This is a main thread for SLRO quality.
Feel free to post any questions or concerns.
SLR Originals Quality
I will start with the reply to originals question by
If we already checking the quality, please consider these 2 advices:
please provide the timecode of the screenshot next time so we could compare the same image
Provide a full resolution snapshot from the video and not the screenshot from your monitor otherwise it make very little sense in term of details.
Now lets break it all down:
Yes, post-production does play a significant role in quality and details, but it's not all. SchnuppiLilac
Last time post-production researched the causes and possible ways of improvements - we did our best to preserve and enhance the quality and details, but aside from that there are things that only possible to improve during filming.
Below are the points that influence skin details. First 3 are on production.
first of all - the focus.
if the face is in focus - you will see the details.
the camera our production uses aint magic.
it doesnt have anutofocus.
the focus is there where it is set, so for, the focus its not everywhere.
it is usually where it is set in the beginning of the shot and not changed until the end of the shot.
that is the reason i ask you for the timecode of where you took the screenshot so i could check if it was in the focus or not.
so if the focus is on the closeup then you wont see much details while she is at the blowjob, and even less if she is further away.
second - makeup. (SchnuppiLilac yes makeup, you guessed it)
makeup is usually heavy, blurring all the details of the skin, unless the makeup is light or almost not required.
thirdly - the light. (SchnuppiLilac you guessed it again)
light plays a lot. if the face/body is too lit, the skin pores and wrinkles wont be visible.
that is not a secret and some people know that and use that to avoid their skin imperfections to be visible.
here is the example or you can call it a tutorial, or just google something like that
this one looks like fake but if real then its a too good of an example
4 - Now here goes post production.
The scene goes through multiple steps of post processing that slightly reduce the quality of the image.
Not drastically, but little by little each step of encoding changes the very pixels of the video.
Those steps are necessary if you want to see
Proper stereo correction
No noise + enhances sharpness
Alpha passthrough in its sense.
Streaming and all the possible resolutions. (that one goes after post production and we dont influence this)
Below I attach the side by side SCREENSHOT of the RAW and Processed image
along with the high quality stills for you to download and play with yourself (pun intended)
https://insights.sexlikereal.com/images/passthrough/596/raw.tif
https://insights.sexlikereal.com/images/passthrough/596/pt.tif
click on the image and you will be redirected to the gifyu where you can see a bigger picture or download it or just check the stills that i provided
on the LEFT is the RAW image stright from the camera
and on the Right is the final alpha master file
As you can see
all the details that are visible on her face - remain (you want to see it)
noise that is present in the raw video - removed (you dont want to see it)
hair (actual hair + eyelashes + eyebrows) details are enhances.
Slight skin tone adjustment.
That one for SchnuppiLilac
I would say that actually the skin tone is subjective. More in the next message about it.
Depending on what headset you use and whether you use passthrough - the colors of the model's skin might or might not match the projected passthrough surroundings.
Be it a quest 2 with grey PT image
Or quest 3 with color PT image
Or quest pro with its semi colored PT image
Or some other headset you use.
But as i was to decide and experiment with the colors (prior we hired a colorist) - this was the skin tone i was more or less happy with.
Without those changes the model skin tone would be orange.
Add here a green spill that comes from the green walls that might be altering her real skin color.
And add the camera color shift (i noticed all the shots have that orangy tint and not just passthrough)
Good news is that we now do have a dedicated person (colorist) who has a sharp eye for colors and will be taking care of the colors from now on.
It is still a work in progress and i constantly give my feedback to our colorist regarding colors but hopefully we soon will get to the point where you guys will be happy with the colors.
Will try to make some sort of samples soon for you to compare before and after skin tone adjustments.
As per our conversation with @boudaba that continued in private message i duplicate here my reply:
i made new stills
this time AV1 vs HEVC vs Max Res 8K from SLR
A short video clip would be way better for comparison instead of static images especially for HBR vs Downsampled.
petex67 xeddin1
i get you guys
but the point was to show the different bw raw and final master
you wont be able to compare av1 and hevc side by side in headset
putting together av1 and hevc in one video is not possible
and if i export raw to mp4 it would be raw anymore 
but sure, will prepare something
perhaps raw exported to mp4 with master file at least
- Edited
petex67 eh, i dont think providing a raw file in any form is a good idea for several reasons
- I cant cut a part from raw video without converting it to other format.
- It is not stereo corrected and you wont be able to preview it in headset
- If i to correct stereo it will have to be exported to some format and it looses its sense as raw.
- If i to export raw with stereo correction to some format, in order to preserve the quality closest to raw i would have to use lossless and that is not playable in headset.
petex67 .mkv would only work in headset if its av1, h265 or h264 (which you get below but in mp4). but if you will manage to make lossless mkv and it plays in headset - let me know, perhaps also provide a test sample, i would gladly check it in headset
with that said
i here provide yall hevc + av1 + 8k max res samples from same scene and same 1 minute section so you can either compare it on computer or in headset
Master HEVC
Master AV1
8K_maxres_hevc
8K_maxres_av1
keep in mind post production can only influence the master file quality
the server transcoding quality aka maxres and other resolution are not the part of post production workflow
I tried out the 8K HEVC and Master HEVC on my Quest 3.
As I suspected, even though still images might feel similar when the video is paused, but when it's actually playing, it's a stark difference.
The Low Bit Rate 8K HEVC file feels like somebody applied a heavy Motion Blur Post Processing Filter. This is especially noticeable when there is a lot of movement.
The Master HEVC is crystal clear on every single movement. It looks "High Res" if that makes sense.
It's like watching a movie on YouTube vs watching in IMAX.
