The best quality H.264 encoding software I have used
 

http://h264encoder.com/

This program is very simple GUI-wise, but I haven't been able to see much of any loss of necessary detail (in ANY case). In some cases, my captures look better after encoding without post-processing.

Please check this out, I really can't say enough about this tiny free program. No frivolous settings and it looks better than any Handbrake encode I've ever done.

It's a frontend for ffmpeg, according to the About page.

It makes my vhs caps 400mb without a noticable quality loss - the colorspace change fixes a lot of grain and other noise

It's not as good as Avidemux, in terms of options. In fact, it doesn't even have options. :mad4:

(But I can't imagine it being less stable. That's Avidemux's weakness.)

The site's copyright date is 2009-2011, which may mean that it hasn't been updated in 3 years. For most softawre, I'd say "no big deal". But open-source H.264 encoding has been refined several times since in the past few years.

I've attached it to this post. I hate it when software disappears from the Internet. (And yes, it happens frequently.)

It's still very, very weak compared to MainConcept, or the MainConcept SDK encoding in Adobe Premiere.

At least the guide would be easy to write! "Open file, name new file, press go button. Done!" :laugh:

My prefernce comes from using with my vhs captures. Maybe its me, but that program makes everything look good.

VHS captures need pre-processing to truly look good.

I wouldn't mind having
(1) an after-encoded file to look at
(2) a pre-encoded clip that I could encode myself, and then you could compare

I used this software to encode a DV-AVI (NTSC) file to H2.64. It was shot using a MiniDV camcorder. The video itself was very low in light. First I took the original DV AVI file, did some filtering in VDub and output it using Matrix Free DV Codec. Then fed the Matrox DV through this Free H2.64 encoder. The output H.264 file was full of vertical lines and video was behind the vertical lines. Something wrong.

Also, this software doesn't offer PAL output of SD files???

Not sure if DV is supported, I've processed lossless AVI through it but PAL vs. NTSC is not an issue because it autodetects source size.

I will be uploading a piece of RAW capture and a sample output with the program later this week.

...and thus uses x264 to encode video.

sounds like a simple solution. is there an advantage of using handbrake over this simple software?