Single-pass encoding - possible?

[shogzilla]

I've read the faq, checked every file I could think to look at, gone through every option i could find in both gknot & nandub.

Single pass encoding doesn't seem possible.

I know that quality / predictability are benefits of 2-pass encoding, but to me, the time savings of single-pass outweigh the benefits of 2-pass; with high enough bitrate, quality's fine, and size isn't an issue w/ 160GB drives readily available (already have 5 in one box for encodes) - and I have a backlog of hundreds of discs waiting to be encoded.

The benefit to me of using a single-pass gknot versus flaskmpeg would be the better quality filtering, the autocrop feature, and using vobsub for fine-tune control of subtitle size / placement. The filtering in Flask is acceptable, but the autocrop & subtitling options present in vobsub would be a great boon - to use vobsub in conjunction w/ a flask-encoded avi, i'd have to re-encode w/ resultant loss of quality.

So I guess my basic question would be: can gknot be made to interface w/ vdub instead of nandub? Could it be made to mux the audio on an initial pass?

Is there a way to do single pass encoding (I'm aware that you can set it to do initial pass only - initial pass isn't the same) in gknot?

I've done all the research I can think of to ensure that this isn't a stupid question - but the possibility still exists that it might be. If I have simply been blind to an obvious solution, please be gentle =) Although, harsh flames which still manage to include information useful to enabling single-pass encoding in gknot would still end up being appreciated...

[N_F]

When you do your encoding in Nandub you're using DivX3 SBC (Smart Bitrate Control). With that method you have to encode the movie twice. You'd probably be better of using DivX5 or Xvid if you really don't want to do a 2-pass-encoding.

[shogzilla]

I hadn't noticed the possibility of changing the codec used by nandub; thank you. I'll check into it when I get home.

OTOH, urgh, I've tested xvid & divx5, and got inferior results to 3.11d - guess I'll have to find acceptable options for 'em, if this turns out to be the only method possible.

Hrm. From the gknot-divx5 quide:
Step 3: Video encoding

Configure the codec and encode the video in 2 pass mode using Virtualdub.

This seems to be a problem universal to xvid & divx5 (& divx4, IIRC - although I abandonded that codec fairly quickly, so my memory may be faulty) - they seem to be aimed at 2-pass encoding, and end up not doing single-pass encoding very well.

So, let me re-phrase my initial question:

Is there a way to do single-pass encoding, using the divx 3.11d codec, utilizing gknot as a front-end (thus having auto-crop & vobsub)?

(An option would be to frameserv from dvd2avi, use the reader codec, and mux/encode in vdub, which'd give me the vobsub ability - but still would lack the autocrop. A small, but significant for me, loss).[/I]

[DaveEL]

use save avs instead of save and encode then load the avs into virtualdub and do 1 pass encoding as normal.

DaveEL

[shogzilla]

That sounds like a solution I can use. I'll post a further reply when I get home & try it, but it looks like a good solution.

[N_F]

Nandub can only handle DivX3 SBC. You have to use VirtualDub to use DivX5 and Xvid. If you do a single pass with DivX3 you'll get considerable lower quality than if you compare to any of the other mentiond.

DivX3 just isn't a valide option if you only want to do a single pass.

[timmyg]

If you have a huge hard disk and are not worried about size use the quality based setting in divx5 or xvid.

[Leviathan]

Originally posted by DaveEL
use save avs instead of save and encode then load the avs into virtualdub and do 1 pass encoding as normal.

DaveEL

Thanks, Dave. I can't believe I didn't think of something as obvious as this...I also was wondering how to do single pass with Gknot + divx5.