[MEncoder-users] Terrible results with x264

[Joseph Miller]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Jason Cumiskey
<jason.cumiskey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have just started using x264 to encode my dvds.  I am going for
> quality, not speed.  I am basing my -x264encopts off of the
> recommendations from
> http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-x264.html
>
> Here are the commands I issue (I am using 2 pass encode):
> mencoder -dvd-device /dev/dvd1 dvd://1 -alang eng -aid 128 -oac mp3lame
> -lameopts cbr:br=128:vol=7 -vf
> pullup,softskip,crop=704:480:10:0,hqdn3d=2:1:2,harddup -ovc x264
> -x264encopts
> pass=1:bitrate=1400:subq=1:partitions=all:8x8dct:me=umh:frameref=1:bframes=3:b_pyramid=normal:weight_b:threads=auto -o movie.h264
>
> # Pass 2
> mencoder -dvd-device /dev/dvd1 dvd://1 -alang eng -aid 128 -oac mp3lame
> -lameopts cbr:br=128:vol=7 -vf
> pullup,softskip,crop=704:480:10:0,hqdn3d=2:1:2,harddup -ovc x264
> -x264encopts
> pass=2:bitrate=1400:subq=6:partitions=all:8x8dct:me=umh:frameref=6:bframes=3:b_pyramid=normal:weight_b:threads=auto -o movie.h264
>
>
> On pass 2, I change subq to 6 and frameref to 6 (as recommended in the
> docs link above to speed up 1st pass and have higher quality for 2nd
> pass).Can anyone see anything obviously wrong in my command chain?  The
> resulting video is heavily pixelated and mplayer shows a bitrate of
> 0kbps.
>

My experience has been that the bitrate option either doesn't work
very well, or I don't know how to use it.  Use qp=20 or so and you'll
get good quality.  I have just started using the presets as well and
preset=placebo gives very nice results.  Something like
qp=20:preset=placebo:pass=1 then switching to pass=3 for 2nd encoding
gives nice results and decent filesize.  I'm assuming that
preset=[veryslow|slower|slow] would probably also give good results.

-Joseph