This is because release groups are completely, utterly clueless about video. The file size is set ahead of time. Most groups set e.g. "8GB for 1080p movie", "4GB for a 720p movie" etc. in x264. Historically speaking, these pre-selected sizes were designed to fit on different media types, such as CD, single-layer DVD, dual-layer DVD. Few people use DVDs anymore, but most groups still make files far larger than they need to be.
I rarely download pre-made videos because of this, so haven't downloaded any encoded in h.265, but I suspect they simply chose a smaller pre-set size.
The correct, non-stupid thing to do is to set the quality and let the movie be however large it needs to be, usually under 4GB. This allows more easily encoded video, like CGI films (Toy Story, etc.) to be small while very difficult films (anything with a lot of noise and movement, like war films) are large but don't look terrible.
Forgot to add: I was using recent builds (about a month back) of x265. Whenever a comparison is made, the x265 folks always say that the latest versions are much improved over whatever was used in the comparison. They may be, but they still need some work based on my tests.
I have done my own comparisons of AVC (using x264, single-thread, veryslow preset) and HEVC (using x265, disabling wavefront processing because it slightly reduces quality, veryslow preset). All 1080p video, significant because HEVC is supposed to scale to 4K better than AVC.
My conclusions:
1) x265 takes FAR longer to encode, but we knew that. Understandable. 2) When "low in bits", x265 blurs images rather than making them look blocky. This sometimes looks better but to me often looks worse. 3) x265 seems to force a denoise filter. Video is far easier to encode efficiently when denoised, so I figure this is part of the data savings. It's a bit of a cheat, however, because I can get far smaller file sizes by running a denoise filter myself for x264-encoded video.
I looked closely, for example, at Captain America the Blu-ray. Much of the detail of, e.g. car leather and grass and tree leaves is lost in an x265 encode, even at about the same overall data rate as x265/
x265 supports "--tune grain", roughly analogous to "--tune film" for x264, but it makes the video vastly larger -- often larger than x264's version, and it often looks worse. It does a better job of keeping grain, however.
My experience is very similar to many others' in forums. I had committed to switching my encoding to HEVC, but the results of my tests showed it is not ready for prime time. Some may not mind blurry ("soft" is probably a better word) video, or video that looks like it has been through a denoise filter, but I do.
This is not to say that x265 is junk. I am sure it will mature over time just like x264 had to over time. x264 started out as being not all that much better than divx, the previous generation.
Many GUI applications can be controlled via GUI commands. Showing this helps students understand the link between the magic that goes on under the hood, and the actual action that takes place to make that happen. Sure, not everything is a GUI shell over a CLI program, but the concept of typing a command isn't that different from one of making an API call to Qt or GTK+.
That's funny, I was just in several of the buildings in Redmond last week and found that all drinks -- even those in the cafeteria, are gratis. Paying isn't even an option -- there's simply nowhere to put the change.
For any personal issues you may find with Microsoft as a company, I have seen and heard nothing but good things from their employees.
But colors are printed in CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black), and you'll notice that the best photo inkjet printers have more than just those four color cartridges. They often have the four plus "photo cyan", "photo magenta", etc. and it does make a huge difference.
As you know, some colors cannot be accurately expressed in CMYK, nor can some in RGB (even though theoretically any color is possible, but theory is not reality in this case).
While the extra color may or may not make a big difference, there is at least precedent indicating that the idea is sound.
Ad-block has a rather heavy handed policy of blocking every ad it possibly can, at least with the most common lists. My proposed solution: Add a voting system, or some other means to detect when ads are very intrusive (like the flashing "You've Won!!!!" ads), and keep a list of ads or ad servers that follow that criteria.
Then, users can subscribe to an "obnoxious ad" list in adblock, eliminating the ones we all hate (discouraging their use at all), and allowing those which aren't bad, or are actually useful.
If you'd bother to read the article you'd discover that not only does this not work, but the article explains why and, in fact, that's the whole point of the article.
Isn't it funny how Dan Bernstein is the only guy to develop a bulletproof mail and DNS server, yet all he gets is criticism for his work?
Maybe he didn't want his sources modified because nobody else seems to be able to write secure software, and he doesn't want his name on a security bulletin for someone else's Qmail/DJBDNS mistake.
