[MEncoder-users] Near-lossless MPEG-2 (Was: High bitrate mpeg2 encoding problem)

[Moritz Barsnick]

Hi,

let me add a question that's been at the back of my mind for quite some
time.

Simon is trying to do high-bitrate encoding:

On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 10:25:32 +0200, Simon Oualid wrote:
> What command line you recommand to encode high constant bitrate mpeg2
> (15Mbps, 30Mbps).

I am trying to convert/capture (TV) to MPEG-2 as input for another
program. Since that program doesn't understand any lossless input
formats, but tends to transcode, I would like to provide it with as
lossless as possible input.

First attempt - higher bitrate:

The "standard" MPEG-2 main profile defines 15 Mb/sec as its maximum.
Higher rates are available for higher resolutions though.

a) Does mencoder care? Can I just let it produce >15 Mb/sec files,
   regardless of the resolution?
b) Will other programs care? Probably depends on the program whether it
  tolerates this, I guess.

Are there any encoding (lavc) options recommended for least-lossy
MPEG-2 compression, or do I just need to let mencoder do its best job
(with whatever tweaks) within the given rate? Bitrate is not really an
issue, as hinted above, but it should be possible in realtime (as it's
TV capture) on a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4. Though encoding to MPEG-2 has never
really max'd out my CPU.

Thanks,
Moritz