MeGUI x264 presets.

[meshaun]

I use Megui but I get some audio encoding error all the time.
so I switched to Handbrake, any idea of how to use the above presets in Handbrake? I tried to import, but says unsupported format.
or even to see the Option Strings so that I can manually input those?

[Zathor]

Sorry, I cannot help you with handbrake. You can see the MeGUI command line at the bottom of the profile window

I use Megui but I get some audio encoding error all the time. Please post the log file or more information about this problem.

[meshaun]

I would like to use Handbrake, instead of Megui as it's easy and all.
Is it possible to find the options used in a profile so that I can manually input into the Handbrakes option strings box?

[lintran]

I have 8 Core CPU, when using Megui to encode, the total CPU used is only 20-30%, is there anyway to use 100% of 8 core? I heard about avisynth and x264 bit but seem these are unstable :(
Thanks so much.

[ramsmart]

now a days i see many movies in 400mb that to high quality 720p brrips

i want to know what settings they use and which persists they use to achieve 720p brrip in just 400mb

[ramsmart]

where HQ slow i updated many times but i did not get this HQ slow plez somebody tell me how to download HQSLOW

[LigH]

You don't need that anymore. Use x264 speed preset "slow" and chose a quality factor small enough to provide high quality for your taste (~20 or less, probably). Save it as your new "HQ slow" if you really need any profile.

[ramsmart]

may be there is any update version of HQ slow

[NoX1911]

If i choose the 'x264: standalone: ps3/xbox360' profile and move the preset slider (medium->slow) or set a tuning option several switches vanish from the config line. Should i better leave it untouched or is it not important?

[LigH]

Different speed presets include different options as defaults. Read about it in "x264 --fullhelp".

Additional options which become default after switching the speed preset are optimized out of the command line by MeGUI.

[NoX1911]

Thx. I have dropped the presets and will try built-in target strategy settings instead.

[vale25]

As newbie in x264 conversions I would kindly ask you to help me finding the best profile suited to my avi files. I tested the recommended "Unrestricted 2pass HQ" with V85.

In attachment is the comparison between the raw avi file (created by merging several .mov files of the camera, no compression, only join) and the result obtained with the aforementioned "Unrestricted 2pass HQ"

I "guess" that it is somehow ever-engineered, at least watching that I start with a Baseline@L5.0 and end-up with a High@L5.0. Another doubt is related to the selected bitrate, from 33.8 down to 12 Mbps (but this was my selection, and may be wrong!)

To hope in receiving a good answer I must define my priorities, which were:

- To not degrade the quality of the image when seen on a normal full HD home TV (32-40 inches)

- To decrease if possible the size (from a 16 GB/h perhaps to less than 8 GB/s, recordable on a dual DVD).

Note that I will remove the raw files and keep only these mkv results for future usage (such as making a movie with some editor)

I thank you in advance for the time spending with me

[Shevek]

I just had to do a re-format of my PC and have now reinstalled MeGUI.

The updater is not listing any x264 profiles any more, am I missing something?

TIA

[hello_hello]

Shevek, I'm pretty sure the target device option is intended to replace the old profiles, which is why they're not included any more. You'll find it under the x264 encoder configuration dialogue. Once you've selected a target device, along with any other encoder options, you can save the settings as a new preset.

[Shevek]

Shevek, I'm pretty sure the target device option is intended to replace the old profiles, which is why they're not included any more. You'll find it under the x264 encoder configuration dialogue. Once you've selected a target device, along with any other encoder options, you can save the settings as a new preset.

Ah - I didn't spot that option! Many thanks...

[Ookamichi]

I appreciate the hard work! and darn you ntfs for deleting your files lol honestly :) Okay now on to my question. i been using your old presets for a few years now there great! i mostly encode for my PSP so i was wondering if the new PSP profile is any better then the old one?

[Graal_CPM]

Right after MeGUI last automated update, I have notices that MP3 encoding was broken. Whatever the preset, a 32Kbps encoding was produced.

Checking xml profile files, I see that the line <AbrBitrate>0</AbrBitrate> stands at the end of each MP3 profile.

Replacing 0 by the desired bitrate (112, 128, etc) has solved the issue. I am still a bit puzzled by this and have planned to backup my presets before accepting the next update.

