Can x264 output a (reusable for AviSynth) uncompressed stream?

[asarian]

Is there a way to have x264 output a truly uncompressed stream that can be used again in AviSynth?

I need to do a 2-pass job, in which I first do the upper half (540p, with some overlap), and then the lower half of the movie. For that I need to output both streams to an uncompressed format first, so I can use a second AviSynth pass for (compressed) x264, in which I concatenate the two uncompressed output streams.

Thanks.

[nm]

Use avs2yuv or VirtualDub for uncompressed output. Or encode losslessly (--qp 0) with x264 to save disk space.

[asarian]

Originally Posted by nm

Use avs2yuv or VirtualDub for uncompressed output. Or encode losslessly (--qp 0) with x264 to save disk space.

Thanks!

I tried --qp 0, but I'm getting a steam that's unusable: tsMuxeR can convert it to m2ts, but eac3to can't turn it into an mkv (if I don't do the latter, FFVideoSource tells me the input stream isn't cut on packet boundaries). And both streams are entirely black on playback. :(

[J_Darnley]

If you want an mkv, make x264 output an mkv.

[asarian]

Originally Posted by J_Darnley

If you want an mkv, make x264 output an mkv.

Doh on me

That worked flawlessly, btw. Even though Windows 7 doesn't seem to be able to playback the resultant lossless streams natively, it doesn't matter: x264 itself can handle the streams for input just fine. As a result, I now have a flawlessly denoised full movie!

Thanks for all your help, guys!

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Lossless H.264, as implemneted in x264, uses Predictive Lossless Coding, which requires a H.264 decoder capable of the "High 4:4:4" profile

The Microsoft decoder doesn't support that profile, I guess. But libavcodec (ffdshow, FFmpegSource, etc) does! CoreAVC does too, if that matters for you.

So not really a problem, as "lossless" video is usually used for intermediate storage, which means you can simply use a supported decoder for your work.