I tried to play the AV1 files over my Stash -> Stash VR -> Heresphere stack but it refuses to play the original file and resorts to transcoding. I will try playing them directly loaded from the Quest 3's Storage a bit later.
On another note, it's a damn fine scene mate! Good Job!
Manny_S Hello and thank you for giving us this examples. And this will be some video! Looking forward to see this!
Unfortunately I guess I'm not going to see this scene with the high bitrate as you already dont put those one available in the new slr videos (some say its behind a paywall of the paypervideo... i will never pay that much for a video).
The difference is noticeable mostly how @petex67 says. When the person starts to move you can notice blurriness and out of focus on the smaller files. While on the larger files is very crispy and image flows a lot better. Its not a question of AV1 or H265, its a question of bitrate. 30 mb is just too old image.
But dont get me wrong, 120mb bitrate is very good bu also too much I think. But in the middle term of this I guess it would make everyone happy (or at least most people). But as I said, for me 30mb bitrate is just not good quality to see.
Thank you for all your work.
- Edited
Manny_S Very interesting comparison thanks! First of all, our mind is VERY good at playing tricks on us with this kind of comparisons so you really need to do them carefully and find a way to do a blind test and start up a video without knowing which one it is. If you already know which one that you're watching, your mind will most likely play tricks on you. Very important to realize!
I only watched it on my AVP, not on my Q3. At first I focused on that skin discoloring on her left rib, it's a spot maybe 4 cm large. You have to watch carefully to even see it so I thought that might be a good test. I was amazed to conclude that there wasn't much difference between the original and the HVEC 8k. However the AV1 8k has a little less detail there, which amazed me too, since this is supposed to be the better compression algo? But I definitely see less detail with the AV1 8k version, while the HVEC 8k version actually seems pretty damn close to the original.
So then I tried focusing on a different spot and this time I could see a difference between the HVEC original and the 8k. If you focus on the hair that falls behind her neck when she takes of the shirt in the beginning of the video, you'll see that the 8k version has way more dark/black there and that you can discern more details/colors in the original. There I could easily detect which version I was watching without even knowing which one I started.
Still, I'm positively surprised by the quality of the 8K HVEC compression, the difference with the original is not as big as i would have thought. I do believe that camera/lighting/production quality plays a bigger factor than 8k vs original.
I mean, just look at this. The compression artifacts couldn't be clearer on this Pink me! 20mbit/s file. Just look at the background and see the crappy gradients. How can anyone with a straight face pretend that 20mbit/s is enough?
just compare this to ar porn that uses 75mbit/s almost 4! times higher (Tender Triangle)
- Edited
I privately sent @Manny_S two images from the "Pink me!" video with the timecodes to compare with his version and the one on the site we can download. Indeed, like many others, I noticed that the compression was too strong and that it smoothed out the details specifically on this video. I'm not criticizing the difference between H265 and AV1, but this video where the bitrate is very low. The images I received are of better quality, but we did not align ourselves with the same time code, and it is difficult to be categorical without comparing two same images taken at the same time but from two different sources. I think this video and this model deserves to be aligned, at the very least, with other videos at 30 mb/s bitrate. The last video "Legal Cast: Agatha" is at 30mb/s
fenderwq And that example is from a PT scene where the background is mostly the same color (= less bitrate needed). The girls are taking up very small portion of the frame too (= even less bitrate needed). On a non-PT or multi-girl scene the quality loss would be even worse.
- Edited
fenderwq Yeah wow that's an eye opener, that compression on the walls just looks horrible. I don't think anyone thinks 20 mbit/s is enough nowadays (well SLR themselves maybe). But yours is a good example. That whole scene looks kinda blurry anyway. And it's sad to see SLR is now at 20 mbit while the competition is at 75 mbit.
Have you guys read what people that aren't on the forum but leave comments under the video on the site are saying about the newest scene? Legal Cast: Agatha
Just a couple comments in case you don't read them
Cramming an 8K video that's over an hour long into 14GB is pretty bad. This is turning into a tube site.
FUCK THIS BULLSHIT, POST THE HIGH BITRATE VERSION YOU BASTARDS
I paid for this video on top of my subcription and I don't see the high-bitrate available... I feel super screwed, and not the good kind.
Apart from sharpening edges with that AI sharpening SLR uses, there's hardly any details on her face. No pores, skin texture, nothing.
SLR is going backwards these days after having just solved this earlier.
This comparison was done on a PT scene that already have less need for bitrate. Regular are even worse.
It seems like low bitrate is the problem to me
boudaba where did you take a screenshot from?
next time please make a a snapshot from some editing software or video player with timecode in format 00:00:00:00 (hours/minutes/seconds/frames)
consider the difference in left/right eye images and if you take a screenshot from one eye make sure to let me know which eye.
and attach a full screen snapshot along with the cropped zoomed version
took me some time but i think i found this frame
on my side its 01:01:22:30 right eye.
As i understand what we are discussing here is mainly the quality of the max 8k streaming file which is right now available for download, and not the master file.
i will repeat again just in case
Manny_S Streaming and all the possible resolutions. (that one goes after post production and we dont influence this)
Hopefully some conclusions will be made after this sort of comparison and the team will rethink server transcoding approach.
Now the only thing i can prove here is that the quality of the master files our post-production team produces is on the appropriate, acceptable, watchable level. With preserved as much as possible and enhanced details compared to the RAW footage.
Here is the side by side comparison of the RAW vs Master vs Max8K + your screenshot
a full body side by side
And finally even a 2 minute cut of each video, except for the raw (no re-encoding, pure ffmpeg copy stream)
HEVC master
AV1 master
MAX 8K (downloaded from SLR)