[Discussion]Paramount+ Quality

[RedFox 1]

Did you try reencoding to 720p? You'd end up with a quarter of the original size and still looking awesome

Of course they didn't try, because if they did everyone wouldn't be so " Oh boy it's not 1080p", "when can we get 1080p? ", without even trying 720p.

 

[Bri2000]

Be nice, RedFox 1. To be fair, he said the downloaded 720p looks like crap and the download size is tiny in comparison to 1080p.

I personally download 1080p when available and reencode to 720p using TMPGEnc. My results are usually quite nice. But the purpose of this thread in the first place was to alert the masses that the highest available resolution isn't always the best. The example that I based this on is from an SD show though. I have not run into this with an HD show yet.

 

[RedFox 1]

Be nice, RedFox 1.

I am always nice, but for the life of me sometimes I don't understand why TV episodes have to be in 1080p. They are not cinematic masterpieces that must be seen in HD. But to each his own, we do the best we can do, we would have everything in 1080 and 4K if it were possible, people should understand that, but right now our developers are working extremely hard to fight this new DRM. We want this program to be the best it can be, our developers are world-class. If it can be done we will do it. But until then we want to make the program the best it can be. I wish people would understand we want the best quality also, but its just not possible at this time.

 

[Bri2000]

I'm certainly not going to speak for everyone here, but in my experience, I've noticed that as televisions get more and more advanced, SD starts looking worse and worse. I personally can't stand watching DVDs anymore.

With that said, many of us (myself included) understand that DRM is an ever-changing, complicated procedure that is very difficult to circumvent. I'm loyal to this brand because they have always taken care of their users and I feel like we have a direct line to communicate with the face of the company. That speaks volumes and is worth waiting for. Sure, you're going to get the impatient users, but I don't think they're the majority.

@RedFox 1 I apologize for calling you out to be nice, but I was trying to point out that particular user said that some 720p downloads looked poor. He wasn't complaining about the length of time it's taking to get around the latest DRM issues.

On that note, I am curious if anyone has come across any videos where the 720p download option turned out to be better than the 1080p option. As I said, I've only run into this with SD videos.

 

[RedFox 1]

I'm certainly not going to speak for everyone here, but in my experience, I've noticed that as televisions get more and more advanced, SD starts looking worse and worse. I personally can't stand watching DVDs anymore.

With that said, many of us (myself included) understand that DRM is an ever-changing, complicated procedure that is very difficult to circumvent. I'm loyal to this brand because they have always taken care of their users and I feel like we have a direct line to communicate with the face of the company. That speaks volumes and is worth waiting for. Sure, you're going to get the impatient users, but I don't think they're the majority.

@RedFox 1 I apologize for calling you out to be nice, but I was trying to point out that particular user said that some 720p downloads looked poor. He wasn't complaining about the length of time it's taking to get around the latest DRM issues.

On that note, I am curious if anyone has come across any videos where the 720p download option turned out to be better than the 1080p option. As I said, I've only run into this with SD videos.

Considering that DVDs were 480p when they first arrived and everyone lauded them as the next coming of great entertainment, 720p is actually HD in an uncommon sort of way. Blu-ray was developed as you said when TV became better and better. I of course would not know about that since I am stuck with a 1999 LCD TV that weighs more than I do, but I see the new stuff in the Best Buy ads in the United States and London's electronics stores, and marvel at the 4K ability of them. Yes there are a lot of 4K discs available but no channels on the TV, there are some but not enough for me to forego eating to buy one. LOL

 

[Bri2000]

Lol. Yes, I agree. Eating is more important.

I have a 1080p TV now from 2014 and I wonder if I'll regret my decision to encode everything at 720p when I'm forced to upgrade my TV in the future. If SD looks this bad on a 1080p TV, is that what 720p will look like on a 4k TV? That's a problem I'll deal with when I have to and just be happy in the now.

 

[RedFox 1]

I'm pretty sure you are intelligent enough to realize I was not referring to a Master Copy being streamed. Most sources are the media it was recorded too. ProRes is just an Apple branded Codec.
Paramount has between 3-7 different resolutions it offers. Each streams at the set bitrate that stream was encoded at. For the case of SD materials as mentioned about, the highest bitrate is the source....probably encoded from a DVD.
The streaming service will determine the stream you will get and the CDN will provide it. the CDN does not determine the stream. It's simply storage.
In the case of Paramount, you'll get the same 1080p or 720p stream regardless of when you stream it. If you download it today, you'll get the same size file as if you had downloaded it last week.
There are normally multiple SD files for different devices....these streams are all based on the SD source stream I mentioned.

