Is three-pass really worth it?

[Twilight_Fandom]

I was wondering...adding an extra process (which can take time) to your whole batch really helps?
More clearly,is 3 pass better than 2 pass encoding?
Or mostly a waste of time?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Although there may be a lot of people more qualified on the forum than me to answer this question...... I would say 3 passes is the max!

And welcome to the forum.

Cheers

[Twilight_Fandom]

thanx.
I know 3 is the max and that more than that will do nothing,but i would like a better explanation on how the 3 passes improves(IF it improves) the quality,compared to 2 pass enc.?

[fccHandler]

This may interest you: Create an empty text file in your C:\ root called "FrameLevelControl.txt," and DivX will write tons of info into this file for each pass. Most of it isn't very interesting, but at the very end of the file will be a quantizer distribution table. On the first pass all frames will use quantizer 2. On the second pass, the quantizer values will be dispersed across a small range, which gets smaller with each subsequent pass. Notice how they seem to converge around an "ideal" quantizer value (kind of like a Taylor series).

[silver_cpu]

Very interesting! But it seems to me like quantizer optimization could be accomplished in the second pass, since the codec would already (supposedly) have the info that it required to make quality judgements. I, however, am anything but an authority on video encoding techniques, so I'm probably off the mark.

[dTb]

Maybe a search is in order as this topic has been discussed numerous times.

[silver_cpu]

Lol my bad ;)