10bit encoding

[Sadres]

Well, that stinks. 10bit is starting to spread like wildfire.

[Prospero424]

Well, that stinks. 10bit is starting to spread like wildfire.

As far as I'm aware, it's only been spreading amongst some isolated anime groups. None of the semi-professional encoders I've seen who do the big feature film archive-quality releases have used 10-bit in any capacity.

And there are good reasons for this. Firstly, as pointed out above, the vast majority of hardware decoders out there (almost certainly including the PowerVR video hardware in the Boxee Box) don't support 10-bit decoding. Secondly, the only real advantage is marginally smaller file sizes for the same quality. Thing is that storage space is cheap, cheap, cheap. Hell, I recently picked up a couple of 2TB drives (one WD and one Seagate) for ~$70 each.

Edit: oh, and anime is actually unusually compressible to begin with, even with normal 8-bit encoding

I guess it's nice to have one or two groups out there who are pushing the boundaries and providing incentive for folks to update their hardware and software to support future formats, but there's a very real debate to be had as to whether 10-bit will ever see widespread support in the h.264 format, which would render that effort completely useless in this case.

Why? Because by the time even a small portion of the consumer electronics market could possibly implement support for this niche format, we'll start seeing draft implementations of the successor to AVC/h.264, which is called HEVC. It will offer quality and compression improvements WAY beyond what 10-bit AVC offers and will certainly be the next de-facto HD standard across the consumer electronics market, especially for the upcoming 4k format.

The draft implementations are scheduled to roll out next year and be finalized by 2013. Expect to see experimental community and open-source implementations early in 2012.

[AoiB]

I disagree. It is not a couple of groups, many of the main anime groups are switching for 1080p realeases and with good reason: in spite of the original material being 8 bit, the 10bit encoding provides less banding and hence better image quality with less size.

About storage being cheap, yes that is true, but perhaps we should consider that subbers do not sub anime for only US or countries with fast internet connections. Many places have many limitations in bandwidth and smaller sizes do help.

Anyhoo.. it seems the only way will be to get a home-theater computer for now.

[Sadres]

I disagree. It is not a couple of groups, many of the main anime groups are switching for 1080p releases and with good reason: in spite of the original material being 8 bit, the 10bit encoding provides less banding and hence better image quality with less size.

With the Fall Season starting, nearly half of the releases so far have been 10bit. This sucks. What's the technical limitation that's preventing this from being supported?

[Prospero424]

With the Fall Season starting, nearly half of the releases so far have been 10bit. This sucks. What's the technical limitation that's preventing this from being supported?

Are you just talking about anime or about TV shows in general? 'Cause I have yet to come across a single 10-bit encode.

The technical limitation is that the decoding hardware is probably not capable of supporting it, nor would the decoding hardware in most CE devices.

[Mike Hock]

Which fansub groups are you using? Because most of the stuff I've gotten recently have definitely not been 10 bit encodes.

[MoongluM]

So far it is Commie, UTW, and GG that I have noticed. Three of the best and most reliable older groups. Also, 3 groups that do their own translations and do very good jobs on quality.

Those 3 tend to be leaders, though, so everyone will probably fall into line.

[Sadres]

Mostly anime, yes.

Underwater, as well. HorribleSubs seems to be one of the few that isn't doing it.

[nightfly]

Not sure but is there any reasons on why 10 bit anime when i go to "Files" in Boxee Box then hover the anime file, the thumbnail on the right hand side generated perfectly but somehow we can't play it?

[Sadres]

Probably something along the lines of Boxee's hardware not having the juice to manage software rendering.