[MEncoder-users] two-pass encoding for DVDs

[James Hastings-Trew]

rastersoft wrote:
> Yes, you are right. As a software developer I know that there are always
> bugs. But I was trying to ask something a bit different. I'll try again:
>
> In that message, Trent Piepho says that, some years ago, there was a bug
> that made Mencoder to not honour the VRC_MAXRATE parameter under some
> circumstances, and that it was fixed in a patch at 2006-10-05. But it
> says too that the patch seems to not work when using two-pass encoding,
> only when using one-pass, so using two-passes can result in very big
> spikes in the video bitrate. So my question is (if someone knows it, of
> course): does that bug still exists in Mencoder 1.0rc2 when using
> two-pass encoding? I'm not asking "in general", but for that specific
> (and known) bug, and for the current stable version.
>
> If that bug exists and hasn't been fixed, then it's not a good idea to
> use two-pass encoding to create video DVDs, so I shouldn't add two-pass
> encoding to my Mencoder front-end.
>
> Thanks.

Set your target bitrate to something less than the DVD spec maximum. I 
noticed in earlier messages that you were asking for a bitrate of 9800 
or something like that. Try setting it to 8000. Your spikes will then be 
under the maximum allowed by the DVD spec. Just a suggestion. In other 
DVD encoding software I've used (TMPGEnc), the maximum selectable value 
was 8000, and the encodes were always very high quality.