CCE 2 pass vs CCE 3 pass how much of a difference

[Roveer]

I've always done all my CCE encoding at 3 pass around 2500-4000 avg. IT usually takes 5-7 hours on my P4 1.7ghz machine. I'm trying to to make that time a little less and am looking at faster machines. I'm also wondering how much of a quality loss I'd see going from 3 pass down to 2 pass? I'm very much interested in quality, so if it's too much of a loss, I'll stick with 3 pass.

Your comments are welcome.

Roveer

[Bigbucks1959]

Well, I do the initial pass to get the most out of CCE..as told in guide..and then I do 3 passes with proper bitrate for fitting onto a dvdr. So I guess I do 4 passes.

How long does it take you on a two hour movie to do 3 passes...and are you counting the initial pass also?

I go for quality on DVDRs...I have it working while I work.
I have an AMD 1.8 with 512 ram, RAID, 7200 rpm 40 gb drive c.
I usually have my 4 passes done in about 5-6 hours on a 2 hour movie.

PK

[paulusz]

Roveer,

Why don't you trust yourself? Try 2-pass and compare it with 3-pass... Generally speaking the more passes the better the quality up to 5 passes or so. Quality can be subjective and I would not ask around when it is that simple to test it myself...

[Roveer]

I'm going to do just that. I encoded Oceans 11 last weekend using 2 pass and I'm going to put it on one of my DVD-RW's tonight and see how it looks. I'm a stickler for perfection so I have a feeling I'll be back to 3 pass soon.