x264 for footage???

[kyle_m]

ok guys i fed up with that lossless sh*t and wanna keep my footage in something less space consuming...i set "fast-decode" checkbox in codec gui but obviously this is not enough, seek time is really hitting the ground especially with higher bitrates...gimme a clue god of codecs what option should i try amongst the hell of options this stuff proposes

[Fuzzy Chickens]

What, exactly, are you trying to do? Are you working directly with VOBs or using losslessly compressed AVIs as an intermediary?

[Fuzzy Chickens]

Are you more concerned with seek times or hard drive space?

[l33tmeatwad]

What type of footage are you trying to convert?

[kyle_m]

welp i figured shit out finally. theres magic command line shit "--keyint 1" that makes keyframe every shitty frame and i also set "--bframes 0" but not realy sure it makes any sense. but peoples cant do this shit using standard x264 gui, i had to mine out meGUI package to pass in extra command line. i use refactor number 18 or 19 that makes shit look pretty good and cease the space ~ten times. and it gets decoded in vegas much faster than lagarith which is slow as shit actually especially on large resolutions. yeah i looked for space-savin and live-preview reliability, fuck the quality, live hard die fast

[kyle_m]

Are you more concerned with seek times or hard drive space?

both

What type of footage are you trying to convert?

animu

[mirkosp]

Are you more concerned with seek times or hard drive space?

both

Then you'll have to sacrifice quality, at least to a degree.

Code: Select all

x264 --crf 14 --keyint 3 -o output.mp4 input.avs

The resulting video will be a rather high quality lossy, and it will have a keyframe every 3 frames. Seek time will be sufficiently fast since you have many keyframes and filesize will be greatly reduced compared to lossless/keyframe only streams, but the quality impact will likely be noticeable through generation loss, if not instantly. Lowering the crf will help increasing the quality some more, but that comes at the cost of filesize. Increasing the keyint will boost the compression, but at the cost of seek speed; you can alternatively boost compression by increasing the crf, but that impacts the quality.
If you want it all (perfect quality, low filesize, high seek speed), the only solution is bait-and-switch editing: make a low keyint file (1 is lowest, it will make every frame a keyframe), and have a very high crf value (like 30 or so). Do also make another encode with a crf of 10-14 tops, and rest of the settings as if it was an encode for distro. Use the former in your NLE while editing, and when you're done, save and backup the project, then tell the editor to use the high quality clip instead before exporting. Export time will be slow, but at least you were able to edit smoothly.

[Shui]

Mirko, if I convert some of my footage in that manner will it also increase seek time when I use fake avis for editing?
Or in other words, does ffvideosource give a shit?

Because I'd say that seems like a good way to use bait and switch without having to decode x264 directly inside my editing software.

[mirkosp]

Yes, it will still work that way.
If one does have the HDD space tho, UTVideo is still the way to go.