x264 Settings... Help Needed

[Kira_Douji]

Yeah, that file size and quality was why I wanted to learn this stuff in the first place

As I said, though, it turned out most of the problem was with QuickTime, so it makes more sense now!

Thanks anyway~ ^_^

[Mister Hatt]

Can someone explain in what way MeGUI is a "decent" encoder? All it does is encourage bad practice, have terrible defaults and tooltips that dn't properly explain what settings do, resulting in users changing things they shouldn't, and package ridiculously outdated versions of everything. IIRC it's own devs don't even support it. Handbrake is a lot better and works natively on whatever platform. There is also an official x264 GUI that has been merged out of master but it shouldn't be THAT hard to include it in a build. sx264 is probably the best GUI for it that I've seen though. Just saying.

@YiulongnameIcantrecall: stop telling people to do bad things while sounding like you're clever. You're not helping anyone.

[Kira_Douji]

I've been using MPEG Stream Clip pretty much since this thread... I finally found the presets section and between the help here and the documentation it makes a bit more sense to me now. There's even a section to enter in command line - I think I found a spot for that in handbrake too, but for some reason handbrake seems to have a harder time in general with the video files I use. /shrug I'm curious about the one you mentioned though... Google ahoy~

[Mister Hatt]

x264 has it's own presets which are better than the ones any GUI idiot comes up with. If a GUI uses x264's internal presets, then it's no real special feature, and if it has it's own the they're only making things worse. Nobody should ever have to enter CLI vars in a GUI either. Basically use CLI, there is no need for a GUI ever, but if you MUST use one (and it's still being developed, no idea) then sx264 is your best bet.

[Kira_Douji]

I have to disagree. If you're used to CLI, having a place to throw that into the GUI at least until you're comfortable to it. The presets you have in MSC are either ones you assign (up to 2) or you have access to whatever presets are in your encoder, so in this case, yes, they are the x264 presets. I also haven't seen sx264 in a Mac variant from my google search on it. Frankly, I think MSC is really much nicer than people give it credit for.

[Quu]

if you are using JEEB's x264 build... my favorite (and very simple) command line is

"x264 --crf 14 --preset veryslow --acodec alac -0 dest.mp4 source.avi"

if you know what you are doing, you can add a --tune command: "--tune animation" or "--tune film" etc

that is what I consider archival quality... if you want another options... you can use a different x264 encoder (you would not use "--acodec alac" then... then use flac (use the --best" command) and then mux it all in mkv...

[Kira_Douji]

Flac on the mac side has been nothing but a headache for me, honestly. But thank you for your input.

[Quu]

Kira... if you can get a hold of a nice x264 build with ffms2, libav, and l-smash integrated in (the Jeeb build) for mac, you can basically make amazing files... the ALAC audio codec is the Apple Lossless Audio Codec which someone reverse engineered and added to libAV... it is compatible with the MP4 container.

[Mister Hatt]

The audio stuff doesn't come from L-SMASH, Kovensky wrote it for GSoC. FFMS2 and libav support are also default in x264. The only patches JEEB uses are L-SMASH muxer, fade-compensate, and fgo. These patches are all rather common (L-SMASH a bit less so, but only because VFR_Maniac writes code nobody else gets) and can be easily built on OSX. Kovensky is also a mac user and a pretty nice guy, maybe try asking him for a compile?

On the site, iirc the one who reverse engineered ALAC (and everything else RE'd in libav) was kshishkov, man has a gift for it.

@Kira: sx264 uses Qt, building it on OSX takes about 3 minutes. Being able to fuck with CLI in a GUI is stupid no matter what your exp is. Better to just have regular graphical opts with more useful names. If you can use CLI, then just use it normally. Otherwise stop pretending and halfassing it.

[Quu]

i did not know that ffms2 and libav were mainline now... that is awesome. (I know the audio stuff comes from libav)... I just wish the libav aac encoder was better... meh, give it time.

in my testing, l-smash muxed mp4 files seam to do better than mp4box and mp4creator... not sure why... but i have been to busy to test further

I agree that the alac RE was an awesome job... i was very pleased.