[MEncoder-users] "High Quality" H.264 at low bit rates ;)

[Gunter Ohrner]

Hi!

I'm tyring to recode some MPEG2 streams to H.264 using mencoder and x264enc,
my aim is to reduce the size significantly without a too severe quality
loss. (Of course I'm aware that I'll lose quality in a lossy-to-lossy
recoding in any case.)

I'm using a post 1.0.rc2 mencoder (binary build of an svn snapshot from
20071207).

What bitrate reduction factor should I be able to achieve?

I'm asking as I read
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-x264.html, the mencoder man
page and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264 .

For my tests, I'm using bitrate-based three-pass encoding with variing
encoding parameters.

My source material is an 9.8 MBit MPEG2 stream. If I encode to 4 MBit H.264,
there are still significant visual artifacts and a significant loss of
detail in comparison to the source material.

As I read that H.264 aims for at least twice the coding efficiency of MPEG2
or more, I wonder if this is correct and to be expected, or what encoding
parameters have proven themselves to optimize the perceived visual quality?

There's probably no way to aim for 2 mbit H.264 video without experiencing
severy quality losses, right?

Greetings,

  Gunter