My son has been using ProRes in Final Cut on his MacbookPro since 2010.

 

[zanetti]

Did you try reencoding to 720p? You'd end up with a quarter of the original size and still looking awesome

well, no. ill give it a go, but i presume it will be slower than keeping the resolution the same. btw, it all looks crap in low light and fog. AP 1080p 3gb file, serious banding and artefacting in low light. my 1080p 1.3gb HEVC encode, same thing plus if i get up from sofa to grab a drink and casually look at the TV as passing by... theres banding, artefacting, shimmering (dunno how to explain it), motion issues... lol. f it. at least im not using 150gb per series, but rather half. i gave up on quality. it looks okish 10ft away from a 65''. hahahaha.

 

[zanetti]

Lol. Yes, I agree. Eating is more important.

I have a 1080p TV now from 2014 and I wonder if I'll regret my decision to encode everything at 720p when I'm forced to upgrade my TV in the future. If SD looks this bad on a 1080p TV, is that what 720p will look like on a 4k TV? That's a problem I'll deal with when I have to and just be happy in the now.

you will miss your 1080p TV, as i do. lol. only top quality encodes, like 9gb 4k HDR from HMAX look good and only from a few ft from TV. if you get close enough you wont see stuff you see with regular 1080p we get in AS from lets say HMAX and AP (banding wont be as obvious, artefacting in low light etc), but you will notice a difference between sitting 3ft or 10ft from the TV. dunno, maybe a 3000$ TV is better, i have a last years mid range sony 65'' and i do miss my 2015 43'' low end samsung. oh, well... btw, older SD shows can be better in low res than high res. had a few of those where i opted for 540p since theres no point in having 2gb per episode if the series wasnt remastered. and if it was. even 540p will look good (e.g. the virginian over on freeve at AP).

 

[Jimc115]

The Virginian on Freeve looks NOTHING like 1080p. Starz aired encodes from the masters that were about 7gb's each.

 

[zanetti]

The Virginian on Freeve looks NOTHING like 1080p. Starz aired encodes from the masters that were about 7gb's each.

yeah, 720p were 4gb each, didnt even try 1080ps. even 540ps are 1.5gb per episode. its the grain that kills it. tried reducing even further from 540p, bitrate wise, but i dont know what im doing so it looks like crap. but, nevertheless what i meant was that it was remastered, so 1080p version doesnt make sense IMO. id does look better, but 200gb per season, 8 seasons... yeah, nope.

 

[cartman0208]

well, no. ill give it a go, but i presume it will be slower than keeping the resolution the same.

Well ... yes, but the result is WAY better than shrinking from an already crappy 720p
Example (I use some kind of trailer from Alita, so I think there won't be any copyright issues. ):
Original (only recoded autio to AAC for compatibility) 270MB
4K recode (same audio as above, NVENC P7, CQP20, 10bit) 55MB
1080p recode from original (same audio, NVENC P7, CQP18, 10bit) 24MB
720p recode from original (same audio, NVENC P7, CQP16, 10bit) 18.5MB

IMO the 720p looks still very decent even on 7% of the orignal size.
Of course there is no grain or noise in this, so there is a huge compression, but I think you get the picture here.
Interestingly the video recode time of 1080 vs 720 was roughly the same.

What I want to say is ... always start from the highest possible quality video to recode to lower resolutions

 

[zanetti]

Original (only recoded autio to AAC for compatibility) 270MB
4K recode (same audio as above, NVENC P7, CQP20, 10bit) 55MB
1080p recode from original (same audio, NVENC P7, CQP18, 10bit) 24MB
720p recode from original (same audio, NVENC P7, CQP16, 10bit) 18.5MB
IMO the 720p looks still very decent even on 7% of the orignal size.
Of course there is no grain or noise in this, so there is a huge compression, but I think you get the picture here.

yeah, if the source is mint then even me and my anemic 2400ge+T400 can work magic. but, what if i threw at you a 15 year old xvid avi, 480p, 500kbps video? id like to get rid of blockiness, aliasing in certain scenes, up the bitrate by 2-3x and maybe add some clearness in low light scenes, maybe even sharpen the picture overall BUT no topazAI? also, did you use ffmpeg for these encodes? im using staxrip, so i guess both avisynth and ffmpeg, but know jack about encoding (bexcept higher bitrate always good, lol)? oh, wait. wrong meeting. no intention on hijacking the thread. cheers!