Wow! That is crazy.
Love how they use "The Dirt" to show it lol.
Guess there are few rockers @ netflix lol.
Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
11–20 of 200 posts
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#12Looks amazing and while I would like to enjoy such quality and am willing to pay for the premium plan (in fact I do already), I still can't watch the 4K content even in a world where I accept DRM modules in my browser, because some DRM plugins seem to be more equal than others.
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of one optimization profile for a whole movie, Netflix is detecting when the shot of a movie changes (the camera "cuts" from one shot to another) and beginning a new optimization profile specifically for the content of that shot. At least, that is my understanding.
That sounds so intuitive that I want to follow up with the question: Why isn't this the default? Is detecting a cut particularly difficult?
Even if you have to pay somebody to tag the scene changes manually that cost would be pretty insignificant to Netflix.
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#14A lot of those graphs seem to show that video quality at 1920x1080 is going down significantly. Does that mean you now need to be on their most expensive plan and using one of their approved devices/platforms to continue receiving the same video quality, now only obtainable with 2560x1440 and higher resolutions?
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#15That seems like a pretty impressive achievement! Question for anyone here: What do you use to play 4K/HDR? I have an Apple TV 4K, which can do 4K Dolby Vision playback and looks ok, but the Apple TV tends to have some jittering when streaming certain shows (very noticeable in panning shots of animation). The sound quality is also noticeably worse on my set with it (it doesn’t seem to be able to do direct pass through…
I use the native apps in my Samsung Q70 TV. They are really good, and I rarely find a need to use my 4K Apple TV anymore. Even the Samsung Apple TV apps, and the AirPlay 2 support is excellent.
As it is, Apple has screwed up HDR on the 4K so badly that it's very difficult to make it work smoothly without also screwing up HDR on other devices.
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of one optimization profile for a whole movie, Netflix is detecting when the shot of a movie changes (the camera "cuts" from one shot to another) and beginning a new optimization profile specifically for the content of that shot. At least, that is my understanding.
That sounds so intuitive that I want to follow up with the question: Why isn't this the default? Is detecting a cut particularly difficult?
Coarsely detecting cuts is relatively simple - look for large frame-to-frame differences (e.g. encode however -> find large frames surrounded by smaller ones -> done, it's as accurate as your perceptual compression is). There are a number of ffmpeg-using tools out there doing this and other "cut to / from black" detection and it's pretty good. Not good enough for a human to say "yeah, these are all scenes", but probably good enough for picking things to re-encode like this.
The harder part is the significantly increased compute use due to re-encoding things multiple times, to detect these cuts and to try to find the best encoding. Heuristics there can be arbitrarily complex and re-calculate any number of times. I imagine it hasn't been done earlier just due to cost, though maybe they've recently achieved a better heuristic.
edit: ah, great, they link to a "dynamic optimizer" post that goes into this in some detail: https://netflixtechblog.com/dynamic-optimizer-a-perceptual-v...
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#17Looks amazing and while I would like to enjoy such quality and am willing to pay for the premium plan (in fact I do already), I still can't watch the 4K content even in a world where I accept DRM modules in my browser, because some DRM plugins seem to be more equal than others.
Do we still need an Intel Kaby Lake or later CPU for 4K DRM decoding? (And Windows... forgot about that.)
If so, Netflix is on the wrong side of the CPU war with AMD ascending.
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#18That seems like a pretty impressive achievement! Question for anyone here: What do you use to play 4K/HDR? I have an Apple TV 4K, which can do 4K Dolby Vision playback and looks ok, but the Apple TV tends to have some jittering when streaming certain shows (very noticeable in panning shots of animation). The sound quality is also noticeably worse on my set with it (it doesn’t seem to be able to do direct pass through…
HDR10 is fine right now. I don’t know of any tv that has a 12 bit capable panel or can create over 1000 nits brightness. HDR10 supports 4,000 and Dolby vision supports 10,000. TVs need to get a lot better before Dolby vision makes a difference.
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#19That seems like a pretty impressive achievement! Question for anyone here: What do you use to play 4K/HDR? I have an Apple TV 4K, which can do 4K Dolby Vision playback and looks ok, but the Apple TV tends to have some jittering when streaming certain shows (very noticeable in panning shots of animation). The sound quality is also noticeably worse on my set with it (it doesn’t seem to be able to do direct pass through…
I have a Vizio Quantum X and a PS4 Pro both work great. YouTube videos show the occasional dropped frame on the Vizio app, and generally 0 dropped frames on the PS4.
I don't have the best speakers or room acoustics, but I can't complain about the sound.
Re: Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
#20> Sometimes we ingest a title that would need more bits at the highest end of the quality spectrum — even higher than the 16 Mbps limit of the fixed-bitrate ladder.
From just a cursory inspection using my Apple TV 4K, 12 Mbps is their target bitrate but their ceiling was ~16 Mbps.
That's still only a third of what AppleTV+ offers (36/48) and only 2/3 of Disney+ (18/24). Netflix is still higher than Prime Video (10/14). HBO Max was the lowest quality, allowing only 8/10 Mbps for their HD streams (which generously doubled HBO Now's infamously low 4/5 Mbps bitrate).