Is there any difference in quality between the different QxR users?
I've heard that tigole is the best, but i've also seen Silence, SAMPA, etc. Is there really any difference? Should I avoid any of them?
I've heard that tigole is the best, but i've also seen Silence, SAMPA, etc. Is there really any difference? Should I avoid any of them?
I've tried to look into this by analyzing the media and encoder information, and all I've come up with is that tigole is slightly larger than Silence (by like 4%), but seems to use the exact same "sets" of encoding profiles. So in theory I believe they should be identical, but in practice might not be.
On a related note, has anyone tried using e.g. VMAF as a metric for encoding "quality"? In theory that's what it's made for, so it would be interesting if the numbers matched up with reality as a way to measure different releases.
Yes. There's a gui software called 'Nmkoder' that has an encoder built in called AV1AN. It basically cuts the entire video into a bunch of short segments, renders several copies of each short segments at different CRF values (basically Handbrake's RF values), gets the VMAF for each segment, saves only the one thats closest matches your Target VMAF, and stitches it all together at the end.
It works for AV1 and HEVC, and let's you pause and resume an encode at any time, though the whole process is quite a bit slower.
The real problem though is that doesn't produce an even size between source materials of different sizes. For example: a 5 GB Amazon screen rip can encode down to 1.5 GB at 95 VMAF or so. However a 60 GB bluray rip encodes down to 24 GB. One thing I really look for in an encode is a 5-15 MBPS HEVC video stream, so this doesn't really get what I'm wanting in most cases. It is fun to experiment with though.
I can't say I've had a bad release from QxR I like how they include extras if available
There is a difference between choices they make when encoding, which I suppose can affect quality. Unless you're talking a really old release, they're all relatively consistent now. Ghost puts a lot of work into their releases, not sure that Tigole does.