MeGUI x264 presets.

[LigH]

Well, as already mentioned: If you spend enough bitrate, you'll get so little differences that you won't notice them. How little they have to be to become "transparent" for you depends on your personal experience. Some are satisfied with an amount of artefacts ("WOAH! Top quality!!1!"), another viewer would get annoyed about ("Eye cancer")... You will possibly have to do your own tests to decide. x264, fortunately, has a very convenient feature to discover your personal annoyance threshold: the CRF value, which describes the acceptable amount of difference between input and output video. The encoder will use as much bitrate as necessary to ensure a degree of similarity.

Create a series of copies with CRF values between about 18 and 24 (fractional numbers are allowed, but integers may be sufficient for the test) of a few different short high-quality videos (preferably not web trailers, they will already contain compression artefacts, so getting good material may be the most complicated part about it; downloading and processing the PNG image sets of the Blender movies is possible, but quite complex and time consuming). Many average viewers will probably be satisfied with the quality of CRF values around 21-22. CRF 15 may already be taken as "archival grade".

But the smaller the CRF is, the more bitrate will be spent, the bigger the file gets. Possibly even bigger than the original, if that was already compressed. And already compressed original videos will probably already contain compression artefacts (usually blocking and edge ringing). And encoding such artefacts even further requires even more bitrate because they are unnatural details.

If you insist in a specific target bitrate and output file size, using 2-pass encoding, x264 will calculate the required CRF value after the 1st-pass analysis, and apply it during the 2nd-pass encoding.

Apart from the bitrate (target average bitrate for 2-pass, or resulting bitrate via CRF in 1-pass), the other encoder options do not primarily increase the amount of kept quality (only indirectly in a 2-pass encoding, via the more efficient compression). The (speed) "Preset" controls the efforts to find similarities to use to increase efficiency. The (content) "Tuning" mainly controls features to make quality loss less obvious. And the "Target Playback Device" option limits the efficiency to maintain compatibility with decoders which have limited features, compared to an all-purpose PC with GHz CPU and GB RAM to run a more or less complete decoder software.

Use the trinity of (speed) "Preset", (content) "Tuning", and "Target Playback Device" compatibility. x264 has a very elaborately tuned and tested set of options which will give you nearly optimal results for most cases. A slower preset than "Slower" is probably not necessary, you won't get much more efficient compression despite wasting a lot more time. Find your personal CRF threshold. Select the hardware compatibility matching your player. And from here, save your personal "Encoder settings / presets" with a few probable tunings. If you insist in a maximum file size, switch to 2-pass encoding. Done.

Change the advanced options only if you know their meaning at least as good as the x264 developers.

[Zathor]

Originally Posted by tebasuna51

Warning added. Please say me if is correct/enough.

Thank you very much!

[300watt]

Alright thanks for the info. I tried using the unrestricted-insane preset, going all the way down to CRF 13 where the result ended up bigger than the source and still some quality was lost (like the fine texture fidelity of surfaces, h264 just smudges it out). I guess I'm better of just using the original wmv2, remuxing it into a new container. Some of the files have wrong aspect ratios and sound desync, but that should all be fixable through the container format.

I also compared the "Unrestricted-Insane" and "slower" presets at the same CRF 15, and it seems like insane took longer and produced a better quality.

Is content-tuning worth experimenting with (for regular live-action movies) or what is it about??

[LigH]

Tunings can help in certain situations, like preserving more details (grain) or, the opposite, smoothing low-detail parts more (animation), by tweaking the in-loop deblock filter, among other options.

Presets with names like "insane" or "placebo" got this name for a certain reason. If you have to use these to achieve "satisfying" results, you did something generally wrong.

[tonyymmao]

i just have 1 question, i can see that u can set the bit rate in the encoder settings, so why can u set the bit rate again after u press auto encode

[Betsy25]

Originally Posted by tonyymmao

i just have 1 question, i can see that u can set the bit rate in the encoder settings, so why can u set the bit rate again after u press auto encode

You have to press "Auto Encode" *after* you have your encoding settings set.
Auto Encode means something like "All is ready, let's do it !"

[LigH]

[Shevek]

Originally Posted by LigH

I wish this board had a Kudos button - you'd get 10 points from me for that

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by tonyymmao

i just have 1 question, i can see that u can set the bit rate in the encoder settings, so why can u set the bit rate again after u press auto encode

So you don't have to set up multiple encoder presets with different bitrates?

I never encode using set bitrates or file sizes but MeGUI has two queue buttons which let you add individual video-only or audio-only encoding jobs to the job queue. In the former case I imagine it'd use the bitrate you specified when setting up the encoder. When using the auto encode button, you're usually encoding video and audio (or adding existing audio to your video encode) so the auto encode method lets you specify a new bitrate or final file size for each auto encode job.

[Dal]

Ok, after coming back here to read, I finally understand why there hasn't been any updates to the presets for a long time
But I would claim the old presets still works pretty good, though.

But all I have seen in here lately is talk about the x264 codecs and presets...

What about the Xvid presets? Are they outdated too?
I still use the Xvid: 2pass HQ (No Qpel) on a daily basis, and things seems to work fine to me.

