2-Pass divx5 noticably better than 1-Pass?

[lordbelial]

I only have a 550Mhz P3 and I was wondering if 2-Pass encoding increases the quality by a very noticable amount? If not I could defiently save some time switching from 2-pass to 1-pass.

[FDISK]

Yes, it definately does. It makes high action scenes look a LOT better than 1-pass, which certainly improves overall quality. Run both passes while you sleep, it shouldn't be too bad then:)

[jggimi]

A single pass at 100% quality (or at maximum bitrate ... same thing) will produce the "highest possible" quality, if disk space is not a factor.

Please, keep in mind the purpose of 2 passes. It's to produce a variable bitrate video. You do this to get the best possible quality for a specific file size.

Think of 1-pass as "constant bitrate" and 2-pass as "variable bitrate." It's a simplification, but will help you grasp the concepts.

[Dali Lama]

LordBelial didn't you use to be involved in the Mac DVD ripping scene? If not then don't mind me.

Dali

[ioman1]

Originally posted by FDISK
Yes, it definately does. It makes high action scenes look a LOT better than 1-pass, which certainly improves overall quality. Run both passes while you sleep, it shouldn't be too bad then:)

How ya been Fdisk? Why don't you send me an e-mail sometime so we can talk? ianbell@bizzbum.com

The whole staff at Designtechnica.com would like to know why we never got a review for the Radeon 8500 card that we sent you. Not to mention that ATi Technologies will be sending a collection agency after you. I am sure your parents won't be too happy about that.

Send me a note Please.

[theReal]

When I don't have to fit a file to a certain size (like when I captured a 5 minute music clip) then I often encode with a fixed quality setting (quantizer 3 or 4 is quite good and not too big).
You can start encoding and see if the bitrate is getting much too high, then you can always increase the quantizer.
I like this method especially since I'm encoding tv-captures at 50fps, and with Gunnar Thalin's smooth deinterlacer plus some smoothing and resizing I'm ending up with 4 fps (that makes 2 fps for 25 frames/sec!). Two-pass would be very annoying for such a slow encoding process...