Stargate Atlantis S05E01 720p HDTV x264-LOLCATS

detail's not that important to everyone.
personally, i prefer the 1gb releases. the difference isn't so great that i
can't watch the 350's, but it's enough to make the 1gb's worth the wait for me.

has anyone noticed artefacting, during sudden brightness changes (avoiding
spoilers, but near the end).
wondering if it's my end, or the encode.

the difference is definitely worth the wait for me. i still certainly watch
350mb rips - mainly if it's a show that's not on my high priority category, or
when there isn't an 1100mb 720p rip available, like doctor who. that isn't made
in hd so there isn't one available, but i did wait for the [mm] 350mb h264 mkv
at full sd broadcast res for that extra bit of sharpness at the same file size.
depending on the source for the 350mb rips there can be quite a difference in
quality between them - of course the ones made from a hd source are generally
the best, surprise surprise.

i'm assuming the "brightness change" you're referring to is the one starting at
39:11. i've just done a frame by frame through it and don't see anything i'd
call "artifacting". extra blockiness definitely, but not the major image
quality issues i'd call artifacting. [if you want to see an excellent example
of something with lots of artifacting look for a 700mb dvd rip of "saving
private ryan". at ~2hr 45min, 700mb, and divx 3 (i think it was when i saw it
years ago) that's got plenty of prime examples of low bitrate image artifacting,
hehe. it would have looked better if they had dropped the res from 640 width to
512.]

in high motion scenes blockiness is pretty much unavoidable unless you are using
insane bitrates, but i've found h264 walks all over divx or xvid any day at any
given bitrate. for equal viewing quality you can get away with a much lower
bitrate in h264 than you can with divx or xvid - no surprise there since it's a
newer better codec. the price you pay is higher cpu requirements during
playback. these 720p encodes really do need a mid range or better pentium 4 for
playback. my 2.4ghz p4 is barely enough for them - i get away with it mostly,
but there are sections that require more power than it can throw at it. that's
when i can see a 100% cpu use spike and video going out of sync or playing slow.
for full hd i'd say forget using a single core p4 altogether as a rough guide.
(now i'm starting to get a bit off topic)

for a nice example of just how good h264 is try downloading a 165mb hr stargate
ep. (there are a few sg1 and atlantis eps around in this quality, eg.,
stargateatlantis_319_vengeance_hr_hdtv_h264_aac.mkv is one i saw out of
curiosity about the quality) no that's not a typo, a full sg ep in 960x540 h264
in 165mb! obviously it's not perfect, but it is surprising just how good it is,
given the rather low bitrate (and comparatively minute file size).

interestingly i was watching something yesterday on a local sd digital channel
(abc2, in aus) and noticed that they appear to be using a lower bitrate for that
channel than they do for the main abc1 channel, as there was noticeable motion
blockiness, which surprised me for a mainstream broadcast channel.

anyway, this is getting too long again ... i'll stop now. :-)

hi guys, just wondering which isp the aussie users are going through? there are
(sort of) unlimited plans available, usually quite pricey though, but for $55
shared between me and my flatmate, we've been pulling down over 50 gig a month
through pacific internet on a 512k plan (which they upgraded for everybody who
wanted to 1500k for no additional cost at christmas).

only catch is it's throttled back to 128k from 8am-6pm on workdays, but hey,
most people are at work during those times anyway.

just to agree with others for a moment, thanks for
the time taken to explain 🙂

artefacting may not be quite the right word.
ha! even if it is, i spell it funny, anyway 😛
the "brightness change" i'm referring to is the pair of flashes at about 32:33.

it's not a huge issue; only about 16 frames in total. it just got my curiosity
ticking over.