10bit Encoding: New standard (Non-official help thread)

So I made this thread for those poor souls who don't know what to do with the new official standard for encoding encoders are forcing upon us: 10bit MKV.

The reason, they said, was that through the 10bit encoding, they will be able to give higher quality video, for less the file size. Now while I haven't proven that it does, since I cannot see the difference, there are people who claim that it works.

But right now there are only a few codec packs and players out there that support the 10bit encoding: K-Lite and CCCP are the to most prominent. Also, for people who cannot play Hi-Res vids, there are even less tools that can convert 10bit MKV.

Now a new standard isn't a bad thing: It's only bad when there are only a few, and sometimes none at all, options available for the new standard to be fully usable by everyone.

And so I dedicate this thread to gather ALL tools, players nd converters that will adapt to the new standard. No doubt that in the coming days, there will be more updates for the various players and converters available that support 10bit.

I will put them all here.

1. CCCP is the king for now. It supports 10bit MKV. Just download and install

2. K-Lite Codec Pack. Like CCCP, just download and install.

edited 5th Oct '11 11:47:15 PM by djmaca

How to Encode from 10bit to 8bit

by: RH Excelion from Commie subs (Note: Any errors? Blame him)

1. Grab latest 8bit x264. Just go with the 32 for simplicity.

2. Save it in a folder. (This guide assumes you’re using windows. x264 works on linux too, but fuck it if you use linux you can figure that shit out by yourself)

3. Make a new text file. Paste this line in:

x264 -preset veryfast -tune animation -crf 18 -o %1.8bit.mkv %1

You can change this:

veryfast – fastest, highest file size

veryslow – slowest, lowest file size

Leave the rest alone unless you know what you’re doing. (But fuck, if you knew what you were doing, why am I explaining this to you)

5. Save the text file as encode.bat

5. Move a 10bit file you want to encode into the same folder.

6. Click and drag the 10bit file onto encode.bat.

7. Holy shit something should be encoding.

8. Wait until encoding window disappears.

9. Open mkvmerge GUI

10. Drag the ORIGINAL VIDEO into the input files. There should be a list of checkboxes underneath. You want to UNCHECK the V_MPEG4 (this is the 10bit video you want to throw out)

11. Now drag in the ENCODED VIDEO. It should be the same name as the ORIGINAL VIDEO except it has a .8bit.mkv at the end.

12. Name your muxed file at the bottom and hit mux (don’t forget a .mkv)

13. Congratulations you have a something in 8bit with quality loss due to reencoding and the file size is most likely larger to boot. Now ask yourself why the hell you wanted it again.

edited 6th Oct '11 7:28:22 AM by djmaca

And the semi-official help guide for Hi 10 P playback is here: http://haruhichan.com/wpblog/?p=205

edited 6th Oct '11 12:53:28 AM by APN

I've played with things Linux-side a bit; currently, mplayer from debian-multimedia was the only one I could get to play my test 10-bit encode correctly(VLC showed a green screen and mplayer2 just refused to play it).

More to the point, make sure that if you follow post 2 that you replace the long dashes with two regular ones.

Thanks for the heads up. I thought it was obvious that it looks like one dash than two...

Guess I'll just go with CCCP, then. Thank you~

I copied and pasted. Kept getting "x264 [error]: could not open input file `ùpreset' via any method!".

Well I just copied everything RH said. Hey, I'm not the type to commit plagarism.

So once again, thank you.

Does this only apply to torrents, or does it also effect streams?

Probably not for licensed streams it doesn't look like it's worth the trouble. And non-licensed ones have terrible quality anyway.

I'm also using Linux. VLC was pretty random on whether or not it would work with 10bit, sometimes working just fine or giving me an endless green rectangle. I had to install the daily builds of VLC to get anything working, and even then the 10bit stuff was absurdly choppy and tended to refuse to show subtitles. It doesn't help that I have a weak computer, but it doesn't look much better on my parents desktop running Windows.

edited for various politeness things.

edited 6th Oct '11 1:38:07 PM by Funnyguts

You might want to try CCCP instead of VLC for Windows. As for Linux... I'm not a Linux user myself but I heard that 10bit works fine on the vanilla command line MPlayer (note: not MPlayer2).

edited 6th Oct '11 12:12:07 PM by Thrombin

This is not a thread for format wars. If you have something of use to contribute, do so. If all you want to do is complain, snipe, or preen, don't post.

-edited after mod post-

edited 6th Oct '11 12:18:04 PM by Funnyguts

Uh Funnyguts... you might want to edit your previous post as well. I'm on neither 'side' of these rather silly flame wars but my computers are somewhat old and they work fine with 10bit.

If CCCP is giving you performance issues, then you might want to try MPC-HC with madVR - it's a lot more forgiving on less powerful hardware. I tried the Coalgirls 720p release of Mardock Scramble first with the CCCP setup and then MPC-HC with madVR - the improvement in performance and the reduction of stuttering was definitely there. The setup itself is a bit more complicated than CCCP (I had a friend to help me do it) but it seems fairly straightforward. The link to haruhichan that APN posted above has the deets.

edited 6th Oct '11 7:20:48 PM by Thrombin

Does anybody know where the move to 10-bit got its start? Apparently it's been standard in professional applications for a while, but I'm curious as to when the fansubbers decided it was a good idea.

As I understand it, it started in /a/.

^^There, edited my post. Of course, seeing as that your post included a quote about how I feel about /a/, you should probably edit yours too.

edited 6th Oct '11 1:40:43 PM by Funnyguts

I for one welcome our new 10bit overlords.

If you're just interested in watching, then I'm going to get behind the crowd and recommend CCCP to my fellow format-luddites. I freely admit to my own willful incompetence in this area, but as long as I keep my codec pack relatively up to date, I've never had any issues watching just about anything.

To those whose PC isn't good for High Def I reccomend converting your videos to a smaller and/or lesser resolution. My PC isn't for High Res as well and have been converting my anime to watch them on my 6303classic Nokia. Then I recently stared using my Nintendo DS to watch anime.

... Wait, you can use a DS to watch anime? Why has no one told me this before?

It's homebrew called Moonshell

CCCP plays fine, so I'm wondering if I should try out this mad VR thing (again)? I tried tweaking MPC - HC but I couldn't get it to work, it just made the framerate hella slow.

That looks awesome. I'm going to go turn my D Si into an MP 3 player now.

... Wait, how do I actually get that on the device?

Does switching to 10-bit make 8 bit unplayable?

I switched in order to watch the new Kamen Rider subs, and then I noticed Horrible Subs didn't work.