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• Anatomy of an optimization : H.264 deblocking

  26 mai 2010, par Dark Shikari — H.264, assembly, development, speed, x264

  As mentioned in the previous post, H.264 has an adaptive deblocking filter. But what exactly does that mean — and more importantly, what does it mean for performance ? And how can we make it as fast as possible ? In this post I’ll try to answer these questions, particularly in relation to my recent deblocking optimizations in x264.

  H.264′s deblocking filter has two steps : strength calculation and the actual filter. The first step calculates the parameters for the second step. The filter runs on all the edges in each macroblock. That’s 4 vertical edges of length 16 pixels and 4 horizontal edges of length 16 pixels. The vertical edges are filtered first, from left to right, then the horizontal edges, from top to bottom (order matters !). The leftmost edge is the one between the current macroblock and the left macroblock, while the topmost edge is the one between the current macroblock and the top macroblock.

  Here’s the formula for the strength calculation in progressive mode. The highest strength that applies is always selected.

  If we’re on the edge between an intra macroblock and any other macroblock : Strength 4
  If we’re on an internal edge of an intra macroblock : Strength 3
  If either side of a 4-pixel-long edge has residual data : Strength 2
  If the motion vectors on opposite sides of a 4-pixel-long edge are at least a pixel apart (in either x or y direction) or the reference frames aren’t the same : Strength 1
  Otherwise : Strength 0 (no deblocking)

  These values are then thrown into a lookup table depending on the quantizer : higher quantizers have stronger deblocking. Then the actual filter is run with the appropriate parameters. Note that Strength 4 is actually a special deblocking mode that performs a much stronger filter and affects more pixels.

  One can see somewhat intuitively why these strengths are chosen. The deblocker exists to get rid of sharp edges caused by the block-based nature of H.264, and so the strength depends on what exists that might cause such sharp edges. The strength calculation is a way to use existing data from the video stream to make better decisions during the deblocking process, improving compression and quality.

  Both the strength calculation and the actual filter (not described here) are very complex if naively implemented. The latter can be SIMD’d with not too much difficulty ; no H.264 decoder can get away with reasonable performance without such a thing. But what about optimizing the strength calculation ? A quick analysis shows that this can be beneficial as well.

  Since we have to check both horizontal and vertical edges, we have to check up to 32 pairs of coefficient counts (for residual), 16 pairs of reference frame indices, and 128 motion vector values (counting x and y as separate values). This is a lot of calculation ; a naive implementation can take 500-1000 clock cycles on a modern CPU. Of course, there’s a lot of shortcuts we can take. Here’s some examples :

  • If the macroblock uses the 8×8 transform, we only need to check 2 edges in each direction instead of 4, because we don’t deblock inside of the 8×8 blocks.
  • If the macroblock is a P-skip, we only have to check the first edge in each direction, since there’s guaranteed to be no motion vector differences, reference frame differences, or residual inside of the macroblock.
  • If the macroblock has no residual at all, we can skip that check.
  • If we know the partition type of the macroblock, we can do motion vector checks only along the edges of the partitions.
  • If the effective quantizer is so low that no deblocking would be performed no matter what, don’t bother calculating the strength.

  But even all of this doesn’t save us from ourselves. We still have to iterate over a ton of edges, checking each one. Stuff like the partition-checking logic greatly complicates the code and adds overhead even as it reduces the number of checks. And in many cases decoupling the checks to add such logic will make it slower : if the checks are coupled, we can avoid doing a motion vector check if there’s residual, since Strength 2 overrides Strength 1.

  But wait. What if we could do this in SIMD, just like the actual loopfilter itself ? Sure, it seems more of a problem for C code than assembly, but there aren’t any obvious things in the way. Many years ago, Loren Merritt (pengvado) wrote the first SIMD implementation that I know of (for ffmpeg’s decoder) ; it is quite fast, so I decided to work on porting the idea to x264 to see if we could eke out a bit more speed here as well.

