](nbsp)(2)
1.2 6000 396 384(nbsp)kbit/s 480(nbsp)kbit/s 1152(nbsp)kbit/s 1536(nbsp)kbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(7)
[email protected](nbsp)(6)
1.3 11880 396 768(nbsp)kbit/s 960(nbsp)kbit/s 2304(nbsp)kbit/s 3072(nbsp)kbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(7)
[email protected](nbsp)(6)
2 11880 396 2(nbsp)Mbit/s 2.5(nbsp)Mbit/s 6(nbsp)Mbit/s 8(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(7)
[email protected](nbsp)(6)
2.1 19800 792 4(nbsp)Mbit/s 5(nbsp)Mbit/s 12(nbsp)Mbit/s 16(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(7)
[email protected](nbsp)(6)
2.2 20250 1620 4(nbsp)Mbit/s 5(nbsp)Mbit/s 12(nbsp)Mbit/s 16(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(10)
[email protected](nbsp)(7)
[email protected](nbsp)(6)
[email protected](nbsp)(5)
3 40500 1620 10(nbsp)Mbit/s 12.5(nbsp)Mbit/s 30(nbsp)Mbit/s 40(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(12)
[email protected](nbsp)(10)
[email protected](nbsp)(6)
[email protected](nbsp)(5)
3.1 108000 3600 14(nbsp)Mbit/s 14(nbsp)Mbit/s 42(nbsp)Mbit/s 56(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(13)
[email protected](nbsp)(11)
[email protected](nbsp)(5)
3.2 216000 5120 20(nbsp)Mbit/s 25(nbsp)Mbit/s 60(nbsp)Mbit/s 80(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(5)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
4 245760 8192 20(nbsp)Mbit/s 25(nbsp)Mbit/s 60(nbsp)Mbit/s 80(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(9)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
4.1 245760 8192 50(nbsp)Mbit/s 62.5(nbsp)Mbit/s 150(nbsp)Mbit/s 200(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(9)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
4.2 522240 8704 50(nbsp)Mbit/s 62.5(nbsp)Mbit/s 150(nbsp)Mbit/s 200(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
[email protected](nbsp)(4)
5 589824 22080 135(nbsp)Mbit/s 168.75(nbsp)Mbit/s 405(nbsp)Mbit/s 540(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected] (13)
[email protected] (13)
[email protected] (12)
[email protected] (5)
[email protected](nbsp)(5)
5.1 983040 36864 240(nbsp)Mbit/s 300(nbsp)Mbit/s 720(nbsp)Mbit/s 960(nbsp)Mbit/s
[email protected] (16)
[email protected] (5)
[email protected] (5)
Level number Max macroblocks per second Max frame size (macroblocks) Max video bit rate (VCL) for Baseline, Extended and Main Profiles Max video bit rate (VCL) for High Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 10 Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 Predictive Profiles Examples for high resolution @ frame rate (max stored frames) in Level
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For more detailed information, please refer to “Annex A” in the official ITU-T H.264 specifications!
GPU support
Since GPGPU has become a hot topic, people began asking for GPU support in Avidemux. These people need to understand that Avidemux cannot offer GPU support for H.264 encoding, until GPU support is implemented in the x264 library. There is a project scheduled to add CUDA support to x264 (see http://wiki.videolan.org/SoC_x264_2009#GPU_Motion_Estimation), but there are no results yet (May 2009). We know that there are commercial H.264 encoders with GPU support available already. But if you look at these encoders closely, you will notice that their speed-up claims are marketing blabber. These encoders may be fast, but their quality isn't anywhere near x264's quality! Also note that marketing people tend to compare their encoders to the completely unoptimized H.264 Reference Encoder. x264 is faster than the reference encoder by several orders of magnitude, which renders these speed comparisons meaningless. x264 can run extremely fast on a CPU and scales up to at least 16 cores. So don't believe everything that marketing people claim!
IDR-frames
IDR frames are: An IDR frame is what has been traditionally known as an I frame. An IDR frame, just like an I frame in MPEG-1/2 and MPEG-4 ASP, starts with a clean slate, and all subsequent frames will make reference to the IDR frame and subsequent frames. Non IDR I frames should be rare, but since they cannot be r