How many passes do you use?

[kadilak]

Does anyone know how many passes will generally yield the best quality output from CCE? I've heard VAF+2 passes will do pretty well, but I wanted to get some other opinions.

Can doing too many passes actually reduce the quality of the encode? My concern is mostly transcoding 8 GB DVDs to the standard 4.7 size.

[sh03z]

use 4 passes, or 3 minimum

[alfixdvd]

i use VAF + 3

[Buggle]

For encoding AVI to MPEG2 and so, I use three passes. For encoding DVD to DVD I use four; that's CCE's best performance.

[Kedirekin]

As a rule of thumb, consider multipass as a case of diminishing returns. For example:
- first pass: 90% of best possible quality (bpq)
- second pass: 99% of bpq
- third pass: 99.9% of bpq
- forth pass: 99.99% of bpq

Some people would argue that anything over two passes is a waste of time. Some would argue that anything over three is.

Personally, I do as many passes as time will allow, but never more than 5. If I'm encoding over night, I let it do 4 or 5 passes because, well, why not?

[Uli]

Even for Azumi (a 2 hour 20 minutes movie) split on 2 SVCDs + japanese audio + subtitles the VAF + 2 passes did the job very well on cce 2.5. I personally use VAF + 2 passes always.

greetz, Uli

[kheops]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73959

[Trahald]

i do an OPV (q - based) pass + one vbr pass (ROBA)

so essentially 1 vbr pass

been thinking about upping it to 3 passes for extras since i usually starve their bitrate