hevc encoding presets

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Re: hevc encoding presets

by cumlord » Mon Sep 30, 2024 5:47 pm

it's all good over there, people are nice :)

and yes these are the things i'm thinking about anikey, but from what i'm hearing we would want ideally a single clearnet cross-seed. what should the quality/languages be? if we only have shit quality from megusta for each thing, then the swarms will be healthier, yes, but i2p will just have a bunch of low bitrate encodes and no other options that would scare people away that want to go watch something on a big screen.

if we only have 4k or h264 clearnet cross-seeds, less people want to wait for those especially in i2p because they're so often so large. not everyone wants or needs 4k. some people still prefer h264 because it plays on everything is still gold standard.

then there's 720p, if you're watching on a smaller screen you don't really need any bigger than this anyway. if you're doing 720p you'd also probably be perfectly happy with megusta level stuff.

then there's people that might ask for other languages. we could do only a multi, or only a handful of langs, but those can be large. i'd argue if we had to stick to one, it should be the larger h264 and only the main langs used here uncompressed so we're getting something high quality, but even doing something simple like that is going to change the infohash and it will still be on the heavier side for here, i think. compressing the audio for a multi would also change the infohash. multis are usually released raw so any compressing there i think we'd need to do ourselves, maybe there's someone doing it already, never looked, but if it's not available in clearnet already and we had to do it ourselves it'd change the infohash.

We're already looking at several different versions of the same content. my opinion is that this is overall a good thing, despite spreading seeds thinner. Variety gives people options, some people that see only megusta are going to leave because of low quality, others won't have the patience or space for bigger 264 to download if they didn't see megusta/elite/psa /rarbg or whatever. If you're going to do something like this quality-wise it's good to look for holes, i went for somewhere between h264 and the double pass encodes already available. if we have a lot of overlap, like someone cross-seeding megusta and someone else encoding with megusta settings, I agree completely that that would be pointless and what should happen is just allow the i2p-only encode to die out in favor of the megusta cross-seed.

i don't think we have to reinvent the wheel here, in some ways i2p is analogous to a kind of small private tracker, so we can draw from the experience there, they manage fine. private trackers are more about being in a community that trades media, be it from cross-seeding from other trackers and people sharing their own stuff they ripped, encoded, and/or muxed themselves. I think this should be encouraged, and there's a solid chunk of people that do that sort of thing here too which is awesome. But big difference here versus small pt's (beside i2p being slow): good trackers put emphasis on retention, which should also be important here but it's hit or miss. way i approach it is if i upload it, i seed indefinitely and figure if people like something, they will keep it long-term. If they do i let them have the brunt of bandwidth (and this obviously helps a lot).

you make completely valid points by the way, especially considering the small user base here and higher likelihood of the swarms dying. so it puts more stress on the people that can handle it to hold a lot of torrents down. my opinion is that there's more to gain by having variety than there is to lose. No doubt trust is a big factor too, even more important here since this is the darknet....but also not much different to a small pt that have their own smaller groups that don't get cross-seeded to the public torrent space much (or ever). i'm skeptical of them at first and look into them before i use them, but in some cases they are the ones getting obscure content or some other tailor-made thing i'm after. at least a couple times i've joined a tracker to get access to those releases not being cross-seeded elsewhere (that i could find).

there is some cool niche-level stuff here already especially with the older movies/shows people are putting out. timing can be improved for new things though, but maybe not with postman.

note: no hatred towards megusta et al i've used them a lot in the past myself

Re: importance of cross-seeding

by anikey » Sun Sep 29, 2024 10:25 pm

cumlord wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 9:33 pm i think i understand the issue you're raising about the same content in different formats (non-matching infohashes) thinning the amount of seeds in i2p from clearnet cross-seeds. i hadn't thought to consider that a problem, it's good you brought it up. i'm not fully understanding why you think it would scare off newcomers though, because seed count for clearnet cross-seeds would be lower?
If there is a mismatching infohash, the newcomer might not care to look for the i2p-only infohash, and start cross-seeding the original one, maybe even post it to a torrent index like Postman's tracker. Other users looking for the torrent, may download either one.

