thoughts on Mainconcept's H.264 encoder...

[ellesshoo]

For all it's "buggyness" I'm pretty amazed with it. I'm talking about v2, btw. It certainly has some trouble with it's front end and it won't tolerate much in the way of errors in the input files but... I get amazing results from it at speeds much faster than I do with x.264 and Recode2 at equivalent settings. I can't figure out how I get so much faster encode times with results that often look the same or better than I do with the previously mentioned encoders that takes them a lot longer.... Does anyone else have this experience? I was wondering what everyone thought about Mainconcept's encoder, or at least those that have used it. Also, anyone have any "secrets" or tips that might not be common knowledge that improve speed/quality further?

[Dark Shikari]

For all it's "buggyness" I'm pretty amazed with it. I'm talking about v2, btw. It certainly has some trouble with it's front end and it won't tolerate much in the way of errors in the input files but... I get amazing results from it at speeds much faster than I do with x.264 and Recode2 at equivalent settings.?But they're not the same encoders, so what do you mean by "equivalent settings"? They don't have the same settings.

By definition, equivalent settings are defined one of the following:

1. Generates equivalent objective quality (PSNR/SSIM/etc) at different speeds.

2. Generates equivalent speed at differing qualities.

Past testing has not shown Mainconcept's encoder (v2, that is) to be measurably better than x264 in objective tests.

If you think x264 is too slow, try the build in this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=131965).