x264 goodquality profile?

[daWsOn_s]

HI,
I'm using the x264 codec with Megui for almost a year. To encode 42 minutes videos x264 it always takes about 4.20 hours, now I've found that this long time was because of the goodquality profile selected. In fact without it (no profile) it takes "only" 2.10 hours.
I have a 2.1 GHZ AMD Athlon XP CPU, is that normal to encode only 42 minutes with 4 hours???
I just want my best for my videos, but I don't know if the use of goodquality gives a really better quality or if it's common to use it. What do you say? I can actually see a quality difference especially in the backgrounds.
And I've deleted the profile, how can I recover it?

[Dark Shikari]

Goodquality is

--ref 3 --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --subme 6 --trellis 1 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --vbv-maxrate 25000 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "" ""

The next "level" of speedup would be to drop --ref to 1 or 2, --subme to 5, and eliminating --b-rdo. This would probably drop quality at least 10% though. Your main weakness is your CPU, which is single-core and relatively outdated.

[Sharktooth]

you can use HQ-Fast. It's a 2-pass encoding profile with fast settings (and fast 1st pass) but still with good quality.
profiles are here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101813
however i've just updated them so you only need to let megui auto update and reimport the missing profiles or just all of them.

EDIT: if you dont care about the bitrate or final filesize use the CQ-CRF profile and adjust the Quality from 18 to whatever you need. In x264 18 is almost equivalent to xvid's Q2.

[daWsOn_s]

Yes my CPU is really outdated. Anyway I've reimported the profile with autoupdate :)

So, how much time the HQfast would take with 2-pass econding? I just want a good quality with at most 3 hours

[Sharktooth]

Eh... you have to try it. Once the encoding starts (let it go for a couple of minutes) MeGUI will tell you how much time it will require until the end (status window).

[daWsOn_s]

Right :)

Is there some tool oroption that could count the time of an entire encoding in megui for the local PC?:confused:

[Sharktooth]

uhm, no but you can assume the 2nd pass will be slower than the first pass (coz of "Turbo" option is enabled on 1st pass) depending on the profile used.
The more complex the profile is, the slower will be the 2nd pass, but if you're using HQ-Fast then the difference shouldnt be so huge. i'd say from 1.5 to 2.5 times slower.

[daWsOn_s]

ok.

What is better between a 1-pass and 2-pass that take both the same time in encoding?

For example I saw 1p intermediate and HQfast take 3 hours each one.

[Dark Shikari]

ok.

What is better between a 1-pass and 2-pass that take both the same time in encoding?

For example I saw 1p intermediate and HQfast take 3 hours each one.
If you want a specific bitrate, you are going to have to do 2pass for decent quality.

If you want a specific quality (CRF mode), you only need one pass.

[Sharktooth]

the ratecontrol in 1pass ABR is simply crappy.
2pass would be much better and simply looking at the profile options HQ-Fast is better than 1P-Intermediate.

[shon3i]

--merange 8 can aslo help to encode faster without hurting visual quality.

[daWsOn_s]

Thank you all :)

[pcat]

Goodquality is

--ref 3 --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --subme 6 --trellis 1 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --vbv-maxrate 25000 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "" ""

The next "level" of speedup would be to drop --ref to 1 or 2, --subme to 5, and eliminating --b-rdo. This would probably drop quality at least 10% though. Your main weakness is your CPU, which is single-core and relatively outdated.

It's also depends on the target bitrate or quality: when encoding in the range of crf 18-20, I can barely notice any difference at playback speed between --subme 5 --ref 2 and --subme 6 --ref 3...

When possible, I aways prefer give some extra bitrate and have a bit less agressive compression.

Pierre