x264vfw configuration?

[SnakEye]

Hey guys, I was searching all over for a guide on the "FFmpeg x264vfw configuration" without luck.
could some one please direct me to a URL or post here what every settings mean (don't have to be really detailed about it, most of the Answers I am looking fo those settings are "this" tends to be more for encoding speed and "this (other)" is more for image quality but might/or slower encoding)
Attached are the ScreenShots of the settings I am looking for or in other words the codec I am running.

[Sharktooth]

first thing, forget about x264vfw and use a GUI or avidemux.
that said, have a look at x264 settings on mewiki (http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings).

[SnakEye]

first thing, forget about x264vfw and use a GUI or avidemux.
that said, have a look at x264 settings on mewiki (http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings).

What do you mean use GUI? I am encoding with a GUI (camtasia), but using this codec that is installed.

[Sharktooth]

export to a lossless format and then re-encode using a GUI (there is a whole forum dedicated to encoders GUIs (https://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=78)).

[SnakEye]

thanks for the offer, but due to license issues I must use camtasia and no other GPL/Free Tools - our leagal department at this point do not approve any GPL, etc programs, so I need the settings for what I have got.

[Sharktooth]

license issues? there are free lossless encoders (... if that was your issue ...)

[Dark Shikari]

thanks for the offer, but due to license issues I must use camtasia and no other GPL/Free Tools - our leagal department at this point do not approve any GPL, etc programs, so I need the settings for what I have got....

You do know x264 is GPL, right? :rolleyes:

[Sharktooth]

... and most, if not all, encoder GUIs in this forum are GPL too ...

[SnakEye]

I do know that but we got issues with tools , it's complicated.
any way please stop suggesting me other tools all I need is what I originly asked for so please confirm your comments to the situation in hand.

[Sharktooth]

as i said, http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings.
x264vfw is not officially supported.
btw, i still dont understand what licenses issues you would have with free stuff... considering x264 itself (and x264vfw too) is GPL.

[SnakEye]

heem , it's a nice link but it doen't cover all the settings as on the Screenshots I sent.
BTW - what do you mean by "x264vfw is not officially supported"?, not supported by whom?

P.S. did anyone even bother looking at the Screenshots I sent?

[Sharktooth]

by the x264 developers.
however i cant see the screenshots coz they were still not approved by a moderator.

[SnakEye]

by the x264 developers.
however i cant see the screenshots coz they were still not approved by a moderator.
ok, fair enough.
what is the official supported x264 you suggest me using (not the encoding tool but the codec)?
would appriciate if you could also supply me with a D/L URL.
BTW - I am running Vista x64 w/SP2

[Dark Shikari]

ok, fair enough.
what is the official supported x264 you suggest me using (not the encoding tool but the codec)?
would appriciate if you could also supply me with a D/L URL.
BTW - I am running Vista x64 w/SP2x264.nl (http://x264.nl/).

Also, technically, it isn't a codec, it's an encoder. If it was a codec, it would decode too (which it doesn't).

[Sharktooth]

well, x264 officially exists in 2 forms, as a library and as a command line interface encoder.
then there are a tons of GUIs that use x264 (in one or the other form) to transcode something into h.264.
in your case, since it's your fist approach, i'd suggest to start up with something simple like handbrake or avidemux.
but first you need to encode to some format (preferably lossless) using camstasia since i dont know of any gui that supports live encoding.

[Usagi_Chan]

I've been told that this forum hates x264vfw. I tried to install the x264.exe and nothing happened. It blinked and then disappeared. I looked in virtual dub and no 264 encoder was shown. I installed x264vfw and then the endcoder was there and available. when I clicked on Configure I got the above screenshots which need some explanation.

Since x264vfw seems to be hated and everyone suggests that I trash Virtualdub and use Avidemux, a few hours ago I installed Avidemux. I then opened a .vob file with it. When I clicked the play button I got a very garbled display which hardly resembled the original. The very same file opened just fine in virtualdubmod.

So, my problem is that after searching the web for several hours I still cannot find how to do the settings for x264vfw and I cannot find something that I can understand that will do the job it does, which is work with virtualdub and virtualdubmod. I find that avidemux is totally unreliable.

So now what?

Thanks in advance.

[Dark Shikari]

I've been told that this forum hates x264vfw. I tried to install the x264.exe and nothing happened. It blinked and then disappeared. I looked in virtual dub and no 264 encoder was shown.It's a commandline application. We assume that someone well-versed enough in computers to use a complex video encoder knows how to open a terminal.

The problem isn't "x264vfw is bad", but that "vfw is bad". Virtualdub can only use VFW. Therefore, Virtualdub cannot be used for any serious encoding purposes.So now what?Learn to use a commandline, or use a GUI like Ripbot264, Staxrip, etc.

[Blue_MiSfit]

x264 CLI is quite simple to use. Assuming your input is an AviSynth script, just do this:


x264.exe input.avs --preset slow --tune film --level 41 --crf 20 --vbv-maxrate 62500 --vbv-bufsize 62500 --output "output.mp4"


Note, this also assumes you're encoding film material, at High profile, level 4.1. It also uses x264's CRF rate control mode, which is a VBR encode targeting a certain visual quality.

http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings

See here for more CLI settings, and more info about CRF versus traditional 2-pass VBR or CBR encodes.

~MiSfit

[Usagi_Chan]

Thanks for your help. I will simply go back to using VirtualDub with xvid, since x264 is a complex system that apparently requires a PhD in video editing.

[bob0r]

It isn't called AVC (Advanced Video Coding) for nothing! :devil:

[Dark Shikari]

Thanks for your help. I will simply go back to using VirtualDub with xvid, since x264 is a complex system that apparently requires a PhD in video editing.If typing:

x264 input -o output.mp4

is beyond your ability, I have no idea how you ever figured out to use something as powerful and complicated as Virtualdub.

