kamiwa on h.264

This topic is a bit complex. Not sure where to start. In the following you can find a list of tools for H264 encoding. Pick one or more of them, make some experiences with them and keep asking. I'll be around to answer your questions.

Easy going

The easiest tool for a beginner (due to the fact, that its GUI doesn't require you to fiddle with all the existing switches that exist for H264) is most likely Nero Recode. (Costs money, but you can grab a 30 day trial from the NERO website.)

Unfortunately its ease of use is at the same time its biggest drawback, as the absence of the more advanced settings will prevent you from tweaking the codec to its best. The underlying H264 codec from Ateme does offer the full range of H264 settings. Only, you can't reach them through the Nero GUI. Not suprising, as the full featured product which you can obtain from Ateme will cost you about a 1,000 bucks.

More advanced tools

If you're mainly backing up DVDs I would recommend Handbrake. It offers much more settings to play with. It's based upon X264 and ffmpeg (if I'm not mistaken). But its current version is limited to DVD VOB files as input.

Then there is AviDemux. Offers video editing, filtering and conversion to allmost any video or audio codec you can think off. Its GUI is something I never could get used to.

Nerd tools

You're encoding in VirtualDub(Mod) aren't you? If you want to stick to it, use DeathTheSheep's United AVC VfW. Enables you to use X264 from VD(M). If you decide on this, don't admit it. The gurus on doom9 will be likely to kill you, as putting AVC content into an AVI container is not regared to be a good idea in general. MP4Box and MKVMerge can help you though to change that after the encode.

MeGUI is - due to the fact that it is the most complete - probably the best tool for X264 encoding. It definetly is my tool of choice, when using a GUI.

And then there is AutoMKV. Sometimes called the alternative to AutoGK (Gordian Knot).

Purist tools

For purists like me there are the commandline tools ffmpeg.exe and x264.exe. ffmpeg failed me so far. Keeps crashing. But I got very good results using X264.

You need an AviSynth script as input. Make sure that the output it creates is YV12. If not add the ConvertToYV12 conmmand to the script.

Want to try it? Here's a sample to start with:

x264 --crf 21 --ref 3 --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --weightb --direct auto --filter -2,-1 --subme 6 --trellis 1 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --vbv-maxrate 25000 --me umh --merange 12 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "MyOutput.mkv" "MyInput.avs"

General things about H264

- Encoding to H264 is slow. And if I say slow, I mean sloooooooooooooooooow.

- The compression is superior to ASP. While recommended bit-per-pixel values for ASP (DivX) lie somewhere between 0.16 and 0.22, you should be able to achieve the same (some say better) quality using something between 0.10 and 0.16. This is a rule of thumb. I've seen videos that looked great at 0.08 bpps and others that needed 0.20. Experiment!

- H264 puts many "hints" (e.g. for deblocking) into the encoded stream. So it is important that you use a decent decoder when watching. My personal opinion is that CoreAVC is best. But that is just me. A free alternative would be ffdshow. Other decoders come from MainConcept or Cyberlink, only to name a few.

- Quantizers. Just like ASP, H264 supports one pass constant quality encodes (-crf parameter). A quantizer of 18 is regarded to being almost lossless and equivalent to a quantizer of 2 in ASP. I posted a formula somewhere here on the forum to compare ASP to AVC quantizers. Currently can't remember anymore.

- H264 can make intensive use of b-frames which may refer to other b-frames. This requires intensive seeking in the video stream and is the reason why AVC shouldn't be caged into AVI container. Use MKV or MP4 instead.

- Biggest drawback is that there are currently only a very few stand alone players that support AVC. It'll be even less if you take into consideration that the MKV container which offers best support for it, isn't taken into consideration by the hardware manufacturers at all. But I am convinced that we'll live to see that change.

Enough for now. (Can't type at the same speed as PuzZleR can.)