Output profile is baseline, even though I set it at High in the encode commandline

[St Devious]

New to commandline encoding. always used MeGUI do the work for me.

So this is the commandline


x264 --bitrate 6000 --profile high --level 5.1 --preset ultrafast -o D:\Videos\1a.mp4 D:\Videos\1080p25.avs 1920x1080


The output video has profile baseline. what's wrong ?

[kemuri-_9]

--preset ultrafast is your problem
add --8x8dct at the end of that command line that if you want high profile.

[St Devious]

--preset ultrafast is your problem
add --8x8dct at the end of that command line that if you want high profile.

thanks, strange that it didn't decrease the encoding FPS.

do you also know what type of encoding is carried out ? like 1 pass ABR ?

[Dark Shikari]

--bitrate means 1-pass ABR.

--preset ultrafast is an insane preset designed to strip everything down to the basics at all costs, which among other things means baseline.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

The "--profile" option exists to restricts the profile. And "--profile high" (the default) means that there are no restrictions at all.

So if your video comes out as "Baseline", this doesn't mean anything went wrong. It simply indicates that your video doesn't need a higher profile than "Baseline".

x264 will always choose the lowest profile possible that is still is compatible with your settings. That's because it makes no sense to choose a higher profile, if a lower one would be sufficient.

However with "--profile" you can enforce an even lower profile. Then x264 will restrict all your settings to comply with the specified profile.


Adding "--8x8dct" will enforce High profile, because "8x8 vs. 4x4 Transform Adaptivity" is a High profile feature. But it makes absolutely no sense to add that just to trigger "High" profile!

It makes sense to add that, because "--8x8dct" improves quality/compression. And it should be added only if High profile is acceptable on the target playback device...

[St Devious]

--bitrate means 1-pass ABR.

--preset ultrafast is an insane preset designed to strip everything down to the basics at all costs, which among other things means baseline.

The "--profile" option exists to restricts the profile. And "--profile high" (the default) means that there are no restrictions at all.

So if your video comes out as "Baseline", this doesn't mean anything went wrong. It simply indicates that your video doesn't need a higher profile than "Baseline".

x264 will always choose the lowest profile possible that is still is compatible with your settings. That's because it makes no sense to choose a higher profile, if a lower one would be sufficient.

However with "--profile" you can enforce an even lower profile. Then x264 will restrict all your settings to comply with the specified profile.


Adding "--8x8dct" will enforce High profile, because "8x8 vs. 4x4 Transform Adaptivity" is a High profile feature. But it makes absolutely no sense to add that just to trigger "High" profile!

It makes sense to add that, because it improves quality/compression. And it should be added only if High profile is acceptable on the target playback device...

:goodpost: and :thanks: as always