RealTime Encoding recommended settings?

[SnakEye]

ok guys here is the deal.
I am very new in this section of x264,up untill 2day I Encoded feeds with XviD but lately I am not really pleased with the resualts.
I am going to summarize what exactly I am encoding and then I'll ask the Questions.

here is the deal.
I have a video feed from a security camera that transmit a feed of around 276x204 with a mid-low quality at source and 10fps.
I have a capture program that capture these feeds and places them to an AVI file on our HDD.
in the program settings I can define the codec I would like to use for realtime encoding.
My goal is to keep to the original as close as possible but also
with the minimum file size.
now the thing is that since the feed is so low in resolution and we are talking about only 10fps that I am almost sure that my CPU will handle almost any hardcore settings.

My Question is:
what are the settings you are reccomanding me to use for
"My goal is to keep to the original as close as possible but also
with the minimum file size."?
(I am willing to try CPU demanding Settings)
please if you can spare the time and go over all the settings and tell me what should I place there.

Please note that we are talking about real time encoding so I
am not sure that B-Frames ,etc are relevant, but maybe I am wrong.

[bond]

everybody wants to "keep to the original as close as possible but also with the minimum file size." ;)

the problem is those two things dont fit and you are the only one who can decide on what is the best compromise between the two for you

therefore try to simply disable everything in x264 and see if it encodes in realtime and than step by step increase the used settings until you reach the point where you still get realtime but cant use any higher (more quality bringing) settings anymore

[SnakEye]

the problem is I don't know were to start. :scared:
give me a configuration that you think is best suited for my needs
and where to play around with and what should these do

[SnakEye]

can some one at least point me to a guid of all the options
in the codec and what do they do and pros and cons of every option?
I see more then that I won't be able to get out from you. :scared:

[nm]

Take a look at the MEncoder documentation:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-x264.html
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html (search for x264encopts)
The parameter names differ a bit from those used by the x264 CLI and the various GUIs, but it is not hard to figure which is which.

[Pookie]

If you want to start with something simple, try Winmenc as a front-end to mencoder. The nice part is the ability to save your choices as a batch file. It'll be easy to monitor performance.