[MEncoder-users] 3-pass encoding with x264

[Olivier Rolland]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Grozdan <neutrino8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Olivier Rolland
> <billl at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Grozdan <neutrino8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:33 PM, Olivier Rolland
>>> <billl at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> In 3-pass encoding, should I use
>>>> pass=1 for the 1st pass, pass=3 for the 2nd pass and pass=3 for the 3rd pass
>>>> or
>>>> pass=1 for the 1st pass, pass=3 for the 2nd pass and pass=2 for the 3rd pass ?
>>>>
>>>> The man page of mplayer says that I should use the former but mewiki
>>>> (http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings#pass) says that I
>>>> should use the later.
>>>
>>> pass=1 for 1st pass
>>> pass=3 for any subsequent pass if you're doing 3 or more passes
>>
>> So mewiki is wrong ? Or does mplayer modify the pass number before
>> sending it to the codec ?
>
> I don't know much about mewiki, but it's always been like that in
> mencoder. And not just for x264, but also for encoding with lavc
> codecs (eg, mpeg4, etc)

I've just checked the --help of x264 and it says the same as mewiki:

 -p, --pass <1|2|3>          Enable multipass ratecontrol
                                  - 1: First pass, creates stats file
                                  - 2: Last pass, does not overwrite stats file
                                  - 3: Nth pass, overwrites stats file

I then checked mplayer's code and saw that the pass number is passed
as is. I then suspect that the man page of mplayer is wrong and that
what is true for lavc is not true for x264.