This will create fragmentation across swarms. If the infohashes matched in the beginning, the combined swarm would have more seeders than individually the separate swarms, so the downloaders would benefit from more seeds, higher speeds.

Over time, swarms may lose seeds, and the less seeds - the more chance of a swarm dying. So, the combined swarm also benefits from less chance of dying.

There is also the issue of trust - if an infohash has been posted on a clearnet tracker (especially one with closed registration, or with a system of trusted users), it is more trustable by regular users (to contain what it states, to be of good quality, to not contain malware / video player exploits [and here also the publication time matters - it is usually the case that clearnet torrent had been published before the i2p one]), as opposed to an infohash that originated from i2p and hasn't been posted anywhere else. (Although this can be somewhat alleviated by the postman's star system - but some users may still have doubts)

Re: hevc encoding presets

by lgillis » Fri Sep 27, 2024 7:20 pm

cumlord wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 8:18 pm I'm talking about tv's, phones, top boxes. I don't want to assume everyone is watching things on their pc. Decode capability for non pc is still spotty, pcs should be able to play it back fine regardless but other devices older than 3-4 yr's old might have issues. On mobiles and laptops with no dedicated hardware support playback is going to suck battery life i'd think.
With your social attitude, your people should be lining up here to thank you. I hope at least over at PaT people show you more appreciation.

Re: hevc encoding presets

by cumlord » Thu Sep 26, 2024 9:33 pm

no you're right on cross-seeding being good, i could have worded that better. ideally i think these things should coexist because the ease of cross-seeding like with bigly bt lead to a big increase in i2p torrent availability. we can merge the swarms and benefit from both clearnet and i2p seeders. So yeah cross-seeding VERY good for i2p in my opinion, make it as easy as possible to do for more clients and it will only get better

i think i understand the issue you're raising about the same content in different formats (non-matching infohashes) thinning the amount of seeds in i2p from clearnet cross-seeds. i hadn't thought to consider that a problem, it's good you brought it up. i'm not fully understanding why you think it would scare off newcomers though, because seed count for clearnet cross-seeds would be lower?

i think of i2p in similar terms to like a private tracker. In private trackers the swarms are not reaching out to public trackers and you're not using dht, so the swarm for that tracker is it's own isolated thing, same like it is here with i2p versus clearnet. from that perspective i don't think it would be damaging, trackers often have the same content in several formats and may have their own sources.

Re: hevc encoding presets

by anikey » Thu Sep 26, 2024 8:47 pm

cumlord wrote: Sat Sep 21, 2024 5:52 pm Also, my primary motivation is to try and get more people using i2p and move capability into i2p. If more people do this sort of thing i2p can become less reliant on clearnet cross seeding and stand on its own.
Not regarding the quality issues, I think cross-seeding is still good (and re-encoding specifically for i2p would damage it). For example, a clearnet torrent has been cross-seeded into i2p. Now another user (who already has this torrent and is seeding it in clearnet) discovers i2p torrenting and starts seeding it into i2p, no re-downloading required. (And now imagine this for some people who have lots upon lots of torrents on their drives)

The more re-encoded and non-cross-seedable torrents there are, the less potential from newcomers like those (because they will find less matching infohashes). They might start their own cross-seeding. And now there are two swarms hosting mostly the same thing except one of them is re-encoded.

Re: hevc encoding presets

by cumlord » Thu Sep 26, 2024 8:18 pm

I'm talking about tv's, phones, top boxes. I don't want to assume everyone is watching things on their pc. Decode capability for non pc is still spotty, pcs should be able to play it back fine regardless but other devices older than 3-4 yr's old might have issues. On mobiles and laptops with no dedicated hardware support playback is going to suck battery life i'd think.

On encoding side of things, nvidia released their first gpu with hardware encoder last year, i don't have a gpu that has this yet. I don't care to be first in line for new hardware and wait a little to see how they perform and improve. Depending on the content the efficiency gain isn't as drastic as you might think, i do consistently see 10-30%, occasionally going up to around 40-45%. I need to do more testing but that's what i've been seeing so far. I still have more to learn to increase the efficiency but i've been hearing similar things from other encoders.

