x264 good quality?

[Russia]

Guys, i've been lookig for the answer on this question for a long time. Still couldnt figure it out... :( How to achieve goode quallity with x264? Preset insane+Q18? Thanks in advance... By best possible quality i mean highest compression+transparent video.

[Unearthly]

At first I was going to point to rule 12 for saying 'best', but this actually has an objective answer!

If you are using MeGUI (as it seems), set the method to 'Constant Quantizer' and set the value to '0'.

Best possible quality!

[Dark Shikari]

At first I was going to point to rule 12 for saying 'best', but this actually has an objective answer!

If you are using MeGUI (as it seems), set the method to 'Constant Quantizer' and set the value to '0'.

Best possible quality!He said highest compression while ensuring transparent quality. For this I'd suggest CRF 18 with AQ strength on at least 0.5.

[Unearthly]

He said highest compression while ensuring transparent quality. For this I'd suggest CRF 18 with AQ strength on at least 0.5.

In my defense, it did not say that when I posted.

Anyway, I find CRF18 (Not CQ) to be transparent enough for me. As for x264 settings, how much do you care about speed? Even HQ-Insane has some settings you can increase. You can change B-frames to 16, M.E. algorithm to 'Exhaustive', ME-range to whatever still gives you results. You can also check out this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=130364) for patches that unlock some more 'insane' options that will allow you to squeeze more quality per byte. There are some compiled binaries in that thread too.

I would at least start with increasing b-frames, it should not increase encode time but allows x264 to use b-frames as it pleases. 'Exhaustive' will slow you down a lot, me-range you could test different values to see how much quality increases for each speed decrease you get on your sources

[Sharktooth]

b-frames number do not negatively affect the encoding speed.
ESA was left out on purpouse though... it's over-insane... you could use the reference encoder as well then...

[foxyshadis]

ESA is less insane on quad-core than UMH is on dualcore, now that it's multithreaded, and it scales quite well. Of course me-prepass will be in the HQ series, but not until it gets committed.

[Morte66]

By best possible quality i mean highest compression+transparent video.

Highest compression means turning on options like rate distortion and trellis, which tend to stop h264 retaining the finest data e.g. grain. Retaining ultra-fine data means lowering the deadzone settings (amongst other things), which increases bitrate. You cannot have it all, you have to make choices.

Once we get past basic stuff, nobody can just "tell you" either. It depends on your taste, and your material, and your monitor. You need to understand what you're doing and configure the encoder in ways that suit you. It's a bit like playing guitar -- maybe you can get started by reading a book, but getting good results takes practice and study.

For example, I'm working on a set of "timeshift" settings that will let me collect up a TV series, clean it up in AviSynth (denoise, deblock etc), and store the results until I have the entire series and I can watch it. I'd like to use a lossless encoder but I just don't have the drive space. So all this week I've been digging away at x264, starting from my crf 18 bulk backup settings and trying to get close enough to the huffYUV that I'm happy. And after about 15 hours of testing, I feel like I'm past half way. A friend of mine is doing something similar, but he's come up with different settings. He has a different monitor (CRT to my LCD) and he has different priorities (e.g. he's fussy about banding, I'm fussy about blocking). So we'll probably end up with different encoder settings for the same job.

Thus, you have to understand what you're doing and put some time in to test things. I'd start by looking at Sharktooth's profiles with "HQ Fast" and searching the AVC forum for the word "transparency".