What do you all set your CCE settings to?

[trence]

Hi, not sure if this is the right place to post, but I was wondering what number of passes for your CCE, if you use it? Does anyone use the one pass OPV? I have read the previous threads about OPV, and does it really give equal or even sometime better quality than multipass? Thanks for your input. :)

[jdobbs]

I'd say better is unlikely, but it is possible it can give equal quality. OPV's weak point is its ability to accurately predict the output size, so sometimes it will undersize slightly -- in those instances the output will be of a slightly lower quality than multipass, because it uses slightly less than the available space. But in most cases it's negligible.

I personally use 2 passes in CCE. If it is a particularly difficult movie (e.g. it is very long) I may go 3 passes. Over three is usually a waste of time, as the improvements become exponentially less significant with each pass beyond two -- but there are those who will argue that it doesn't hurt if time doesn't mean anything to you.

[Sharc]

In the past I have seen OPV producing equal or even better results (less blockiness) in cases of originals with CBR or strongly biased VBR - or other poor bitrate allocation.
Today I personally prefer Redistribution with 2-pass VBR encoding.
For my eyes and in my experience the Redistribution pass normally adds more to the overall quality than additional (3+) encoding passes. There may be other experiences around though.