Any 2-pass MPEG-2 encoders for Linux besides libavcodec?

[nonoitall]

FFmpeg and mencoder just haven't been willing to cooperate with me on the encode I'm working on. HC encoder seems to work pretty well, but it's not nearly as tweakable as libavcodec-based encoders, plus I'd prefer something that runs natively on Linux. Any suggestions?

[dashcloud]

If it's not super-urgent, I'd highly recommend filing a bug with FFmpeg- they're pretty good about getting back to people quickly on bugs. (But you will need to compile your own SVN version unless you have one that is quite recent- within a few hundred revisions of the current HEAD).

While there are other mpeg2 decoder choices, the only thing that comes to mind is using mencoder or mplayer with a non-libav mpeg2 codec.

[nonoitall]

I gave it a go and we'll see what happens. :) If anyone has any suggestions in the meantime, I'm still all ears.

[rernst]

I gave it a go and we'll see what happens. :) If anyone has any suggestions in the meantime, I'm still all ears.

I use mencoder all the time and have zero problems. I have seen many H.264 encoders but none as good as this. Granted FFMpeg might be.

It runs x264 under the covers but does a lot of nice pro- and post-processing.

The de-interlacing is supreme. You can take some footage which uses 29.97 interlaced and 29.97 pulled up from 23.976 and it will know and not somehow garble the initially progressive footage. It will do it's own pulldown and pullup so it's 29.97 but accurate. Nothing worse than a de-interlacer that smears the fields together without real knowledge of the source material.

[nm]

Agreed, but nonoitall was asking for an MPEG-2 encoder, not H.264 or a filtering frontend.

I'd be interested to hear what the problem is with libavcodec.

[WalterK]

The only complaint i have heard about libavc for Mpeg2 output is that while its good it is not CCE , since i believe that libavc mpeg2 only does a max of two passes and not the several CCE does.
Maybe by now thats change, i don't usually do more than one pass myself for outputing to mpeg2, i don't see the difference in quality between a 1 and 2 pass encode , i am sure its there but my eyes don't see it.

[dashcloud]

The only complaint i have heard about libavc for Mpeg2 output is that while its good it is not CCE , since i believe that libavc mpeg2 only does a max of two passes and not the several CCE does.
Maybe by now thats change, i don't usually do more than one pass myself for outputing to mpeg2, i don't see the difference in quality between a 1 and 2 pass encode , i am sure its there but my eyes don't see it.

If you're willing to help add the feature, you'll get plenty of support from the mailing list; if not, you may want to file a wish on the tracking system.
If you go this path, be sure to write a nice description of what you want, why it's good, and where to see an example of it (possibly a comparison between libav mpeg-2 and something that does more than 2 passes- just don't put the samples on rapidshare or something similar).

[Irakli]

MPEG 2 encoding with more than 2 passes is basically useless. There are many other things that are worth improving/adding in libavcodec MPEG 2.

[shevegen]

nonoitall can you report about your progress here too please,
so that people like me can see if ffmpeg team is really active or not :D

[dashcloud]

nonoitall can you report about your progress here too please,
so that people like me can see if ffmpeg team is really active or not :D

I'm not a member of the team, but I can assure you they are VERY active. If you measure activity by releases, you'll see nothing because everything is happening in SVN.
Depending on the time you have available, either check the website changelog, or one of the mailing lists, -devel, or -cvslog.

[unixfs]

- libavcodec and mencoder _can_ encode in more than 2 passes,
(vpass=N in the -lavcopts block) but I've never seen the slighest
improvement with more than 2 passes
- avidemux can encode to mpeg2 using a strange combination
of mpeg2dec's encoder and xvid multi-pass rate-controller,
but I have to say that in all my tests I've only seen much
worse results than mencoder's output (mpeg2enc seems to
produce too much noise for my tastes)