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This commit adds a new encoder capable of creating BBC/SMPTE Dirac/VC-2 HQ
profile files.
Dirac is a wavelet based codec created by the BBC a little more than 10
years ago. Since then, wavelets have mostly gone out of style as they
did not provide adequate encoding gains at lower bitrates. Dirac was a
fully featured video codec equipped with perceptual masking, support for
most popular pixel formats, interlacing, overlapped-block motion
compensation, and other features. It found new life after being stripped
of various features and standardized as the VC-2 codec by the SMPTE with
an extra profile, the HQ profile that this encoder supports, added.
The HQ profile was based off of the Low-Delay profile previously
existing in Dirac. The profile forbids DC prediction and arithmetic
coding to focus on high performance and low delay at higher bitrates.
The standard bitrates for this profile vary but generally 1:4
compression is expected (~525 Mbps vs the 2200 Mbps for uncompressed
1080p50). The codec only supports I-frames, hence the high bitrates.
The structure of this encoder is simple: do a DWT transform on the
entire image, split it into multiple slices (specified by the user) and
encode them in parallel. All of the slices are of the same size, making
rate control and threading very trivial. Although only in C, this encoder
is capable of 30 frames per second on an 4 core 8 threads Ivy Bridge.
A lookup table is used to encode most of the coefficients.
No code was used from the GSoC encoder from 2007 except for the 2
transform functions in diracenc_transforms.c. All other code was written
from scratch.
This encoder outperforms any other encoders in quality, usability and in
features. Other existing implementations do not support 4 level
transforms or 64x64 blocks (slices), which greatly increase compression.
As previously said, the codec is meant for broadcasting, hence support
for non-broadcasting image widths, heights, bit depths, aspect ratios,
etc. are limited by the "level". Although this codec supports a few
chroma subsamplings (420, 422, 444), signalling those is generally
outside the specifications of the level used (3) and the reference
decoder will outright refuse to read any image with such a flag
signalled (it only supports 1920x1080 yuv422p10). However, most
implementations will happily read files with alternate dimensions,
framerates and formats signalled.
Therefore, in order to encode files other than 1080p50 yuv422p10le, you
need to provide an "-strict -2" argument to the command line. The FFmpeg
decoder will happily read any files made with non-standard parameters,
dimensions and subsamplings, and so will other implementations. IMO this
should be "-strict -1", but I'll leave that up for discussion.
There are still plenty of stuff to implement, for instance 5 more
wavelet transforms are still in the specs and supported by the decoder.
The encoder can be lossless, given a high enough bitrate.
Signed-off-by: Rostislav Pehlivanov <atomnuker@gmail.com>
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