Trying now the same movie, the same script but 1-pass. Let's see what comes out.

Phil, did you test the commandline I did send to you via PN a while ago for testing? Its very simple and fast (no Trellis etc.).

Using that one I do get much less Quantisation peaks and very well plain/dark surfaces.

Less Quantisation then CCE and even mooore less quantisation then TmpgEnc .... MCE not mention about it!

Compared to QuEnc well ... Im not happy with QuEnc ... some days ago I did a high avg bitrate test (3500 avg) and mencoder via commandline resulted better .... but that should be a parameter thing which could be easely included in QuEnc by Nic.

But Be aware that there are some mencoder/windows builds that do output more worse files than other builds! Do look at the doom9 thread.

Shure, menocder does output some pts or so errors, but after a simple "restream" Timestamps correcting, EVERYTHING works well in my standalone, even if I do encode interlaced material as progressive! After using restream and the header patch to TFF and "interlaced" ... no probs!

Didn't you said some lines above taht this was a bad option ?

Edit:

@INC
No I didn't. In fact I didn't had any time for. I'm testing MCE because I gave my words to Procoder but this is again on my sleeping time

Are there any difference in quality between 1 pass & 2 pass encodings? I did a small sample right now and thought I saw a little less blocks in the 2 pass encoding but I'm not quite sure . Anyone else that have been doing comparisons between 1 pass & 2 pass encoding

EDIT
Correction: I must be really tired and my eyes are playing trick on me. I DON'T see a quality difference between the two methods... :banghead:

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AudioSlave

Yes, but after several tests, I got the same behaviour with "Closed" too.
Maybe Inc's comment about processing the .m2v with restream, is the ticket to the correction

-kwag

You're not tired
There is NO difference

-kwag

Is ReStream a stand alone program or is it integrated in any program package? Anyways, download locations

(Off-topic
@kwag
Don't you use Skype anymore? I never see you online )


EDIT: I found ReStream here:
http://www.sysh.net/restream.html

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AudioSlave

Do I need to change any setting within ReStream when correcting the video file or do I just open the file and press write?

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AudioSlave

Alright, tested QuEnc 0.45 once again, this time, same settings but 1-pass... FileSize came about 7% lower than wanted.
I can almost live with that but:

I get bitrate peaks of 9800 kb/sec which is way too much for my taste. The strange thing about this is: it only happens at the beginning after ~1 minute of play-time, after that the Q-Curve stabilizes and also the bitrate curve. Before that, it's like a rollercoaster...

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j3llyG0053

This is a common problem with ffvfw and this had made me tell some days ago: "and you call THAT a good encoder ?".
Because you're right Jelly, that is a BIG problem.

But as Marcellus explained above, this is probably due to 1-pass mode. During second pass the logic wants that the encoder "smoothes" The Q curve.

I've been away from the computer lately

-kwag

It is not due to 1-pass mode unfortunately. The first minute of the movie looks almost identical in 2-pass mode, although the bitrate peaks are not as high. However the Average bitrate is also lower, so I guess that is the reason...

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j3llyG0053

As I said, the encoder behaviour for that matter varies very much with the settings in ratecontrol tab. I'm sure that there are not such thing as "optimal settings" that work for every encoding at any resolution, PAL/NTSC, (non)interlaced. That is why I think everybody should be able to tweak his encoder untill is satisfied, so having access to as many as possible tweaks is a must for a good encoder. I tweaked my ffvfw untill I was pleased with the results, so that should be the case with QuEnc too (I mean we should be able to tweak it).

Because I do some encodings on a daily basis with same character sources I made up my mind on some settings that work for me every day (352x288, PAL,~730 kbps, Seinfeld series, black border of 16 pixels). My ffvfw ratecontrol settings are (GOP size: 15, 2 B frames):
-Filesize tolerance: 4096 (default 1024)
-Quantizer compression: 1 (default 0.5) -actually 1 means 100%
-One/First pass quantizer blur: 1 (default 0.5)
-Max quantizer difference: 31 (default 3)
-Use countinous function to limit quantizers within q min/ q max: checked

With those settings the begining is no more so problematic and the q line is stable for long segments, the "rollercoaster" thing is almost never seen. The q line stays (for the source I mentioned) between 2.5 and 3.5. The settings worked well even for 120 - 180 mins movies on one CD but I already mentioned in the post above what problem I had with a particular movie.

So, untill I have with QuEnc the same freedom as with ffvfw, it will not be "my encoder".

Yes, that was the issue with my problematic movie too, even with 2-pass the quantization peaks were still so high that the movie was unwatchable at the bitrate targeted for only one CD. I guess the 2-pass encoding algorithm has even more problems in libavcodec than 1 pass, it eats double time and the results are not as expected (not to say disapointing). An ideal 2-nd pass encoding should have the same q value from the first frame to the last, not only a "smoothed" q line.
bye
marcellus

Nic posted here:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...018#post465018

Michael Niedermayer is working on that, let's see where that leads


Bilu

Is it important to use trellis? I noticed it slows down QuEnc a little

@ Kwag

Restream is like a "massage" to the encode afterwards

@ tickey

It does not count what gives more speed, quality is our way, but ..... I NEVER use trellis and with or without trellis in QuEnc ... I do get better outputs via mencoder even no trellis is activated.

But .... as always .. that could be a build issue??? Ok, I got the latest QuEnc, and Mencoder is from Marcellus MencoderGUI site (It was marcellus or not ?)

Of course not!!
Try again, I didn't touch Mencoder encoding, much less building or hosting... I'm just a simple user...

It was Amenophis !!!!

Thanks 4 the tip.