x264 two pass encoding

[jonathonsunshine]

I have noticed that in the command lines generated by MeGUI during two pass pass encoding, the 1st pass mentions the average bitrate to be achieved during the 2nd pass.

It I decide to run the 2nd pass again, to encode it at a higher or lower bitrate, do I also need to run the 1st pass again or can I reuse the .stats files generated the 1st time around ?

[Dark Shikari]

You can re-use it as long as you don't change the bitrate too much. For example, 1000kbps -> 2000kbps is probably reasonable, but 1000 -> 10000 or 1000 -> 200 is probably a bad idea.