Tell me again how many mail and DNS servers have had zero security holes?
Not that it matters anymore, as these have all been placed in the public domain.
One might request new features in these applications, but patches are often to fix bugs. If there haven't been any official patches since 2001, maybe it's because there haven't been any bugs.
DJB my not agree with the GPL and may like to do things in a very non-standard way, but damn, the proof is in the product.
How easy is it to UPDATE applications and, more importantly, the operating system with the latest patches? This is a big deal. Every time I've looked into OpenSolaris before, it wanted me to subscribe to a pay service to get system updates. I consider that to be pretty basic functionality (even Microsoft doesn't charge for their update service), so this was an automatic no-go.
Admittedly I may be way off-base since I am much more familiar with Linux and FreeBSD than with Solaris.
Any honest person, and yes that is a blanket statement, would agree that the patent system in the U.S. is terrible.
Are there any examples of countries that you (Slashdotters) believe gets it right?
I read a few interesting reform ideas on this thread, but has anyone/any country implemented a system that actually doesn't suck?
Patents are not a BadThing. Patent trolls are. But they will always exist, just as spam will always exist because of the financial benefit. The trick is to get the system to where patent trolls are the exception.
That is an excellent point. For servers in particular, the Raptor's heat density is probably greater than that of a 3.5" drive, which matters if it has lots of drives. For a regular user with 1 or 2 drives though, it's supposed to be a very cool-running drive.
Although RAID0 does offer some performance benefit for desktop systems, it's very limited in the real world, but it absolutely kicks ass for STR-heavy stuff like video editing.
Backups are still a good idea though. Accidental deletion, corrupt filesystem, and all that can still eat your data. Not that I've ever done this... RAID1 also improves performance for reads somewhat compared to a single drive (though for writes, it is slightly slower unfortunately, plus you only get the space of one drive).
Are you saying this (it's incorrect, by the way) with regards to the comment about STR having little effect on real-world performance, or about the unlikelyhood of RAID0 giving significantly better performance than a Raptor 3000?
Before making judgments about my knowledge, look up my alias on the StorageReview forums and tell me again that I don't know anything about RAID.
You obviously haven't used one. The TRex drive requires a separate room just for the storage. At least the Raptor fits in a normal case (and, if you have a crowbar to remove the damn black metal thing, in a laptop!
The 300GB Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 is $675.00 at Dell (source: Google, while the Raptor is (supposedly) about $300.
That's 2.25 times the cost per megabyte.
According to this performance database (choose IOMeter 8 I/O. I can't link to it directly, it doesn't seem to support that), the Seagate drive does 293 IOPS vs. the Raptor 3000's 228, so it's only 28% faster (on an 8-deep workload, which is a fairly common one, maybe a little deep).
Cost-per-IOPS wise, the Raptor blows the 15K SCSI drive away. Of course, the Seagate is an SAS drive, which is far more robust for large server installations and such, but for smaller ones, I think the Raptor would be fine. Of course, for most smaller ones, a cheap-o 250GB 7200 RPM RAID1 array would be fine, too.
RAID isn't going to give you better performance than this Raptor other than in STR (sustained transfer rate, like copying large files or streaming HD video). STR is about worthless for desktop computers, though RAID0 does improve performance for other things a bit.
Just, not as much as people seem to think when they read a misleading benchmark written by some dope that thinks HDTach and Atto are worth the floppy disks they're installed from. (They are great tools for what they do, just, they are misused).
The first 10KRPM drives sounded like what you'd get when you put ice cubes in a blender. I seriously ducked the first time I heard one start to seek.
The WD Raptor 74GB is alright. I can hear it, but I wouldn't say it's loud or annoying (and I have one of those open Lian-Li cases that have 50000 holes).
This new one is supposed to be one of the quietest drives ever measured.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny how is number of users is 2^10 + 2^9 - 1. 'Lot of code smell in this article.
This is because release groups are completely, utterly clueless about video. The file size is set ahead of time. Most groups set e.g. "8GB for 1080p movie", "4GB for a 720p movie" etc. in x264. Historically speaking, these pre-selected sizes were designed to fit on different media types, such as CD, single-layer DVD, dual-layer DVD.
