Question about x264 profiles and quality

[MatzeXXX]

Hello,

I am new to MeGUI, after having used AutoGK for many years. I want to use x264 from now on, that's why I abandoned AutoGK.

My only questions right now are about the x264 profiles and video quality.

Profiles like Unrestricted 1pass Const Quality HQ/Fast/Balanced/Extra Quality, etc. all produce files of similar size, but balance between encoding speed and quality, right? So if speed doesn't matter to me (well, it shouldn't take days to encode...), I should stick with HQ?

If I find the result too good looking, in a way that I could accept less quality (maybe similar to the 75% Xvid setting in AutoGK), what's the easiest way to achieve this? I don't wanna mess around with all those settings for x264... mainly because I don't understand them!

Thanks!

Matthias

[Dark Shikari]

x264 works very simply. There are two options that matter:

1) CRF value.

Pick something from 0 to 51. 18 is roughly equivalent to Xvid's CQ2. Higher is lower quality.

2) Preset.

Speed-quality balance. Ranges from "ultrafast" to "placebo".

I'm not entirely sure what MeGUI is trying to do with them these days, but it would be nice if they simply added two buttons, one for each, and just left it at that.