[MEncoder-users] improving x264 encoding quality ?

[Pierre Catello]

Hello,

I have endoded a DV footage with lavc and x264, and to my surprise the
lavc version is much better at 1500 kbs/s than x264 at the same
bitrate on situation with many moving details:
- it is a surfing footage with horizontal panning, breaking waves, and
wind chop (many bumps at the surface of the water = many small edges).
The wind chop becomes very blurry both at the foreground and the
backgrouynd, which looks very unnatural.

but lavc kept these zone well detailed.

The settings used were the following (second pass):

for lavc:
vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:vbitrate=2500:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3:predia=3:dia=3:vmax_b_frames=2:vb_strategy=1:precmp=3:cmp=3:subcmp=3:preme=2:qns=2:mpeg_quant:vpass=2

for x264:
subq=6:frameref=15:8x8dct:bframes=3:b_pyramid:weight_b

Naturally, i would expect a higher quality (or at least the same) from
x264 at the same bitrate. How could I improves things (keeping the
details, like lavc) ?
- it is recommended not to "play" with deblocking, do you think that
in my case it would be appropriate to reduce the deblock filter ?
- or are there other options that would improves the preservation of details?


or should I just consider lavc as better than x264 in some cases :-) ?

Pierre