[mariush]

1. Install Avisynth. It's open source, GPL, no license needed.
2. Install a lossless video codec like HuffYUV or Lagarith, both free and open source if I remember correctly so no license issues here.
3. Record your movies with Camtasia, export the movie to .AVI using the lossless codec.
4. Create the AVS script that you'll use with the encoder to encode to h264. It can be something as simple as this:

AVISource("Drive:\Path To\Your Movie.avi")


5. Now you can either use x264.exe directly or a GUI like MeGUI to convert.
To use x264.exe directly, download and save x264.exe in an easy to remember folder on your drive, for example C:\x264. Now open a command line by clicking on Start > Run > cmd.exe [Enter]

Type

CD C:\x264

to work from the folder where you saved x264.exe
Now type
x264.exe --bitrate 2000 -o "Drive:\Path To\Where The New File Is Saved.mp4" "Drive:\Path To\The Input File.avs"


Where 2000 is the bitrate value in kbps (you can change it to whatever your want) the path after -o is the output file name (you can use MP4, MKV or .264 to save video in different containers) and the last path is the path to the AVS file you previously created.

You can use some presets and change quality settings by adding parameters in the command line. You can type:

x264.exe --help >BasicSettings.txt
x264.exe --longhelp >DetailedHelp.txt
x264.exe --fullhelp >CompleteHelp.txt

and the text files that appear in the same folder with x264.exe show all the parameters you can use to improve the quality and the default values that are built in.

For example, you can improve the quality by changing the command to:

x264.exe --bitrate 2000 --preset veryslow --pass 1 -o "Drive:\Path To\Where The New File Is Saved.mp4" "Drive:\Path To\The Input File.avs"
x264.exe --bitrate 2000 --preset veryslow --pass 2 -o "Drive:\Path To\Where The New File Is Saved.mp4" "Drive:\Path To\The Input File.avs"


This way, on the first run x264 spends time just analyzing the source and determining the best way to encode the video. On the second run, the actual conversion is done. The additional --preset veryslow tells x264 to try as hard as possible to give more quality instead of speed.

Now you just have to convert the audio to MP3 or AAC or AC3 depending on what your final container is (MP4 works best with AAC for example, MKV works with any of the above) and then you'll use another free tool to combine the video part and the audio part in a final MP4 or MKV file.

You can also try combining them in an AVI file but it's really not recommended, because h264 (the video standard, MPEG4 AVC) was not really designed to work in AVI and x264vfw is using workarounds just to make it work.

It looks complicated at first, but it's very easy once you get the way it works.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yeah, x264 CLI is really really easy to use, actually :)

You can do it, guaranteed.

~MiSfit

[Usagi_Chan]

If typing:

x264 input -o output.mp4

is beyond your ability, I have no idea how you ever figured out to use something as powerful and complicated as Virtualdub.

I really fail to see how that would get a 2 hour or so performance of a japanese musical off a dvd, add English subtitles to it in .ass format, adjust audio timing a touch as needed and produce an output file in .avi or another format that people can view in a player such as VLC. Between DVD Decrypter, VirtualDubMod and VirtualDub I have been able to do that many times now.

That is the problem I see with the GUI programs that exist for h264 encoding. Handbrake doesn't handle .ass (Advanced Substation Alpha) subtitle files, I already described what avidemux did, which was to fill the screen with artifacts that made the entire file unreadable.

I have seen some new encodes using h264 and they were spectacular. I thought that h264 might be a better way to encode than what I have been doing, which is adding subtitles to a number of Japanese musicals and producing a xvid encoded .avi file. Perhaps not, though because the quality of the DVD's might not be high enough to make a noticeable difference from an xvid encode.

Thanks Mariush for the detailed explanation but I'm not sure how any of that would apply to what I'm doing.

[Dark Shikari]

I really fail to see how that would get a 2 hour or so performance of a japanese musical off a dvd, add English subtitles to it in .ass format, adjust audio timing a touch as needed and produce an output file in .avi or another format that people can view in a player such as VLC.Virtualdub can't do that either, so what's the point?

[sneaker_ger]

You can put your encoded H.264 file, the sound file and the .ass script and mux it into the Matroska container using MKVMergeGUI and it should play using VLC or a similar player.

[mariush]

That is the problem I see with the GUI programs that exist for h264 encoding. Handbrake doesn't handle .ass (Advanced Substation Alpha) subtitle files, I already described what avidemux did, which was to fill the screen with artifacts that made the entire file unreadable.

I have seen some new encodes using h264 and they were spectacular. I thought that h264 might be a better way to encode than what I have been doing, which is adding subtitles to a number of Japanese musicals and producing a xvid encoded .avi file. Perhaps not, though because the quality of the DVD's might not be high enough to make a noticeable difference from an xvid encode.

Thanks Mariush for the detailed explanation but I'm not sure how any of that would apply to what I'm doing.

You're making a confusion between encoding and building the final result.

What I explained was how to encode the video part only, using the x264.exe command line encoder. It's the easiest way once you practice a bit. If you don't care about it, you can use GUI's to make it easier for you.

You use another command line encoder or some GUI (LameXP (http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#lamexp) for example)to encode the audio and then you use another tool to MUX (combine) the video, audio and subtitles into a container. The best container would be MKV and a great tool to merge video, audio and subtitles into a MKV file is MKVMerge (inside the MKVToolnix (http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html) package).

Your problems come from the fact that you wanted to use one application to do everything for you at once. Well don't. You will spent a bit more time, probably, but in the end it's worth it.

[srk3461]

@Snak eye: can u post the download link to the VFW you're using!
the one In the screen shots!!