[MEncoder-users] Compression too great, bitrate too low on detelecined deinterlaced mpeg2video

[Laine Lee]

I'm converting 720p 24 fps sources to mpeg2video with the following command.
100 minutes or more of video with highly variable motion content is being
compressed too greatly but mencoder tells me I don't need the bitrate I'm
asking for. Output pictures are not pixilated, but they are softened too
much. The bitrate values come straight from documentation, but are
apparently being ignored. How do I get the output closer in size and bitrate
to the input? I don't care about how long the encoding process takes, and I
don't care much about limiting output file size. I don't care about the
deinterlacing, but I went through an extreme amount of experimentation to
find a filter chain that would perform the necessary pullup correctly, so
I'm not likely to change much of that. I'm pouring pretty much everything
into the lavcopts I can find, so some of it is probably not needed. Please
advise about that, too. Thanks!

mencoder -oac copy -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf
framestep=2,filmdint=fast=0,softskip,harddup,scale=720:480,hqdn3d=2:1:2
-noskip -lavcopts 
vcodec=mpeg2video:vb_strategy=1:brd_scale=2:trell:mbd=2:precmp=2:subcmp=2:cm
p=2:dia=-10:predia=-10:cbp:mv0:vqmin=1:lmin=1:dc=10:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_ma
xrate=9800:vbitrate=8000:keyint=15:aspect=16/9:vstrict=0:vpass=1:turbo -ofps
24000/1001 -o /dev/null '/infile.mpg' && mencoder -oac copy -ovc lavc -of
mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf
framestep=2,filmdint=fast=0,softskip,harddup,scale=720:480,hqdn3d=2:1:2
-noskip -lavcopts 
vcodec=mpeg2video:trell:mbd=2:precmp=2:subcmp=2:cmp=2:dia=-10:predia=-10:cbp
:mv0:vqmin=1:lmin=1:dc=10:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=8000:k
eyint=15:aspect=16/9:vstrict=0:vpass=2 -ofps 24000/1001 -o 'outfile.mpg'
'infile.mpg'

-- 
Laine Lee