So i need more hardware upgrades, will take much longer time to encode, an unknown number of i2p users can't play it on their device of choice, for something in the range of a 10-30% space savings/seeding time gain. No doubt av1 is the future and it's better in every way, but the effort/cost just doesn't seem to match up with the gain for me right now to be highly motivated to switch.

Kind of same thing with hevc. The space savings gain avc to hevc was more drastic, and although it took more cpu power to do those kinds of encodes and hardware support was spotty, space was more valuable so people really were pushing to maximize that any way they could.

Re: hevc encoding presets

by lgillis » Thu Sep 26, 2024 2:15 pm

Up to and including FullHD, no hardware decoding is required. Any standard office PC with a GPU in the CPU should be able to play this (AV1) without jerking.

People's motivation is generally the same everywhere, they are hoping for a small competitive advantage. However, they then use the money saved elsewhere, someone once said, for higher-quality consumer goods. I don't know whether this is the case, but the money saved could also be invested in a more powerful PC.

What is striking is the consistently conservative attitude in the global file sharing scene. While the industry has already declared new codecs to be the standard, the scene is sticking to yesterday's stuff. Just as it took almost ages to establish the switch from Xvid to AVC. Today, AVC is still the preferred codec.

Perhaps it should be kept similar to the German public broadcasting system. Everyone who has a permanent residence has to pay fees, but the fee payers are free to buy the necessary equipment to be able to use the program. What I'm saying is, just do it, people will move, especially if they have to.

Re: hevc encoding presets

by cumlord » Thu Sep 26, 2024 7:38 am

Support for hardware decoding is something i'm not sure on. I feel like the profile of the average i2p torrent user is less likely to have a compatible device? than say someone torrenting with a vpn or running a seedbox in private trackers. I get the vibe that there are people here that are here because it's free, or can't afford those things so maybe they wouldn't have a compatible device. Not sure how many people fit into that category versus people that are here more out of nerdy or privacy reasons. i'll just have to do a couple and see if people are ok with it, maybe it's not a big deal

on my end of things still some to do. i rebuilt some of my hardware to be modular so it should be easy to add cpus for the extra load i'd anticipate, need to learn it more and fidget with the presets. also will admit that i'm not as motivated now as i might have been some years ago to switch to a new codec since space is relatively cheap now, so it's not going to benefit me as far as that goes. i could potentially increase quality some for similar file size which i would like or go for smaller file sizes which would help with seeding time

Re: hevc encoding presets

by lgillis » Thu Sep 26, 2024 6:13 am

Why not use the more efficient AV1 codec?

»Tests by Moscow State University have shown that AV1 can outperform the encoding and decoding efficiency of HEVC by around 28%. AV1 is able to deliver the same quality as X264 at 55% of the average bitrate, while the best HEVC encoder (x265 in three-pass placebo mode) runs at 67% of the bitrate. In other words, with AV1, distributors can send streams faster and cheaper, and we can enjoy higher resolution content over the same bandwidth.« (AV1-Codec ist 30% effizienter als H.265)

Re: hevc encoding presets

by cumlord » Wed Sep 25, 2024 2:12 am

Welcome thought it could be useful for people doing their own encodes or thinking of it. It's a personal preference thing, a lot of people preffer lighter encodes for all kinds of reasons so variety is a good thing. Plenty of people will be happy with crunched audio. Encoding anything is reducing quality so it's always a factor of how much quality you're ok losing

Automation is how I can post as much as I can. it's the only way to hope to keep up with the deluge of content available in the clear, which is also automated and has been for many years. Something I've complained about with postman tracker in the past, so I'm working on a solution. At least for single episodes. It can be time consuming and unreliable which can require manual input from me which can slow the process down until I can sit and do it. If we want i2p to be an alternative to clearnet torrenting (as it just isn't now, not even close) my opinion is that this is necessary to expand content offerrings. Should add that i understand why postman doesn't want this

And thanks for the kind words and adding some things. I have used multiple clients for a while but I've been changing things up with multiple snark instances. It's low resource so it's easier to take advantage of more tunnels that way. I made a multisnark tool to manage this limitation and have shifted focus to working on the other limitation for now

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