Insane Quality, fastest alteration with lowest quality degrade ?

[Betsy25]

Hi,

I'm just busy encoding some old '70s Louis De Funès movie in MeGui, and for getting near perfect quality, I chose the
"Unrestricted 2pass Insane" preset, but it's encoding almost 2 days now, and only at 80% ! :scared:

Please, With all the different options, and so many options having relations with other options,
I would like to know which options I better change to gain good speed at the cost of almost
no quality degradation ?

Anyone has any tips, there must be some "These settings increase encoding time dramatically but don't specifically
increase quality" options in my command-line.

Please, anyone can give me some tips on how to create some "Near Insane" preset ?

Thank you very much !

This is the command-line for the "Unrestricted 2 pass Insane" preset I'm currently using, but it really is not good for my health
and electricity bill.:scared:
--pass 2 --bitrate 1000 --stats ".stats" --ref 16 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 4 --b-adapt 2
--b-pyramid --weightb --direct auto --deblock -1:-1 --subme 9 --trellis 2 --partitions all --8x8dct
--vbv-maxrate 25000 --me tesa --merange 32 --threads auto --thread-input --progress
--no-dct-decimate --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input"

[Inspector.Gadget]

Stick with one of the "Unrestricted 2-pass" options if you want 2-pass, but you're using literally the most complex set of quality options available through MeGUI (well, except for up to 16 B-frames).

If you don't care about knowing file size exactly, just use one of the DXVA-SD-X presets (DXVA-SD-HQ has been my choice for a while) and use the CRF quality function. Most people seem to find a CRF from 18 to 26 provides an encode that has no obvious visual flaws.

[Dark Shikari]

"Insane" is in fact "insane". You aren't insane, so don't use it.

[nurbs]

I'd do --ref 3 (or 4), --me umh (and leave merange at default), --trellis 1 and drop --no-fast-pskip and --no-dct-decimate. If you are not encoding cartoons the refs will make practically no difference, neither will me. --no-fast-pskip and --no-dct-decimate don't help quality much either. --trellis 2 is probably the option that brings most quality of those I recommend to change, but then again it's not worth the speed loss in my opinion.

[Betsy25]

Thanks for the suggestions, my preference is to encode toward some defined size, like 700MB so I can put this on a CD-RW.

I'm a little wiser now, will try a new encode tommorow, and see the results, altough, what am I doing, the original movie is far from great looking itself.:D

Just trying to get a little more knowledge for getting the best results, and having quite a bit of time to waste, but 2.5 days is indeed a little too insane, and so am I now, time to sleep.

Thanks for the tips everyone !:o

[fazzaz31]

old '70s Louis De Funès movie

What is the source?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but HDD space is cheap (I'm endlessly poor but still have over 1.6 Terabytes). Also, dual layer burners are dirt cheap everywhere (like ~$35). Clone the source as an ISO and/or burn the file to a DVD+9R DL (http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=NSW&num=20&q=DVD%2BR9&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=12350130768999213400#ps-sellers).

You'll then have a bit-for-bit duplicate of the original file.

[Sagekilla]

If you don't have the hard drive space for doing 1:1 backups, then doing the following should give a noticeable speed up without a huge hit in quality:
ref 16 -> ref 4
me tesa -> me umh
merange 32 -> merange 16

Those are very extreme, and should only be used as a last resort. Think of them as a "I can only encode this once and then I'll never EVER get a chance to again" type option, since it's absurdly stupid to waste time on those for what amounts to a negligible increase in quality.

[Adub]

I frankly only use merange 32 when I am dealing with HD material, but since you are dealing with SD, you should be fine with merange 16.

In truth, I usually have my refs around 9-12, but that's me. Also, if you are using live footage, keep b-frames around 3, using the new b-adapt method.

[Betsy25]

Thank you very much everyone !

These changes will make a very good encode, and the speedgain is really nice !

Many thanks to all of you. Perhaps I sound a bit stupid, but adding these kinds of tips to some FAQ or sticky for noobs like me who really would like a near perfect quality but cannot continue to waste 2 full days for some 700MB result, these options are thus really overkill and the changes you all suggested will still give a very good encoding and a reasonable encoding time.

Thanks a lot ! :goodpost: