[MEncoder-users] Re: Question: 2-Pass Encoding No Bitrate Specification

[Jon Drukman]

Rich Felker wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 06:41:57PM +0300, andreil1 at starlett.lv wrote:
>> The question is - how to get rid of explicit bitrate specification (2- 
>> pass encoding seem to require)? I would like to use this script for  
>> batch converting, and there are files with both high and low bitrate.  
>> Is there something like "best guess by mencoder itself"?
> 
> 2pass is pointless unless you're trying to meet a target bitrate. If
> you want constant quality use vqscale=2 or 3 but it will waste a good
> deal of space on scenes that don't need it IMO.. You might be able to
> overcome this with clever use of the adaptive quantization options..

so there's no equivalent to mp3 vbr encoding where it uses as little as 
needed for each frame but can burst up to the maximum if necessary?

that would be real handy for me - i am transcoding HD movies from 1080i 
to 720p, and i don't really care if the resulting file is the same size 
as the original.  (although it shouldn't need to be, given that mpeg4 
should be more efficient than mpeg2, and the resolution is less).

use as much as needed to make it look good but obviously if there's no 
need, use as little as possible.