GK & DivX502: Single Pass grayed out?

[Allistah]

Hi there. A friend suggested that I try out Single Pass with a high quality to see the difference in size vs two pass high bitrate.

When I went in to do this with GK I noticed that the "Single Pass" radio button is grayed out. Am I doing something wrong or is this function not implemented yet?

Thanks for any information anyone might have.

-Allister

[jggimi]

I think it may be academic, as you want to do a single-pass quant 2.

GK is designed for 2-pass encodings, and allows you to start either the first or second pass separately, not do a single pass encoding.

For that, do it in Virtual Dub.

If you've not done it before, it's fairly easy.

Start Vdub,
Open the avs file you created with GKnot.
Select Video...Fast Recompress
Select Video...Compression...DivX5. Then press Configure button.

In the DivX configuration applet, select a 100% quality based single pass.

Press OK enough times to get back to the Vdub main window. Save AVI (F7).

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Afterwards, transcode your audio (GKnot Encoder tab, Add Job, Audio 1 tab).

Then interleave your audio with Nandub, per Doom9's audio interleaving guide.

[EDIT: Took out mistake at top about greyed-out single pass]

[Allistah]

But the one huge feature I'd be losing if I did it manually is GKs ability to queue up jobs. I've been able to do so much just because of this feature. I'd never get through my collection if I didn't have this feature.

Doing things the manual way for 100% single pass would kinda suck for me. As it is with GK I can get through 2.5 movies just over night while I sleep. Manually it would just stop after the first one and waste all that time. :-/

[jggimi]

Vdub has job control. You can queue up lots of jobs.

Time to learn to use it.

[Allistah]

The video would be added to the jobs like you mentioned but I don't think the audio would as well?

I guess what I'm saying is that it would be cool if the "Single Pass" wasn't grayed out when doing it the GK way so I could just click it, set a value for quality and let it go like it does now.

[jggimi]

Well, I use Nandub to do my interleaving, when I do things outside of GKnot's parlance.

Those are short jobs .. a few minutes each, and I do those without job control.

Besides, if a friend suggested you "try out" single pass encoding, then queues shouldn't be much of a factor.

Or, if all else fails, whine to your friend. :-)

[Allistah]

The reason my friend suggested that I take a look at a single quality pass was because I'm currently doing two pass @ 900k abr. I've just set all my rips to 900k since I don't care about filesize too much.

He said that if I did a single pass with a higher quality rate I might be able to get the same quality with a smaller file. But I thought that with two pass sbc you're getting the most out of every frame.

Hm, maybe I just don't understand two pass vs single pass for DivX502. Could anyone enlighten me a bit?

Thanks for all the replies by the way. I appreciate it.

-Allister

[jggimi]

It can be confusing. Here's how I understand it. I'm simplifying, but hopefully not oversimplified. I'm simplifying by using bitrate and quality as if they are equivalent in two passes.

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A 2-pass encoding is designed to provide the best possible quality for a specific file size. It produces, if you will, a "variable bitrate" video.

How it works:

The codec works from an average bitrate, supplied by you or your bitrate calculator. It takes two steps, or two passes, because the first pass analyzes each and every frame, and puts that analysis into a log file.

The second pass does the encoding, based on the frame-by-frame information in that log. Different frames get different numbers of bits.

--

A 1-pass encoding uses either: a constant bitrate, or a constant quality (quantisizer). It is often used to procure either a low quality encoding, such as end-credits in Gknot; or a high-quality encoding, where size is not a factor. DivX5 supports bitrates up to 10,000kbps.

[Allistah]

Thanks for taking the time to try and explain it to me. Let me make sure I understand what you said.

Two pass is for the person that wants the final file to be a specific size.

Single pass is more for the person that doesn't care what the final size is.

It sounds like I should indeed be using a single pass method since I set the bitrate at 900k to get a good quality rip. I'm just so in love with the way GK does most everything for you though. :-/ hehe Yes I'm lazy at this point. I own about 40 dvds, and this is the third time I've encoded all of them to get better results. First time was with Fair Use, then with Nandub, now with GK w/DivX502. I would hate to have to go back to a method thats more work just to get a single pass. heh I can live with them the way they are now, but would be cool to do them all in single pass quality.

Man, only if that option for "Single Pass" wasn't grayed out in GK I'd be set. :-(

Thanks again,

-Allister