Solved Issue 10-bit h264 (Hi10) Support?

This is turning out to be a new trend in the encoding "business" and I am wondering if there'll be any support for it in XBMC 11.0 (Eden)?

EDIT 2012-01-10:

XBMC hi10 Wiki
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Hi10P_playback

What titles have you found out there that use this type of encoding? Must do some testing.

Anime stuff, for example by m33w-fansubs, Doki Fansubs or Coalgirls who released some files. Check out their homepages to find them.
The Hi10 files are playing on a normal media player/XBMC, but since they're not properly supported yet, there are a lot of artifacts.

I don't think it could be described as a 'trend', it is just anime encoders and they have never had any consideration for hardware/software compatibility anyway.

Scene rules are very slow to change so 99% of relevant H.264 content will be HP@L4.1 for the forseeable future.

10-bit h264 decoding support was merged into FFmpeg on April 14 and into libav on May 12. So whichever of the two projects they decide to base their player on, this functionality should be available in the next XBMC release.

However, I hope this isn't a trend in video encoding because it's incompatible with DXVA / VAAPI / VDPAU playback.

Slightly off topic:

I was intrigued, so I tried to read about this online, but couldn't find any technical explanation for why it offers better quality for a given bitrate (for animated clips)

Anyone have a link?

CSB! Wrote:Slightly off topic:

I was intrigued, so I tried to read about this online, but couldn't find any technical explanation for why it offers better quality for a given bitrate (for animated clips)

Anyone have a link?

This might be a start:

http://figmentos.iblogger.org/10bit-encoding/

CSB! Wrote:Slightly off topic:

I was intrigued, so I tried to read about this online, but couldn't find any technical explanation for why it offers better quality for a given bitrate (for animated clips)

Anyone have a link?

You might want to read these:
http://x264.nl/x264/10bit_01-ateme_pierr...10-bit.pdf
http://x264.nl/x264/10bit_02-ateme-why_d...dwidth.pdf
http://x264.nl/x264/10bit_03-422_10_bit_...uality.pdf

voochi Wrote:I don't think it could be described as a 'trend', it is just anime encoders and they have never had any consideration for hardware/software compatibility anyway.

Fansubbers and encoders have their own "scene" and standards to which they adhere fairly well. Don't brush them off simply because they don't release shit like The Office and Jersey Shore. Most groups are now starting to move toward 10bit (or atleast experiment with it) as the content they are encoding becomes available in forms that take advantage of this encoding. It may not seem like it now, but give it a year and I guarantee you more than half of the larger groups will be doing it. With animation especially this manner of encoding presents some very impressive results and lesses the amount of banding seen in gradients. Not to mention often cutting the file size by half or more.

voochi Wrote:Scene rules are very slow to change so 99% of relevant H.264 content will be HP@L4.1 for the forseeable future.

As for your ideas about scene rules... they just recently changed (http://scenerules.irc.gs/t.html?id=2011_TV_X264.nfo) and while I see no mention of 10bit as of yet, unless of course they are calling it something else, you shouldn't assume that these rules never ever change because for tv releases they do quite frequently. Oh and "99% of relevant" content? I'd love to know which hole you're pulling that figure out of...

Is there any more word on support for this in the future. It appears that more players are starting to pick this up and it looks like fan sub groups will begin to make full releases in it starting in the fall. In addition some groups are already redoing all BluRay content in 10-bit.

I can also say that for those of us that want to digitize our blurays for easy playback the new 10-bit encoding offers a way to dramatically reduce file size while improving quality.