How to compare encoding techniques

[Karkas]

I love http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/website/compare.html for comparing different encoding techniques and was wanting to do something similar.

I was thinking selecting a frame from the source by taking a snapshot with avidemux, then taking the same frame after the encode and comparing them with a standard picture viewer. I would do this for all the different encode settings I would try to figure out the best for me.

Is this a stupid way to compare different techniques and/or is there a better/easier way to do this?

I really want to look at still frames because it easier to compare for my eyes.

Thanks

P.S. I'm sorry if this is a common question, but I tried searching but couldn't seem to shake the search term needle out of the haystack.

[Dark Shikari]

Single-frame comparisons are always risky, especially when deciding between different encoding settings, because (for example) one set of settings might result in said frame being a B-frame, and another set may result in it being a P-frame. The B-frame will of course look worse.

[Karkas]

Single-frame comparisons are always risky, especially when deciding between different encoding settings, because (for example) one set of settings might result in said frame being a B-frame, and another set may result in it being a P-frame. The B-frame will of course look worse.

Is there anyway to figure out which is which for an apples to apples comparison?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

For example ffdshow has a "OSD" filter that can display the "Frame type".

The same is available when inspecting a MPEG-2 stream in DGIndex or an AVC/H.264 stream in DGAVCIndex.