:) BTW, I have been playing around with encoding for quite some times now and MeGUI is by far the best software I have ever used. Open, multi-format, loaded with functionnalities, flexible in so many ways, and, and... with full automation!! Thank you to all contributors for this amazing work.

[Zathor]

i mostly encode for my PSP so i was wondering if the new PSP profile is any better then the old one?

There should be no changes in the final output when using the PSP device setting - they have just been moved from external profiles to internal ones. But as for every change problems may occur and as I do not have a PSP I cannot test if the files can still be played on a PSP.

Right after MeGUI last automated update, I have notices that MP3 encoding was broken. Whatever the preset, a 32Kbps encoding was produced. Checking xml profile files, I see that the line <AbrBitrate>0</AbrBitrate> stands at the end of each MP3 profile.
I will check that. Thanks for the hint. I do not use the MP3 output myself.

[Betsy25]

Is there *anyone* in this world who knows what would be the best quality settings possible for PS3 ?

Nowhere on the official playstation pages could I find anything related to which x264 settings the PS3 supports....

So, to sum it up, is the current PS3 profile in MeGUI the best setting (quality wise) to use for it, or are some settings included which increase encoding speed at the cost of final quality ?

[sake42]

I want to ask which is better
x264 DXVA HD extra quality ?
or
x264 DXVA HD HQ ?
thank you

[LigH]

@ sake42:

Your question makes no sense. "Better" is "the result which appears to have less annoying loss". That's completely subjective. Try both, check both - and decide for yourself.

[tebasuna51]

Now don't exist official external 'Encoder settings', was replaced by internal settings selected with 'Target Playback Device' in Configuration Dialog.

The custom external 'Encoder settings' are allowed, but we can't know the parameters in your custom settings 'x264 DXVA HD extra quality' and 'x264 DXVA HD HQ'.
I have a set of external 'Encoder settings' but none with these names.

To know the differences you can copy the parameters in bottom window of Configuration Dialog when you select these 'Encoder settings'.
For instance, I have 2 DXVA external settings:

x264: DXVA-Standard Def.
program --level 3.1 --crf 20 --vbv-bufsize 14000 --vbv-maxrate 17500

x264: DXVA-High Def.
program --level 4.1 --crf 20 --vbv-bufsize 50000 --vbv-maxrate 50000

But, if I select DXVA in 'Target Playback Device', I have only:
program --level 4.1 --crf 20

Then, please, put the parameters of your external 'Encoder settings' to see the differences.

[LigH]

In addition to ^: The speed "preset" and the content "tuning" (and some day also the playback "device"...) options alter the default settings inside the x264 encoder. MeGUI optimizes the command line to omit options which are equal to current defaults.

Additional options in your "outdated" encoder profiles would change the behaviour in relation to previous default values based on preset and tuning; an option which may increase the efficiency in relation to one preset+tuning, may decrease the efficiency in relation to another preset+tuning, make or break compatibility to target playback devices. No chance to rate them generally, regardless of presets or tunings.

[ramsmart]

now a days i see many movies in 400mb that to Bluray quality 720p brrips

i want to know what settings they use and which persists they use to achieve 720p brrip in just 400mb

[LigH]

Oh, really? Show me links to such 400 MB 720p movies. Or at least full MediaInfo reports. Let's discuss their quality together.

[Zathor]

now a days i see many movies in 400mb that to Bluray quality 720p brrips

i want to know what settings they use and which persists they use to achieve 720p brrip in just 400mb

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=161037
Please continue the discussion there.

[Groucho2004]

i want to know what settings they use and which persists they use to achieve 720p brrip in just 400mb

You're posting in the wrong place. I'm sure there are places where these scene "gurus" hang out and discuss this stuff.

[vrpatilisl]

hi
what is exact difference between unrestricted HQ AND EXTRA quality.
Thanxs

[LigH]

"Unrestricted" means that there are no compatibility restrictions considered, so the result may play only on PCs with sufficiently complete decoder software, but playback on consumer players is not certain.

The difference between a "High" and "Extra" quality template is mostly placebo: More efforts to find redundancies and similarities in the video, taking more time to calculate, but hardly giving noticably better quality at the same filesize, and making hardware player compatibility even less certain.

If you want to know the exact differences, load both XML files of these templates in a tool which highlights source code differences (e.g. windiff, Beyond Compare, etc.).