Few people use DVDs anymore, but most groups still make files far larger than they need to be.
I rarely download pre-made videos because of this, so haven't downloaded any encoded in h.265, but I suspect they simply chose a smaller pre-set size.
The correct, non-stupid thing to do is to set the quality and let the movie be however large it needs to be, usually under 4GB. This allows more easily encoded video, like CGI films (Toy Story, etc.) to be small while very difficult films (anything with a lot of noise and movement, like war films) are large but don't look terrible.
I always use Staxrip
https://github.com/stax76/stax...
Forgot to add: I was using recent builds (about a month back) of x265.
Whenever a comparison is made, the x265 folks always say that the latest versions are much improved over whatever was used in the comparison. They may be, but they still need some work based on my tests.
I have done my own comparisons of AVC (using x264, single-thread, veryslow preset) and HEVC (using x265, disabling wavefront processing because it slightly reduces quality, veryslow preset). All 1080p video, significant because HEVC is supposed to scale to 4K better than AVC.
My conclusions:
1) x265 takes FAR longer to encode, but we knew that. Understandable.
2) When "low in bits", x265 blurs images rather than making them look blocky. This sometimes looks better but to me often looks worse.
3) x265 seems to force a denoise filter. Video is far easier to encode efficiently when denoised, so I figure this is part of the data savings. It's a bit of a cheat, however, because I can get far smaller file sizes by running a denoise filter myself for x264-encoded video.
I looked closely, for example, at Captain America the Blu-ray. Much of the detail of, e.g. car leather and grass and tree leaves is lost in an x265 encode, even at about the same overall data rate as x265/
x265 supports "--tune grain", roughly analogous to "--tune film" for x264, but it makes the video vastly larger -- often larger than x264's version, and it often looks worse. It does a better job of keeping grain, however.
My experience is very similar to many others' in forums. I had committed to switching my encoding to HEVC, but the results of my tests showed it is not ready for prime time. Some may not mind blurry ("soft" is probably a better word) video, or video that looks like it has been through a denoise filter, but I do.
This is not to say that x265 is junk. I am sure it will mature over time just like x264 had to over time. x264 started out as being not all that much better than divx, the previous generation.
Many GUI applications can be controlled via GUI commands. Showing this helps students understand the link between the magic that goes on under the hood, and the actual action that takes place to make that happen.
Sure, not everything is a GUI shell over a CLI program, but the concept of typing a command isn't that different from one of making an API call to Qt or GTK+.
That's funny, I was just in several of the buildings in Redmond last week and found that all drinks -- even those in the cafeteria, are gratis. Paying isn't even an option -- there's simply nowhere to put the change.
For any personal issues you may find with Microsoft as a company, I have seen and heard nothing but good things from their employees.
Digital images are displayed in RGB, yes.
But colors are printed in CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black), and you'll notice that the best photo inkjet printers have more than just those four color cartridges. They often have the four plus "photo cyan", "photo magenta", etc. and it does make a huge difference.
As you know, some colors cannot be accurately expressed in CMYK, nor can some in RGB (even though theoretically any color is possible, but theory is not reality in this case).
While the extra color may or may not make a big difference, there is at least precedent indicating that the idea is sound.
Author: I think this article is simply very well written. I plan to send a link to all the CS professors I know.
If only the Python documentation were written half as well.
Until they try to restore the backup.
Ad-block has a rather heavy handed policy of blocking every ad it possibly can, at least with the most common lists.
My proposed solution: Add a voting system, or some other means to detect when ads are very intrusive (like the flashing "You've Won!!!!" ads), and keep a list of ads or ad servers that follow that criteria.
Then, users can subscribe to an "obnoxious ad" list in adblock, eliminating the ones we all hate (discouraging their use at all), and allowing those which aren't bad, or are actually useful.
--Charles N. Burns
If you'd bother to read the article you'd discover that not only does this not work, but the article explains why and, in fact, that's the whole point of the article.
Isn't it funny how Dan Bernstein is the only guy to develop a bulletproof mail and DNS server, yet all he gets is criticism for his work?
