Xvid or x264: My Situation

[antdgar]

Hi.

My situation:
1. I use Mac OS X on a 2007 Macbook (intel core2duo, 2GB RAM)

2. I need to rip and encode about 7 DVD films to my computer (films contain people, sometimes moving quickly ;) no sfx or cgi or 'action' scenes). 2 hours duration each.

3. Time unfortunately matters. I cannot encode for more than 5 hours per film. 5 hours is maximum, about 10fps encode speed minimum{?}

I don't require insane quality. Something which is fast to encode (5 hrs maximum) and looks OK (no blocks, weirdness)

I'm not sure which would be most suited to my situation, FFMPEG, XviD or x264

Any recommendations, and of settings/presets to use would be appreciated considering my situation.

ps. I use handbrake for Mac OS X.

[Poopoo]

I would advise you a 2-pass Xvid encode. You can't see the difference between 2pass Xvid & 2pass x264, and Xvid encoding takes much less time.

[Dark Shikari]

x264 can easily do standard definition encoding at realtime on a Core 2 Duo; doing it at 2.5 times slower than realtime (5 hours per 2 hour film) should be a piece of cake.

Since you need to rip to your computer, you can use CRF (constant quality) mode, which only requires one pass.

[antdgar]

Thanks for the comments.

I've set it to constant quality (CRF) 50% and it's encoding at 10fps.

I'm not even sure if the quality will be good enough at 50% crf.

I'm using these advanced options:
ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=3:b-
pyramid=1:brdo=1:bime=1:weightb=1:deblock=-2,-1subq=6:trellis=1:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:me=umh

Am I doing something wrong? which is why it's encoding so slowly at 50% constant quality.

Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Dark Shikari]

Thanks for the comments.

I've set it to constant quality (CRF) 50% and it's encoding at 10fps.

I'm not even sure if the quality will be good enough at 50% crf.

I'm using these advanced options:
ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=3:b-
pyramid=1:brdo=1:bime=1:weightb=1:deblock=-2,-1subq=6:trellis=1:analyse=all:

Am I doing something wrong? which is why it's encoding so slowly at 50% constant quality.

Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!Ah, yourre using Handbrake? I'm not sure what "mapping" it uses for CRF; x264's "actual" CRF is a value from 0 to 51, where 51 is lowest quality and 0 is lossless. I suspect maybe 50% CRF is supposed to be 25 or something?

1. Are you sure its running in multithreaded mode? Try adding threads=auto.
2. Are you sure you have a recent version of x264? x264 has gotten 15-20% faster in the past few months (and I strongly recommend a version r804 or later due to the addition of adaptive quantization).
3. Try removing b-rdo and analyse=all, that will boost speed. I'd personally set deblock to 0:0, the defaults, also. You should probably add 8x8dct, that's pretty important for quality.

[antdgar]

I'm using Handbrake, yep. Mac OS X.

I upgraded to x264encoder v.0.8.2: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33858
I think I installed it correctly, just moved the file to library/quicktime

It seems to be running in multi threaded mode, it's using both CPUs at 100%~
I did what you suggested and now getting 15fps at 60% constant quality

I'll try to find an alternative to handbrake...

[Dark Shikari]

I'm using Handbrake, yep. Mac OS X.

I upgraded to x264encoder v.0.8.2: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33858
I think I installed it correctly, just moved the file to library/quicktime

It seems to be running in multi threaded mode, it's using both CPUs at 100%~
I did what you suggested and now getting 15fps at 60% constant quality

I'll try to find an alternative to handbrake... * Add AQ support.
* Add deblock-alphac0/beta support.
* Sync core to x264 git-807 and ffmpeg SVN-12672.So its not the most recent, but its probably good enough; looks good!

Handbrake is probably fine for general encoding on the mac. You really don't have many other options.

[antdgar]

Cool.

I tried FFmpeg encode at 2000kbps (48fps encode) and I cannot notice the difference between that and a 'high profile' x264 preset (10fps encode).
I'm beginning to think I'm going blind... but the fast ffmpeg seems to suffice.

I need to experiment more with x264!

[Dark Shikari]

Cool.

I tried FFmpeg encode at 2000kbps (48fps encode) and I cannot notice the difference between that and a 'high profile' x264 preset (10fps encode).
I'm beginning to think I'm going blind... but the fast ffmpeg seems to suffice.

I need to experiment more with x264!If you can't tell the difference, your bitrate is too high ;)