But I doubt it is worth the efforts. Templates in general are a concept ready for deprecation for the x264 encoder — because the trinity of speed "preset", content "tuning", and playback "device" options is sufficient in most cases. Less experienced users may not know all the advanced parameters good enough to take responsibility for their own changes; more experienced users may have contributed to the device option instead.

[ACrowley]

Ive a question abou the x264 BluRay 1080p 24p Profile

Why is weight=0 ? Is it incompatible with x264 and BluRay encoding?
I mean Mainconcept Reference 2.2 can use for the Bluray Profiles and my Standalone Players plays those encodes without any Problem ?

I bet its to avoid Problems with some SA Players right ?

Thank you

[rapscallion]

Where are you seeing that it's zero. This from that profile :

<CustomEncoderOptions>--level 4.1 --bframes 3 --ref 4 --slices 4 --aud
--nal-hrd vbr --b-pyramid strict --keyint 24 --min-keyint 2 --vbv-bufsize 30000
--vbv-maxrate 40000 --weightp 1 --colorprim "bt709"
--transfer "bt709" --colormatrix "bt709"</CustomEncoderOptions>

[vrpatilisl]

hi
I encoded small video clip with 1pass hq and extra quality preset but i get more bitrate in Hq than extra quality. Is it okay. I thought extra quality>HQ.

[LigH]

How can you believe that bitrate would be trivially equal to quality? An assembly worker who finishes simply more products than another is not better if half of them are culls.

Profiles may be designed to take more or less efforts (and encoding time) for finding and removing "redundancies". But the bitrate depends on both the efficiency (ratio between necessary information and unnecessary redundancy) and the quality loss (amount of necessary information missing to recreate the original data). A more efficient encoding profile can reduce the "waste" by redundancies (with the cost of a longer encoding time) and keep enough relevant data. A less efficient profile has redundancies and needs to reduce the overall bitrate - so it loses relevant data too.

[Groucho2004]

tell me the best profile or settings in megui for anime SD 360p

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"
I suppose this also applies to some extent to megui profiles and settings.

Also, have a look at forum rule #12.

[tonyymmao]

so will there any more updates or will this be the newest version

[Galgofa]

Any advice or ready preset for Camcorder DV encoding, pls share your experience as i have no much knowledge about encoding and always in doubts about quality limit :)

[LigH]

Do you want to encode from DV or to DV?

I doubt that creating DV video would be preferable using MeGUI. Any VfW AVI editor (like VirtualDub) and an installed DV VfW codec would be sufficient. But DV has its limits, and the codec shall know them. Regarding audio multiplexing, either DV Type 1 or 2 may be required.

But if you want to convert from DV to e.g. MP4 with AVC, then I see no reason to be concerned about any details, except that NTSC DV uses 4:1:1 chroma subsampling, that might use some filtering before encoding.

[Galgofa]

I would like to create compressed film from DV file which is much larger for storage on hd, thus wandering if there additional filters or tricks maybe to make home video looks betters (like for anime presets) ?

[HMJ]

Could you please do a preset for the new Retina Display iPad?

[LigH]

That won't have any relation to the used display. Only to the limits of the decoder (processor and software) used.

[HMJ]

That won't have any relation to the used display. Only to the limits of the decoder (processor and software) used.

Actually it has everything to do with the "used display". Because the display has 4x the number of pixels as that of the iPad 2, and the GPU is only 2x faster, there is a performance hit even on supported formats, and especially on non-standard formats like mkv, in even the best current players that support other formats. There are many complaints about this at various forums. In any case, we do not have any presets for even the iPad 1, so there is a definite need for an iPad preset in general, and an iPad 3 preset specifically, because of the performance issues. Will Sharktooth please respond.

[LigH]

Well, of course ... it will depend on the relation between CPU speed and display resolution.

But not depend too much on the display technology ... that's what I meant.

So I would guess that a set of options with limited complexity will support a "fast decode" behaviour (check the similarly named tuning). But it will limit the quality per bitrate as well.

Eventually, only practice will show. But that would require owning a "New iPad" — which has, in contrast to the monetary, no big productive value for me; I have no use for tablets...

[HMJ]

Well, of course ... it will depend on the relation between CPU speed and display resolution.

But not depend too much on the display technology ... that's what I meant.

Hmmmm. Well I don't see any way to separate the display technology from the resolution really. The resolution is a function of the technology.

