Question about a FAQ?

[nomorecoasters]

Hi there,

Sorry for my first post to be a question but i have searched around a lot in my 5 day waiting to post limit but couldnt find this (although maybe someone will correct me) :D
Its regarding using DVD-RB and CCE but thought i'd post in the CCe forum rather then the DVD-RB forum due to a question specifically about CCE. :)

Its a question regarding this in the FAQ


7. And a few words about the number of passes for a multipass VBR encode in CCE-SP. The CCE-SP 2.50 manual says
Quote:
Image quality slightly improves each time encoding is repeated, but quality improvement reaches its limit at 3 ~ 4 times of encoding

and you can trust it on that even for the later versions. Remember that in multipass VBR mode you have a fixed average bitrate and all that CCE-SP can do is try to find an optimal distribution of the available bits between easy and difficult to encode scenes. More passes will not make up more bitrate from air. You are free to use up to 9 passes, but, and this is strictly IMHO, anything more than 3 passes is just a waste of time at any given bitrate. 2 passes will be enough most of the time.
.


If anything more then 3 passes is a waste of time then why is the option there to up to 9passes(10 in some versions)

At the moment i have been basing my passes on file size, if im recoding a 6gb film with dvd-rb then i use 6 passes and if 7gb film then 7 passes etc.

Is this a waste of time and resoursces if i can just use 2-3 passes?

[random asshat]

The number of passes question in CCE is a bit subjective, and
quickly becomes a fray into the land of opinion and "what is best?"
discussion.

That being said, my personal opinion is that there really isn't
a huge diffrence in how the bitrate gets distributed in the 3rd pass
versus the 9th pass.

I am under the impression however that CCE uses a
slightly diffrent method for bitrate distribution on the even vs.
odd pass numbers.

Personally, my CPU has speed to burn, and I ussually encode
overnight anyway. I mostly use 7 pass (.vaf + 6 encode passes)
For short clips, and places where the encoder is being forced
to use an unduly low bitrate, sometimes even more.

I file away my backups with piece of mind that I won't ever feel
the need to come back and re-do the whole project because I
wonder if the encode "Could have looked better".

Others will tell you this is overkill though, and they aren't wrong.


If anything more then 3 passes is a waste of time then why is the option there to up to 9passes(10 in some versions)


Possibly just a clever marketing strategy, the more cool features you
feel like you're getting with any tech product, the better it sells.

/ If so, I fell for it :)

[Trahald]

Analysis of the reported q values and psnr tests will generally show that that there are improvements after 3 passes.. the reason people in many users opinions that the extra passes are a waste of time is that the improvements are hard to see by eye and to have your encode time up to double or triple for a result that side by side you see very little or no difference may be seen as a waste.