I think presets for different encoders is a great thing, because it allows the not so technically strong among you (including me) to do excellent work without having to understand the ocean of options in there.

Thanks.

[kalehrl]

What about the Xvid presets? Are they outdated too?

Personally, I don't use Xvid presets because I created mine which better suit my understanding of Xvid options.
This is for 2-pass:

program -i "input" -pass2 ".stats" -bitrate 842 -turbo -max_key_interval 250 -nopacked -lumimasking -bvhq -o "output"

Bitrate of course varies from encode to encode.
This is for CQ:

program -i "input" -single -cq 3.3 -max_key_interval 250 -nopacked -lumimasking -bvhq -o "output"

[Dal]

Originally Posted by kalehrl

Personally, I don't use Xvid presets because I created mine which better suit my understanding of Xvid options.
This is for 2-pass:

program -i "input" -pass2 ".stats" -bitrate 842 -turbo -max_key_interval 250 -nopacked -lumimasking -bvhq -o "output"

Bitrate of course varies from encode to encode.
This is for CQ:

program -i "input" -single -cq 3.3 -max_key_interval 250 -nopacked -lumimasking -bvhq -o "output"

Thank you, I will try this.

But about the x264 settings:
Should I still have two different settings? One for SD (AVC Level 3.1) and one for HD (AVC Level 4.1)
If I just choose playback device = DXVA, MeGUI chooses (and encodes in) 4.1 automatically, no matter what the source material is.

[kalehrl]

No need for that because x264 takes care of that automatically if you use built in preset.
I just choose 'slow' and 'targeting quality' or 'targeting size' and HD encodes are always 4.1 and SD 3.1.
I don't choose playback device = DXVA so don't know about that.

[hello_hello]

kalehrl,
My understanding is a given level might impose different restrictions according to the resolution. Might I inquire as to the reason for using 3.1 for SD and 4.1 for HD? I'm just curious.

Originally Posted by Dal

But about the x264 settings:
Should I still have two different settings? One for SD (AVC Level 3.1) and one for HD (AVC Level 4.1)
If I just choose playback device = DXVA, MeGUI chooses (and encodes in) 4.1 automatically, no matter what the source material is.

DXVA just changes the level to 4.1. That's it.
Are you aiming for playback using a particular device? Most portable players will specify the level they support, but these days High Profile, Level 4.1 is pretty standard. I encode everything that way regardless of the resolution. I've not had problems playing my encodes using my TV's built in media player, either of the Bluray players in this house, using the PCs video card to decode.... even my Android phone plays High Profile, level 4.1, 1080p without a problem. As should the iphone 4s (I've not used one).

If you're using a (possibly) older device for playback which only supports a lower AVC level then change it accordingly, or use the Target Playback Device option, but you'd still probably use the same level regardless of resolution. I'm not sure I understand the logic behind changing it for SD or HD.

[kalehrl]

Might I inquire as to the reason for using 3.1 for SD and 4.1 for HD?

I'm not setting the levels manually.
x264 does it for me according to the resolution.
So far, all my SD encodes were 3.1 and HD 4.1.

[BlockABoots]

Can anyone tell me the command line for the 'HD-DVD' and 'HD-DVD Fast' so that it works with the newer releases of x264?? As that preset gives really good quality and fast encoding times for Youtube 1080p uploads. Im not sure what needs to be changed from the old command line...

HD-DVD
program --level 4.1 --pass 2 --bitrate 8000 --stats ".stats" --deblock -1:-1 --keyint 14 --min-keyint 2 --bframes 2 --b-adapt 2 --qpmin 10 --qpmax 51 --ipratio 1.1 --pbratio 1.1 --vbv-bufsize 14475 --vbv-maxrate 24000 --qcomp 0.5 --me umh --direct auto --subme 6 --trellis 2 --nal-hrd vbr --mvrange 511 --output "output" "input"

HD-DVD Fast
program --level 4.1 --pass 2 --bitrate 8000 --stats ".stats" --deblock -1:-1 --keyint 14 --min-keyint 2 --bframes 2 --ref 2 --qpmin 10 --qpmax 51 --ipratio 1.1 --pbratio 1.1 --vbv-bufsize 14475 --vbv-maxrate 24000 --qcomp 0.5 --merange 12 --direct auto --subme 4 --trellis 0 --nal-hrd vbr --mvrange 511 --output "output" "input"

Also is there a Youtube preset that gives the best video quality and fast encoding times for 720p and 1080p uploads??, i think the above HD-DVD presets are really good for youtube

[StainlessS]

@BlockABoots

Use of the word 'best', invites bottom smacking on D9.

[Atak_Snajpera]

some people forget that youtube ALWAYS reencode your video files so it does not matter what settings you use. just use default settings with low crf value (16 or lower)

[BlockABoots]

Originally Posted by Atak_Snajpera

some people forget that youtube ALWAYS reencode your video files so it does not matter what settings you use. just use default settings with low crf value (16 or lower)

Yeah i understand that but i though the better you can get the quality before uploading to YT the better the TY vid would look?

Hang on, i thought the higher the CRF value the lower the quality???

[Atak_Snajpera]

what does 'lower value' mean in english then?