[FFmpeg-user] Worse quality than mencoder

[Moritz Barsnick]

Hi n32,

On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 19:14:00 +0100, n32 at email.cz wrote:
> The output is surprisingly the same:

Are you absolutely sure?

> It's very long, especially from mencoder, so I dropped some insignificant 
> lines (marked as {more times}), which are similar to previous, so hopefully 
> nobody feels flooded; and changed \r to \n to read it easier.

No problem, that's fine.

You're doing two-pass, right? If that is why these logs each contain
two outputs from the encoders, then you're doing something
significantly wrong:

mencoder.txt:x264 [info]: profile Main, level 3.0
mencoder.txt:x264 [info]: profile High, level 4.0
ffmpeg.txt:[libx264 @ 0x63c9c0] profile Main, level 4.0
ffmpeg.txt:[libx264 @ 0x63c9c0] profile High, level 4.0

The libx264 settings from the first pass and second pass differ
significantly from each other - and in a different manner in ffmpeg and
mencoder. Only the second pass settings seem identical, which may be
why you see the same embedded in the file.

AFAIU you need to use identical codec options in both passes, and it
seems you're not doing that. That _may_ be the cause for your
observations.

Moritz