transcode or mencoder options - discussion on what yields good results

[mousemurder]

i am wondering if anyone experiments with the hundreds of options available to transcode and mencoder and can comment on the benefits of certain options.

for the sake of order in this thread, how about a dvd to xvid or if you prefer dvd to x264.

here's mine:


transcode -a 2 -y xvid,xvid -F mpeg4 -M 2 -N 0x55 \
-s 3 -w 1000,25,100 -b 64 -Z 720x480 \
-i /dev/dvd -T 1,-1 -o moo-vee.avi

-or-

mencoder -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts bitrate=1000 \
-af volume=20 -lameopts vbr=3:br=96 \
dvd://1 -aid 128 -o moo-vee.avi

mencoder's 2-pass encode tends to generate very poor quality backups for me.

thoughts ?

[Major_Kong]

It all depends on the default settings each one uses, they could be different. If you want to make a real test, you have to make sure they use the same settings for the xvid encode.


PS:Lame is the recommended encoder for mp3, so i wouldn't use the built'in audio encoders...

[blaz]

Check out the mencoder options froogy1 uses in his batch scripts h264enc, divxenc, etc.
He seems to have done a lot of research on it (He has threads for each script running on this board).
So far, for my own scripts, his options have worked well.

[mousemurder]

^ the relevant search:
http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?searchid=3730968

i'll give them a read...

[fbgd]

^ the relevant search:
http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?searchid=3730968

i'll give them a read...

The h264enc (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=134652) thread is about 5 down from this thread. The divxenc (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=136108) thread was only slightly harder to find as I had to actually type in "divxenc" into the search....

[Rasi]

wow how did you find out what to type in that strange Search box? i never seem to understand how it works :P

[mousemurder]

^ i dont understand the sarcasm ?

[WalterK]

only used mencoder and ffmpeg myself and frankly i can't tell the difference between a file encoded using ffmpeg or mencoder using xvid , these days i use divxenc because it takes the hassle of doing the syntax with the option that allows you to create a batch file, which is something i like.