So I would guess that a set of options with limited complexity will support a "fast decode" behaviour (check the similarly named tuning). But it will limit the quality per bitrate as well.

Maybe but I am looking for a detailed preset like the other ones.

Eventually, only practice will show. But that would require owning a "New iPad" — which has, in contrast to the monetary, no big productive value for me; I have no use for tablets...

That's what I said until the new iPad came out. That changed everything. The new display is so fantastic that I find it difficult to go back to anything less, including this 24" monitor. It really raises the bar on all display technology. Go and try one. I think you might just change your opinion. ;)

BTW, are you Sharktooth?

[LigH]

BTW, are you Sharktooth?

Who are you to deny my human right of expressing my opinion? :rolleyes: — Have a cookie. :cool:
__

May it have a pixel density beyond 300 dpi, but after all, the Retina Display is a TFT LCD display like many others, not a miracle.

If you know whether it uses TN, IPS, AFFS, VA, or whichever specific matrix technology, may have an impact on the response times of the display cells, so to some degree it may have a slight impact on the display performance. But I doubt it will be remarkable, because:

The video is decoded to the RAM, not to the display. Displaying the video RAM should hardly delay writing it with the next frame content. If the video RAM is updated while the displaying is in progress, an effect called "tearing" happens.

[Twitch29]

I'm currently using the Unrestricted 1pass Const. Quality HQ preset with CRF 18 and am very happy with the results. Around 15 min encode time and can't spot visual differences unless comparing static frames. I stopped storing movies on optical media years ago so targeting file size makes no sense to me. I would however like guaranteed Xbox360 compatibility. Is this possible with 1 pass, and how would I go about it? The advanced settings are a mystery to me, can I just select 360 profile and change encoding mode to targeting quality? Any chance of a profile specifically for this. I'm sure it would be extremely popular.

And a big thank you for all the hard work you put into this!!!

[hello_hello]

Actually it has everything to do with the "used display". Because the display has 4x the number of pixels as that of the iPad 2, and the GPU is only 2x faster, there is a performance hit even on supported formats, and especially on non-standard formats like mkv, in even the best current players that support other formats. There are many complaints about this at various forums. In any case, we do not have any presets for even the iPad 1, so there is a definite need for an iPad preset in general, and an iPad 3 preset specifically, because of the performance issues.

Isn't the old system of presets long dead and gone? They're no longer installed when you install MeGUI and according to the file dates the presets linked to in the first post of this thread are 3 years old. If you're using the old presets they're probably outdated and should be deleted, and the first post in this thread probably should be updated to indicate the old preset system is dead.

If you open MeGUI's x264 configuration and select the ipad as the target playback device (maybe reset x264 to defaults first), I'd be thinking that qualifies as a preset for the ipad1. Mind you the only thing it seems to enforce is an AVC Level of 3.1 while everything else is x264 defaults. Now according to the specs for the ipad3, it supports:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
"H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats"

So as long as you're using High Profile Level 4.1 then, according to Apple at least, you should be fine. You're officially restricted to stereo AAC audio which is a little "sad", but I'd hope the video specs are at least accurate because for a new device in the ipad price range to require the use of specific encoder restrictions in order for it to play video would be fairly mental. Stereo audio, assuming the specs are accurate, is embarrassing enough. ;)

Ipad3 MPEG-4 specs:
"MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats"

No HD MPEG-4 support at all? Not even 720 pixel wide standard definition?

Anyway... you mentioned MKV and using third party software players. I'd be willing to offer a theory.....
Because the ipad3 only seems to support hardware decoding in the usual Apple formats (m4v, mp4 and mov), when playing other file types such as mkv with a third party player you may be restricted to CPU, rather than hardware decoding, in which case you may have to experiment to see what the CPU can cope with. I could be wrong, I've never owned an iDevice, but maybe even third party players can only use hardware decoding for officially supported formats, hence the difficulty with MKV video at times? It may depend on the player you're using.
As an example (Android-land), when I play video using my smartphone, the third party player I have installed will use both hardware decoding for audio and video, but if hardware decoding isn't supported for a particular type of video or audio it'll switch to software decoding for either just the audio, or for both. What an ipad player can and can't do I don't know, but maybe if the audio isn't supported by the hardware decoder it's forced to use software decoding for both audio and video.... it may depend on how clever the third party player you're using is..... I've no idea how things work in ipad-land so I'm just theorizing.

