number of CCE passes?

[smit_tie]

Hi all,

When I started rebuilding movies and episodic dvd's I always used 9 passes.
Yesterday I read on this forum that doing more then 3 CCE passes is just a waste of time and electricity (overkill).
I read in some messages that 3 passes for a movie is more than enough. More passes will increase the quality but isn't noticable for the human eye.
These opinions were posted many years ago and I want to know if people still think the same way about this.

And what about episodic dvd's (tv shows)?
On average, there are 4 episodes per disc, so much more to encode and mostly episodic discs do have a much lower bitrate compared to movies.
Can I threat episodic dvd's, despite mentioned above, still the same way as when rebuilding movies?

And should I select the option One Pass VBR (w/ analysis)?

I very appreciate your opinions on this matter!

Thanks.

[mp3dom]

Generally you can see subtle fluctuation of quantization/bitrate until 5-6 passes. More than 6 passes is generally a waste since the output stream is almost identical to the previous pass. The '3 pass' limits made more sense years ago, when an encode would run at near 1xRT (real time). With current CPUs, on standard defs materials, it's quite easy to encode at 6-7x RT so even 9 passes doesn't take too much time.

[smit_tie]

Thanks mp3dom.
Then I will stick to 6 passes.
Should I also use this number of passes for episodic discs?
And what about the option One Pass VBR (w/analysis)....should I select this?

[jdobbs]

The developers of Cinemacraft Encoder (CCE) documented long ago (in their user manual) that more than 3-4 passes has virtually no effect. That statement was later removed. If you can't trust the guys who wrote it -- then who do you trust? But, if it makes someone feel better to do 6 passes, then more power to him/her -- just don't expect to see a noticable difference. I personally never go over 3 passes.

From the CCE 2.50 manual:
Image quality slightly improves each time encoding is repeated,
but quality improvement reaches its limit at 3 ∼ 4times of
encoding.

Generally speaking two passes should be plenty for any kind of encoder. The first pass collects all information needed to optimally encode -- and the second pass uses that collected information.

[smit_tie]

Thanks jdobbs, that's very helpfull.
Only two questions left....does this also counts for episodic dvd's?
Should I select the option "One Pass VBR (w/analysis)"?

[jdobbs]

Yes, it holds true. While "One Pass VBR (w/analysis)" can give good results and save time -- I'd still recommend multipass mode.

[smit_tie]

Thanks jdobbs & mp3dom for answering my questions.
I will certainly folllow your advice.

[Pulp Catalyst]

"much lower bitrate compared to movies"

CCE is a hight bitrate encoder, you didn't really say if your doing hight bitrate conversion or low, if low, then use HCEnc. CCE was never designed to do low bitrate conversions.