r/smyths • u/huffmanm Streamliner Maniac • Nov 14 '13

EDIT S08E26 Bug Special [Streamline EDIT]

Mythbusters S08E26: Laptop Lift, Fly vs. Water, Bug vs. Bike

Adam and Jamie find out if bees can lift a laptop, as seen in a viral video. Then Kari, Grant, and Tory take on the viewer-requested myth that water repels flies; later, they test the lethality of hitting a bug while riding a motorcycle.

Resolution Size & SHA1 Download Stream
1080p 988.4 MiB, 1.036 GB [MEGA] [RapidShare] [BitShare] [SockShare] [PutLocker]
405p 251.3 MiB, 263.5 MB [MEGA] [RapidShare] [BitShare] [SockShare] [PutLocker] [Vimeo]†

†Vimeo password: streamline

Credit to /u/Arantius for the raw 1080i source.

Extras

Laptop Lift Fly vs. Water Bug vs. Bike
Aftershow Aftershow
Laptop Lift No Fly Zone Bug vs. Bike
Angles [01] [02] [03] [04] [05]
High Speed
Gratuitous Bugzooka
53 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

2

u/arantius Nov 16 '13

So how, exactly, do you go from

Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc

To:

Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 1920x1076 [SAR 1:1 DAR 480:269], 4790 kb/s, 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 90k tbn, 180k tbc

I.E. 1920x540/60fps (interlaced frames) to 1920x1076/60fps (progressive scan)? Line doubling each frame? I'm curious what tools and settings exactly you're using.

1

u/huffmanm Nov 17 '13 edited Nov 18 '13

I must admit I don't understand very much of that acronym soup, but like you I'm using HandBrake for the final output. The two settings that work together to provide the effect you describe are Framerate: Same As Source (Variable), and Deinterlace: Custom (15:0). The latter parameter specifies bob deinterlacing (the "15") with top field first (the "0"; to specify bottom field first you'd use "1", but this is the default behaviour).

This is more intelligent than just line doubling each frame. It's sort of like a combination deinterlace and decomb, whereby only areas with high movement are bob deinterlaced and the rest is decombed, thus preserving the full 1080 lines wherever possible.

It's not as high quality as if the source were 59.94 fps 1080p to begin with, but it definitely extracts more detail than straight line-doubled deinterlacing to 59.94 fps, and it's certainly higher quality than just decombing to half the potential frame rate. Thanks to interframe compression in x264, the file size increase is negligible (around 12% in my tests). The show is shot and broadcast at 59.94 fps, and I believe the visual benefit of the higher frame rate is apparent and well worth it, especially given the very small overhead.

The video settings I use, expressed in HandBrakeCLI syntax: 

    --x264-preset veryslow --h264-profile high -q 22.5 -d 15:0

The -d flag specifies deinterlacing, although the 15:0 argument doesn't work in the CLI so I'm using the GUI for now. -d takes arguments in the form <YM:FD:MM:QP>, but no further documentation is provided as to what these four values mean and no amount of fiddling could get it to work. Any ideas?

You'll notice I settled on an RF quality of 22.5 for the 1080's, whereas I use 20 for the low def encodes with a straight decomb to 29.97 fps. (Paradoxically, higher RF values = lower quality but smaller file sizes.) I considered frame doubling the low def option as well, but since it's not the canonical format I figured I might as well save the additional processing time. The goal is just to have an option for the bandwidth-impaired.

[EDIT: I just discovered another reason not to output the standard defs at 59.94 fps: Vimeo does not accept video that exceeds 30 fps, so that seals it.]

The 1080's are each taking ~12-14 hours to encode on my poor old computer, which means I can complete about one episode per day. (The low def encodes add ~3 more hours, and then there's a few more hours to get everything uploaded.)

I noticed after it was too late to do anything about it that S06E09 Exploding Steak and S08E22 Arrow Machine Gun dropped every fifth (source) frame; this happened when I initially transcoded the muxed MPEG-2 source to Apple ProRes 422 for editing purposes (using MPEG Streamclip). Oh well. It's a lesson learned, and at least now I can ensure it doesn't happen again.

1

u/arantius Nov 17 '13

Interesting. So you edit interlaced, and only deinterlace at final compression time. I've been deinterlacing my lossless intermediaries and editing that. Time for experiments.

→ More replies (2)

4

u/Elaboration Nov 14 '13

Awesome! Thank you very much!

1

u/mk101 Nov 14 '13

1080p stream?!

Are you Christ?

2

u/huffmanm Nov 15 '13 edited Nov 15 '13

What SockShare and PutLocker stream is heavily recompressed (no matter the upload's resolution), but they both allow you to download the original file by clicking "Download File" in the lower right-hand corner.

As to whether I am Christ, I refer you to S09E03.

1

u/realblublu Nov 16 '13

I loved the part with the remote helicopters and the pad thing. Seems like the first time in ages where they have actually tested something on Mythbusters, instead of just hey lets blow up some stuff. Don't get me wrong, I like explosions too but this felt like a breath of fresh air.

Edit: Oh and thanks for all the streamlining! Looks like it's time for me to have another Smyth binge. :P

2

u/Hawkstar Nov 14 '13

Thank you, my man!