The question is, I guess, if you encode video using High Profile level 4.1 and stereo AAC audio and stick it in an Apple approved container as per the specs will it play correctly? If so, then that's all you should need to do. To create an appropriate preset using MeGUI you just need to open the x264 configuration, load the defaults, select DXVA as the target playback device (which will change the AVC level to 4.1), set your desired quality, speed preset and tuning, and save the setup as your own ipad3 preset.

[hello_hello]

I'm currently using the Unrestricted 1pass Const. Quality HQ preset with CRF 18 and am very happy with the results. Around 15 min encode time and can't spot visual differences unless comparing static frames. I stopped storing movies on optical media years ago so targeting file size makes no sense to me. I would however like guaranteed Xbox360 compatibility. Is this possible with 1 pass, and how would I go about it? The advanced settings are a mystery to me, can I just select 360 profile and change encoding mode to targeting quality? Any chance of a profile specifically for this. I'm sure it would be extremely popular.

And a big thank you for all the hard work you put into this!!!

Well as I deleted all those old presets a long time ago.....

Open the x264 configuration dialog. Reset it back to the default settings. Select the Xbox 360 as your target playback device. Change the CRF value (quality) to 18 (specify a tuning and change the speed preset if you like), save the setup as a new Xbox 360 preset and you're done.

PS The old preset you were using seems to be the equivalent of using Tuning "film", while I'm pretty sure the advanced settings would be basically the same as using Xbox 360 as the target playback device while setting the x264 speed preset to "slower" (it'll also add the required Xbox VBR settings).

[Zathor]

Isn't the old system of presets long dead and gone? They're no longer installed when you install MeGUI and according to the file dates the presets linked to in the first post of this thread are 3 years old. If you're using the old presets they're probably outdated and should be deleted, and the first post in this thread probably should be updated to indicate the old preset system is dead.
Agreed. But only Sharktooth or a moderator can change the text or add at least a warning.

[HMJ]

Isn't the old system of presets long dead and gone? They're no longer installed when you
install MeGUI and according to the file dates the presets linked to in the first post of this thread are 3 years old. If
you're using the old presets they're probably outdated and should be deleted, and the first post in this thread probably
should be updated to indicate the old preset system is dead.

If you open MeGUI's x264 configuration and select the ipad as the target playback device (maybe reset x264 to defaults
first), I'd be thinking that qualifies as a preset for the ipad1. Mind you the only thing it seems to enforce is an AVC
Level of 3.1 while everything else is x264 defaults.

Since this is my first time using it, I don't know if the presets were ever installed automatically, but the existence
of a file to download and then manually install implies otherwise. In any case they show up in the dropdown when you do
install them. They may be almost 4 years old but they are fairly detailed compared to the presets in the built-in
configuration device dropdown. e.g., iPod 5.5G device:

program --profile baseline --level 3 --pass 2 --bitrate 1000 --stats ".stats" --ref 1 --weightp 2 --qpmin 16
--qpmax 51 --vbv-bufsize 1500 --vbv-maxrate 1500 --merange 12 --me umh --direct none --subme 5 --trellis 0 --output
"output" "input"

That's the type of preset that I think would be valuable for the new iPad.

Now according to the specs for the ipad3, it supports:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
"H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz,
stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats"

Yeah, I know, but not enough detail. There are certain parameters that still need to be tweaked I imagine.

So as long as you're using High Profile Level 4.1 then, according to Apple at least, you should be fine. You're
officially restricted to stereo AAC audio which is a little "sad", but I'd hope the video specs are at least accurate
because for a new device in the ipad price range to require the use of specific encoder restrictions in order for it to
play video would be fairly mental. Stereo audio, assuming the specs are accurate, is embarrassing enough. ;)

Well any device is going to have restrictions so that's not surprising. I agree that limiting GPU support for such a
small range of containers and codecs is ridiculous, but what about the company is not ridiculous? It is what it is so
the best tack is to optimize encodings for the restrictions. The incredible resolution of the display makes it all
worthwhile. I suggest you go and check it out.

Ipad3 MPEG-4 specs:
"MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160
Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats"

No HD MPEG-4 support at all? Not even 720 pixel wide standard definition?

I really don't care about MPEG-4, just h.264.