Maybe he didn't want his sources modified because nobody else seems to be able to write secure software, and he doesn't want his name on a security bulletin for someone else's Qmail/DJBDNS mistake.
Tell me again how many mail and DNS servers have had zero security holes?
Not that it matters anymore, as these have all been placed in the public domain.
One might request new features in these applications, but patches are often to fix bugs.
If there haven't been any official patches since 2001, maybe it's because there haven't been any bugs.
DJB my not agree with the GPL and may like to do things in a very non-standard way, but damn, the proof is in the product.
Nah, that was JavaOS (also by Sun)
How easy is it to UPDATE applications and, more importantly, the operating system with the latest patches?
This is a big deal.
Every time I've looked into OpenSolaris before, it wanted me to subscribe to a pay service to get system updates.
I consider that to be pretty basic functionality (even Microsoft doesn't charge for their update service), so this was an automatic no-go.
Admittedly I may be way off-base since I am much more familiar with Linux and FreeBSD than with Solaris.
You would be right. It is still technically slower (a few percent or so), but it isn't a big deal. I probably should have mentioned that. :)
Any honest person, and yes that is a blanket statement, would agree that the patent system in the U.S. is terrible.
Are there any examples of countries that you (Slashdotters) believe gets it right?
I read a few interesting reform ideas on this thread, but has anyone/any country implemented a system that actually doesn't suck?
Patents are not a BadThing. Patent trolls are. But they will always exist, just as spam will always exist because of the financial benefit. The trick is to get the system to where patent trolls are the exception.
That is an excellent point. For servers in particular, the Raptor's heat density is probably greater than that of a 3.5" drive, which matters if it has lots of drives. For a regular user with 1 or 2 drives though, it's supposed to be a very cool-running drive.
Mod this AC up! He knows what he's talking about.
Although RAID0 does offer some performance benefit for desktop systems, it's very limited in the real world, but it absolutely kicks ass for STR-heavy stuff like video editing.
Backups are still a good idea though. Accidental deletion, corrupt filesystem, and all that can still eat your data. Not that I've ever done this ...
RAID1 also improves performance for reads somewhat compared to a single drive (though for writes, it is slightly slower unfortunately, plus you only get the space of one drive).
Are you saying this (it's incorrect, by the way) with regards to the comment about STR having little effect on real-world performance, or about the unlikelyhood of RAID0 giving significantly better performance than a Raptor 3000?
Before making judgments about my knowledge, look up my alias on the StorageReview forums and tell me again that I don't know anything about RAID.
You obviously haven't used one. The TRex drive requires a separate room just for the storage. At least the Raptor fits in a normal case (and, if you have a crowbar to remove the damn black metal thing, in a laptop!
The 300GB Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 is $675.00 at Dell (source: Google, while the Raptor is (supposedly) about $300.
That's 2.25 times the cost per megabyte.
According to this performance database (choose IOMeter 8 I/O. I can't link to it directly, it doesn't seem to support that), the Seagate drive does 293 IOPS vs. the Raptor 3000's 228, so it's only 28% faster (on an 8-deep workload, which is a fairly common one, maybe a little deep).
Cost-per-IOPS wise, the Raptor blows the 15K SCSI drive away. Of course, the Seagate is an SAS drive, which is far more robust for large server installations and such, but for smaller ones, I think the Raptor would be fine. Of course, for most smaller ones, a cheap-o 250GB 7200 RPM RAID1 array would be fine, too.
RAID isn't going to give you better performance than this Raptor other than in STR (sustained transfer rate, like copying large files or streaming HD video). STR is about worthless for desktop computers, though RAID0 does improve performance for other things a bit.
Just, not as much as people seem to think when they read a misleading benchmark written by some dope that thinks HDTach and Atto are worth the floppy disks they're installed from. (They are great tools for what they do, just, they are misused).
The first 10KRPM drives sounded like what you'd get when you put ice cubes in a blender. I seriously ducked the first time I heard one start to seek.
The WD Raptor 74GB is alright. I can hear it, but I wouldn't say it's loud or annoying (and I have one of those open Lian-Li cases that have 50000 holes).
This new one is supposed to be one of the quietest drives ever measured.