On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Mark Pilgrim wrote:
Draft 2 attached. Incorporated all of Jeff's feedback -- corrected factual inaccuracies, added turbo, removed default options, rephrased text on scaling and multithreading, etc. Feel free to critique
+ The next step is truly heartbreaking. + <application>QuickTime</application> 7 does not support MPEG-4 videos + with a display aspect ratio different from the sample aspect ratio, + so you will need to scale the video to square pixels. This wastes a + lot of disk space, but it simply can not be avoided if you want your + video to be playable by <application>QuickTime</application>.
"...does not support MPEG-4 videos with a sample aspect ratio other than 1." Your statement meant instead that the whole video must be square.
+ Of course you want a full-resolution video, so you will not be scaling + vertically. To scale horizontally, you first need to know what aspect + ratio the source DVD uses. <application>MPlayer</application> can tell + you this:
You don't actually need to know that. "-vf scale=-10:-1" will pick the right width for the current height, rounded to a multiple of 16 for optimal compression.
+ The second pass is the same, except that you specify + <option>pass=2</option> and remove the <option>turbo</option> option.
You don't have to remove turbo, it automatically disables itself on the 2nd pass.
+ I have a dual-processor machine, so I usually add + <option>threads=2</option>. This can result in slightly larger files, + but it increases encoding speed by 20-30%. Real multithreaded support + requires that <systemitem>libx264</systemitem> be compiled with + <option>--enable-pthreads</option>.
"Real multithreaded support" as opposed to what, fake multithread? Imo, --enable-pthreads doesn't need to be mentioned anymore, since x264 has had autodetection for such libraries for a long time. Yes, it's possible to compile x264 without multithread support, but only by adding --disable-pthreads or by using some os other than linux, windows, and bsd. --Loren Merritt