  Before I go over what I had to do to make this change, let me first describe how deblocking is implemented in x264. Since the filter is a loopfilter, it acts “in loop” and must be done in both the encoder and decoder — hence why x264 has it too, not just decoders. At the end of encoding one row of macroblocks, x264 goes back and deblocks the row, then performs half-pixel interpolation for use in encoding the next frame.

  We do it per-row for reasons of cache coherency : deblocking accesses a lot of pixels and a lot of code that wouldn’t otherwise be used, so it’s more efficient to do it in a single pass as opposed to deblocking each macroblock immediately after encoding. Then half-pixel interpolation can immediately re-use the resulting data.

  Now to the change. First, I modified deblocking to implement a subset of the macroblock_cache_load function : spend an extra bit of effort loading the necessary data into a data structure which is much simpler to address — as an assembly implementation would need (x264_macroblock_cache_load_deblock). Then I massively cleaned up deblocking to move all of the core strength-calculation logic into a single, small function that could be converted to assembly (deblock_strength_c). Finally, I wrote the assembly functions and worked with Loren to optimize them. Here’s the result.

  And the timings for the resulting assembly function on my Core i7, in cycles :

  deblock_strength_c : 309
  deblock_strength_mmx : 79
  deblock_strength_sse2 : 37
  deblock_strength_ssse3 : 33

  Now that is a seriously nice improvement. 33 cycles on average to perform that many comparisons–that’s absurdly low, especially considering the SIMD takes no branchy shortcuts : it always checks every single edge ! I walked over to my performance chart and happily crossed off a box.

  But I had a hunch that I could do better. Remember, as mentioned earlier, we’re reloading all that data back into our data structures in order to address it. This isn’t that slow, but takes enough time to significantly cut down on the gain of the assembly code. And worse, less than a row ago, all this data was in the correct place to be used (when we just finished encoding the macroblock) ! But if we did the deblocking right after encoding each macroblock, the cache issues would make it too slow to be worth it (yes, I tested this). So I went back to other things, a bit annoyed that I couldn’t get the full benefit of the changes.

  Then, yesterday, I was talking with Pascal, a former Xvid dev and current video hacker over at Google, about various possible x264 optimizations. He had seen my deblocking changes and we discussed that a bit as well. Then two lines hit me like a pile of bricks :

  <_skal_> tried computing the strength at least ?
  <_skal_> while it’s fresh

  Why hadn’t I thought of that ? Do the strength calculation immediately after encoding each macroblock, save the result, and then go pick it up later for the main deblocking filter. Then we can use the data right there and then for strength calculation, but we don’t have to do the whole deblock process until later.

  I went and implemented it and, after working my way through a horde of bugs, eventually got a working implementation. A big catch was that of slices : deblocking normally acts between slices even though normal encoding does not, so I had to perform extra munging to get that to work. By midday today I was able to go cross yet another box off on the performance chart. And now it’s committed.

  Sometimes chatting for 10 minutes with another developer is enough to spot the idea that your brain somehow managed to miss for nearly a straight week.

  NB : the performance chart is on a specific test clip at a specific set of settings (super fast settings) relevant to the company I work at, so it isn’t accurate nor complete for, say, default settings.

  Update : Here’s a higher resolution version of the current chart, as requested in the comments.
  

  http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git ;a=commit ;h=b9ec3ea27812288485329ac7771143021cd4917b

• ffmpeg errors in the daemon

  3 octobre 2020, par smoto_shei

  I created a shell script to compress a video using ffmpeg(4.3.1).

  &#xA;

  ffmpeg -y -i \
 '/var/www/System/Backend/Outputs/TempSaveMovie/200703_4_short_5fr_p2(100_20)_r(50_20).mp4' \
 -vcodec h264 -an \
 '/var/www/System/Backend/Outputs/MovieOutputs/200703_4_short_5fr_p2(100_20)_r(50_20).mp4'



  &#xA;

  If you run this code from the console, it will run without problems.&#xA;In fact, we're using the python subscript.call() to execute it. It works fine too.

