[MEncoder-users] High quality encoding of anime and broken mencoder options

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 12:37:29PM -0300, Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote:
> > > Hi. I seek high quality encoding of anime. I have tested
> > > many encoding options, always with vcodec=mpeg4 and 2-pass encoding.
> > > I have found that even with vbitrate, the actual bitrate depends on
> > > the options used. Therefore, to keep the comparison fair, I have
> >  > measured encoding quality by Q=PSNR/bitrate, with bitrate in Mbits/s.
> >
> >  I believe that your Q value is not relevant: why PSNR/bitrate rather than
> >  PSNR²/bitrate or PSNR/bitrate², or PSNR/log(bitrate) or... PSNR itself is a
> >  logarithm of mean square error, there is no reason that a simple division
> >  should be the relevant measure.
>  The Shannon-Hartley theorem
>  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon-Hartley_theorem) suggests to me
>  that  information is proportional to the PSNR (I know I am stretching
>  things here, and I may be wrong).

Amount of information and quality are not necessarily very close when
it comes to human perception.

> >  > 1) Do you think the above settings are wise? Any suggestions?
> >
> >  Do you insist on using simple MPEG-4? H.264 gives much better results.
>  As far as I know, H.264 would take too much time to encode. Also, I
>  don't like patent-encumbered codecs. I assume that MPEG-4 part 2
>  patents will run out before those of H-264, so it is "less evil". Too
>  bad mencoder does not support Theora. ffmpeg2theora is a bit raw to my
>  perfectionist needs. In any way, MPEG-4 part 2 is more compatible with
>  players.

There's no reason to believe that Theora is any less patent-encumbered
than any other codec, except Xiph/On2 propaganda. Most of the
algorithms it uses are identical to other codecs with plenty of patent
claims against them.

Considering 'patent-encumbered' formats as evil is very wrong anyway,
IMHO. It's something like saying you want to avoid [insert random
ethnic/religious/national/etc. group here] because [insert same] are
oppressed. It's the oppressor, not the oppressed, whom you should
boycott. As long as you're using free software like MPlayer, FFmpeg,
x264, Xvid, etc. for your video encoding and decoding needs, you're
not funding the patent trolls, only asserting your rights to make use
of human knowledge.

Rich