Question about x264

[WorldWarII]

Hello everyone, i'm new to this forum and i would like to devote some time learning something about video compression. I'm total noob when it comes about x264 .Right now i'm using xvid compression using virtualdubmod,but i'm not that happy with the quality output. I love to watch movies at high quality,but i'm running out of space my hard drive is full. Most of my bluray movies are over 10 gb in size and if i could reduce the size that would be great but still keeping a good quality.If anyone could explain me the steps it would be very helpful for me.Any suggestion from you is welocome.Mike

[minaust]

Hello everyone, i'm new to this forum and i would like to devote some time learning something about video compression. I'm total noob when it comes about x264 .Right now i'm using xvid compression using virtualdubmod,but i'm not that happy with the quality output. I love to watch movies at high quality,but i'm running out of space my hard drive is full. Most of my bluray movies are over 10 gb in size and if i could reduce the size that would be great but still keeping a good quality.If anyone could explain me the steps it would be very helpful for me.Any suggestion from you is welocome.Mike

x264 can deliver the same quality as Xvid at half the bitrate. There is a forum here named "MPEG-4 AVC / H.264" that would be a good start. (Hint - H.264/h264/x264/AVC - same thing.) To simplify things, download MeGUI to get started.

Oh, forget about the .avi container. It's pretty limited. You can do x264 in the .avi format using x264vfw, but why put a new engine in that '67 Rambler?

Warning - x264 is used from the command line, and that scares some people to death. That's why I suggested downloading a gui like MeGUI. That can take a lot of the sting out of it. Forget VirtualDubMod - it's way outdated. Go to vanilla VirtualDub, and even then you won't encode with it. But is the gold standard for testing Avisynth scripts. You will need to know something about Avisynth. There's a forum here for that, too.

Now - basic steps - I originally posted this elsewhere, but here it is again:

1. Rip the appropriate Pgc with DVDdecrypter. (DVDdecrypter won't work on some DVDs and not at all with BR)

2. Open the vobs with Dgindex to create an index file and demux the audio. (DGindex is pretty straightforward, but read the damned docs! If you're one of those people who are unable/unwilling to read, stop right now. Forget about this and use a gui.)

3. Create an avs script file and test it in VirtualDub. (Avisynth knowledge is vital here. An .avs script can be pages long, or a single line)

4. Encode the avs script with x264. (You gotta be comfortable with the command line & know what command line to use. simpler than it sounds. x264 has a great set of presets)

5. Mux the resulting .264 stream and the audio track(s) with mkvtoolnix into a mkv container. (Simple drag & drop, then click)

That's how I do it, but MeGUI does a lot of that for you.

[x265]

x264 >> http://www.videohelp.com/tools/x264-Encoder
MeGUI >> http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/
Avisynth >> http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/AviSynth%202.5/

[WorldWarII]

Thank you guys for your time, But i can't understand why do i need MeGUI ? I have already virtualdubmod and the x264vfw installed? I'm completly new to MeGUI.I know how to use avisynth and create scripts.

[Atak_Snajpera]

easier for newbies would be ripbot264.

[WorldWarII]

For now i would like to start getting used to MeGUI i installed it already. Looks more different than virtualdubmod. I'll have a good look at it

[minaust]

Thank you guys for your time, But i can't understand why do i need MeGUI ? I have already virtualdubmod and the x264vfw installed? I'm completly new to MeGUI.I know how to use avisynth and create scripts.

VirtualDubMod's own developers cautioned users not to use it as their primary encoding tool. It has some problems - with colorspace, it creats non-standard .mkv file, and so forth. it does have some great features that make it invaluable even today. The developers left it 7 years ago. The real VirtualDub is maintained and supported to this day.

Things have changed in 7 years. The .avi container is obsolete - it's got some limitations that once upon a time didn't matter much. Who would ever want a video file bigger than 4GB? Nowadays, a lot of people do. And who would want multiple audio tracks? Me, for one.

x264vfw is just a hint, just a taste of x264. Call it a subset of x264. It doesn't have the full power and flexibility of the full thing.

Just now, I did two encodes of the same script. One with VirtualDubMod and x264vfw, and one with x264. The first encoded at 50 fps. x264 encoded at 130 fps. On a multi-core CPU, x264 scales up beautifully. (One confession - the scripts weren't identical - x264 requires YV12 colorspace and VirtualDubMod can't handle YV12 colorspace. VirtualDub can.)

Last thing - what version of VirtualDubMod are you using? Some versions are better than others. I'd recommend that if you"re outputting to .mkv use VirtualDub (not mod) and drop the .avi into mkvtoolnix to make a spec-compliant .mkv. It'll be a real .mkv, it'll only take a few seconds, and it won't touch the quality.

[WorldWarII]

I tried MeGUI and i'm a little disappointed. It takes to long to encode a 10 gb movie i just couldn't belive. 12 hours? I set the CRF to 18 and the preset to very slow someone said would give me a good quality output and smaller size. But the output was infact 7.6 gb i expect lower than that. Probably i've done something wrong. With xvid using virtualdubmod will take much less but anyways i won't give up. Do you guys know any other ways to do it faster ?

[Atak_Snajpera]

use default medium profile with crf 22

ps. what did you expect from profile with 'very slow' label?

[Guest]

@WorldWarII

Please explain where you are getting 10GB bluray movies to resolve rule 6 concerns. Thank you.

http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm

[WorldWarII]

Sorry my badness i didn't read the rules . I realize this may be out of line, and I intend no disrespect.Mike

[Guest]

Thanks for your honesty. Closing for rule 6.