What does it mean when something says 6 passes ?

[JAZZEE]

If a dvd has been shrunk to fit on one 4.3gb dvd and has been done with 6 cce passes what does this mean? does it give better quality and if so,how is it done?

Cheers
Jazz

[SkyCAM]

It means that it was processed with Cinemacraft Encoder with a given amount of passes. Passes are to analyze the motion data better and direct bitrate to where its needed most. CCE can process up to 9 passes. There are other encoders which can even do more. But more passes does not necessarily result in better video quality. The more passes you use the more the bitrate spikes from the original tend to "flatten" out. I recommend you use more passes the stronger you recompress a movie.

[writersblock29]

@JAZZEE

According to the programers of CCE, anything more than 4 passes is most probably overkill; most of the improvements made by additional passes are slight enough that you're really not going to notice them -- or that the improvements will be too slight to justify the additional time spent encoding. In your case (6 passes), CCE actually only made five passes during the encoding -- the first pass is really just an analysis of your original, and helps CCE lay the "blueprints" of the work it's going to do on the encoding passes that follow. I beleive that DVDRebuilder's default is 2 passes... which means one pass to analize, and another to actually encode. It'll be like this in any CCE-based program that's set up for 2 passes. You can also use 1 pass methods with certain programs that yeild very good results, as well -- samples of the original are used to determine what settings CCE should use, substituting that 1st full pass, while the encoding actually takes place over one pass. Sizing seems to be the biggest inacuracy doing this... but in many cases, the results look similar to multipass encoding, only they take a fraction of the time.

If you're running encodes that you have full control over (i.e., no GUI from a given program other than CCE itself) and want better control over your project's quality, you'll do good to check out the Doom9 guides which he's linked from his homepage. I think you'll find his guide on the Robshot method particularly helpful: Two well-controled passes will yeild you better results that six one-size-fits-all passes.

Now... before someone else chews you out (or, even, chews ME out for helping you)... this should probably have been posted in a more appropriate forum. Unless, of course, your CCE-using program is classified as a "one-click" utility. ;)