HCenc - Lossless Intermediate File - any advantage ?

[Movie_Maker]

What exactly does the LOSSLESS file option do in hcenc ? I realize it creates an 'intermediate lossless file', but does it help anything ? How is it different from the altenative (not-lossless) ?

[Dark Shikari]

If you're doing two-pass encoding, the intermediate file means the filtering on your input AviSynth script only has to be done once, instead of twice. Very useful if your filter is sloooowww.

[Movie_Maker]

yeah I read that in the help/manual too but does it do anything for the video quality ? I guess I am trying to understand where the 'lossless' comes into play.
Does it benefit anything else if your avisynth filters/script is not slow ?

[Sharktooth]

no. the lossless is as a pre-render so the script runs only 1 time instead of once per pass.
if your avs is not slow it's almost useless.

[rcubed]

Movie_Maker
Lossless option. There are some cases where the encode may have to be done with a lossless file in cases when a "source mismatch on the 2nd pass occurs. I frequently got this error when I was doing an encode using Mrestore to process the input file. A search through the forum will find cases where this is discussed.

As other users have pointed out it will not improve quality. Make sure you have plenty of disk space to hold the lossless file if you have to use this option. Except when using Mrestore I do not use a lossless file.

rcubed