Anyway... you mentioned MKV and using third party software players. I'd be willing to offer a theory.....
Because the ipad3 only seems to support hardware decoding in the usual Apple formats (m4v, mp4 and mov), when playing
other file types such as mkv with a third party player you may be restricted to CPU, rather than hardware decoding, in
which case you may have to experiment to see what the CPU can cope with. I could be wrong, I've never owned an iDevice,
but maybe even third party players can only use hardware decoding for officially supported formats, hence the difficulty
with MKV video at times? It may depend on the player you're using.

I think the player uses a combination of CPU and GPU when playing unsupported formats so that is the bottleneck. I was
hoping that sharktooth might have some experience with this problem and offer his expertise at choosing parameter
settings.

The question is, I guess, if you encode video using High Profile level 4.1 and stereo AAC audio and stick it in
an Apple approved container as per the specs will it play correctly? If so, then that's all you should need to do. To
create an appropriate preset using MeGUI you just need to open the x264 configuration, load the defaults, select DXVA as
the target playback device (which will change the AVC level to 4.1), set your desired quality, speed preset and tuning,
and save the setup as your own ipad3 preset.

Absolutely. If I transmux an mkv into an mp4 container, re-encoding the audio to 160kbps AAC, if necessary, it usually
plays much better than the original because then it is completely GPU accelerated. But I want to avoid that if I come
across an already encoded mkv, and I still would like to know the best settings for transcoding say, a BD, to mp4.
That's all.

[hello_hello]

Since this is my first time using it, I don't know if the presets were ever installed automatically, but the existence
of a file to download and then manually install implies otherwise.

True. Which is why I said if they're no longer maintained or required, the original post probably should be updated to indicate it. Zathor (who maintains MeGUI) seems to agree with me.

In any case they show up in the dropdown when you do
install them. They may be almost 4 years old but they are fairly detailed compared to the presets in the built-in
configuration device dropdown. e.g., iPod 5.5G device:

program --profile baseline --level 3 --pass 2 --bitrate 1000 --stats ".stats" --ref 1 --weightp 2 --qpmin 16
--qpmax 51 --vbv-bufsize 1500 --vbv-maxrate 1500 --merange 12 --me umh --direct none --subme 5 --trellis 0 --output
"output" "input"

That's the type of preset that I think would be valuable for the new iPad.

I don't think it's necessary. The ipad is officially capable of playing anything covered by using High Profile level 4.1. There's no other bitrate restrictions mentioned in the specs.
To be honest, I'd be kind of surprised if any further restrictions are needed as hardware decoders in most devices are pretty good these days. Even the hardware decoder in my Motorola Razr seems capable of playing anything the video card in my PC can decode.

Yeah, I know, but not enough detail. There are certain parameters that still need to be tweaked I imagine.

The only other things which I'd imagine might need to be tweaked would be bitrate or VBR settings, but unlike the ipod, Apple don't list any bitrate limitations in the ipad3 specs.

Well any device is going to have restrictions so that's not surprising. I agree that limiting GPU support for such a
small range of containers and codecs is ridiculous, but what about the company is not ridiculous? It is what it is so
the best tack is to optimize encodings for the restrictions.

Agreed, which seems to involve using High Profile level 4.1 when encoding and MP4.

I really don't care about MPEG-4, just h.264.

Yeah, the CPU should be able to decode it anyway.

Absolutely. If I transmux an mkv into an mp4 container, re-encoding the audio to 160kbps AAC, if necessary, it usually
plays much better than the original because then it is completely GPU accelerated. But I want to avoid that if I come
across an already encoded mkv, and I still would like to know the best settings for transcoding say, a BD, to mp4.
That's all.

That doesn't quite make sense to me. All the presets in the world aren't going to make an already encoded mkv you might come across play smoothly, but you should be able to determine if it's High Profile level 4.1 and remux it into an MP4 container if that's what's required to get it to play correctly, and according to the specs High Profile level 4.1 and MP4/M4V is all that's required when encoding. For MKVs you come across, a third party player which can use hardware decoding for MKVs (which I'd hope is possible) would be the only other solution, but even then, I'd imagine the encoder specs wouldn't be any different.
If video plays correctly using High Profile level 4.1 and MP4, isn't that what you wanted in a preset? If you encode using High Profile level 4.1 and stereo AAC audio and stick it in an MP4 does it play correctly, or just better as you described? If it's the latter and it's still not playing perfectly smoothly, then I guess that's a different story.