  &#xA;

  cmd = 'sh /var/www/System/Backend/cv2toffmpeg.sh'
subprocess.call(cmd, shell=True)


  &#xA;

  Secondly, if I run it from a daemonized python program, I'll get an error. I get the following error.&#xA;You'll get an error like this

  &#xA;

  Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from './Outputs/TempSaveMovie/200703_4_short_5fr_p2(100_20)_r(50_20).mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2mp41
    encoder         : Lavf58.35.100
  Duration: 00:00:06.15, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 10246 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: mpeg4 (Simple Profile) (mp4v / 0x7634706D), yuv420p, 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 10244 kb/s, 13 fps, 13 tbr, 13312 tbn, 13 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : VideoHandler
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (mpeg4 (native) -> h264 (h264_nvenc))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[mpeg4 @ 0x55cec17c5480] header damaged
[mpeg4 @ 0x55cec17c6840] header damaged
[mpeg4 @ 0x55cec1855f80] header damaged
[mpeg4 @ 0x55cec1866e00] header damaged
Output #0, mp4, to './Outputs/MovieOutputs/200703_4_short_5fr_p2(100_20)_r(50_20).mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2mp41
    encoder         : Lavf58.45.100
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (h264_nvenc) (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=-1--1, 2000 kb/s, 13 fps, 13312 tbn, 13 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : VideoHandler
      encoder         : Lavc58.91.100 h264_nvenc
    Side data:
      cpb: bitrate max/min/avg: 0/0/2000000 buffer size: 4000000 vbv_delay: N/A
Error while decoding stream #0:0: Invalid data found when processing input
[mpeg4 @ 0x55cec17c8780] header damaged
Error while decoding stream #0:0: Invalid data found when processing input
[mpeg4 @ 0x55cec17c5480] header damaged


  &#xA;

  I think the problem is when you run it from a daemonized process. There seems to be a similar problem in the past.&#xA;Ffmpeg does not properly convert videos when run as daemon&#xA;I would like to ask for your help to solve this problem. Thank you for your help from Japan.

  &#xA;

• Way to bypass video upload when testing using Rspec

  1er mars 2014, par Justin

  I'm testing a page on my app that shows videos. I'm trying to speed up the test by bypassing the video upload process or another way ??

  Maybe I'm using FactoryGirl incorrectly for file uploads..

  Using FactoryGirl, I'm creating the video with

  FactoryGirl.define do
  
   factory :video do
  
    user_id 1
  
    type "Live"
  
    title "FooBar"
  
    description "Foo bar is the description"
  
    video { fixture_file_upload(Rails.root.join('spec', 'files', 'concert.mov'), 'video/mp4') }
  
   end
  
  end

  And in the request's spec I'm describing the videos as :

  describe "videos page" do
  
  
  
    let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }
  
    let!(:video1) { FactoryGirl.create(:video) }
  
  
  
    before { visit user_video_path(user) }
  
  
  
    it { should have_title(user.name) }
  
    it { should have_content(user.name) }
  
  
  
    describe "videos" do
  
      it { should have_content(video1.description) }
  
    end
  
  end

  Now, everytime I run the test for this page it goes through the file upload process which takes more time. I'm also using FFmpeg

  **video.rb (video model)**
  
  
  
  validates :video, presence: true
  
  has_attached_file :video, :styles => {
  
                                        :medium => { :geometry => "640x480", :format => 'mp4' },
  
                                        :thumb => { :geometry => "470x290#", :format => 'jpg', :time => 10 }
  
                                       }, 
  
                            :processors => [:ffmpeg]

  What this does when I test the page is the CLI goes through the video upload process like it would if you were uploading the video and watching your local server.