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

[Phil Ehrens]

Grozdan Nikolov (openSUSE Linux) wrote:
> On Friday 22 February 2008 20:18, Gunter Ohrner wrote:
> > 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).
> 
> I get near DVD quality with a bitrate of 1100-1400... H.264 really shows its 
> efficiency at high resolutions and low bitrates. You might also try out 
> http://h264enc.sourceforge.net which has 38 different presets - use either 
> the VHQ or the EHQ preset. If you want to futher improve the quality of your 
> encodes in dark flat areas, then get the adaptive quantization patch for x264 
> and patch & recompile x264

I'm not trying to get all philosophical here on the list or
anything, but there must be some way to make it clear to n00bs
that encoding video is like playing a guitar... It looks easy
when somebody who knows how is doing it, but if you think you're
just gonna pick it up and wail on it right away, you're going
to be disappointed. 

There are some scripts and gui's around that hide the ugly
details, like h264enc, but it requires the input of an
experienced encoder to come up with those presets. And as
Grozdan pointed out, to get the best results out of h264enc
you still need to patch x264... There really is no way to
beat the learning curve.

BTW, for comparison's sake, I get near DVD quality with lavc
mpeg4 at about 1600. And I rarely find that I need to encode
dvd's above around 3000.