Diary Of An x264 Developer

12/05/2010 (3:35 pm)

Direct from the Blu-ray disc

Filed under: blu-ray,x264 ::

A MediaInfo from the Warner Brothers’ Blu-ray “The Town“:

General
Complete name : 00020.m2ts
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
File size : 528 KiB
Duration : 900ms
Overall bit rate : 4 745 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 15.0 Mbps
Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 1s 1ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 5 000 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 24.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.101
Stream size : 611 KiB
Writing library : x264 core 104 r1683 62997d6

(Yes, it’s just a menu. But good things start small!)

04/25/2010 (11:01 am)

Announcing the first free software Blu-ray encoder

Filed under: blu-ray,x264 ::

For many years it has been possible to make your own DVDs with free software tools.  Over the course of the past decade, DVD creation evolved from the exclusive domain of the media publishing companies to something basically anyone could do on their home computer.

But Blu-ray has yet to get that treatment.  Despite the “format war” between Blu-ray and HD DVD ending over two years ago, free software has lagged behind.  “Professional” tools for Blu-ray video encoding can cost as much as $100,000 and are often utter garbage.  Here are two actual screenshots from real Blu-rays: I wish I was making this up.

But today, things change.  Today we take the first step towards a free software Blu-ray creation toolkit.

Thanks to tireless work by Kieran Kunyha, Alex Giladi, Lamont Alston, and the Doom9 crowd, x264 can now produce Blu-ray-compliant video.  Extra special thanks to The Criterion Collection for sponsoring the final compliance test to confirm x264′s Blu-ray compliance.

With x264′s powerful compression, as demonstrated by the incredibly popular BD-Rebuilder Blu-ray backup software, it’s quite possible to author Blu-ray disks on DVD9s (dual-layer DVDs) or even DVD5s (single-layer DVDs) with a reasonable level of quality.  With a free software encoder and less need for an expensive Blu-ray burner, we are one step closer to putting HD optical media creation in the hands of the everyday user.

To celebrate this achievement, we are making available for download a demo Blu-ray encoded with x264, containing entirely free content!

Read More…