MeGUI & x264 settings

[codemaster]

1. x264 has alot of settings, my question is from where can I learn how to make a custom profile based on different types of video sources, like dvd ntsc 29.97 and screencasts at 15 fps, so that the encoded x264 video has the best quality possible with the minimum bitrate possible.

2. this leads to my second question. How do I find out how much bitrate is needed for this balance of quality vs file size, because it depends on the frames, so how can I determine how much bitrate is required for a video, and how much for another. For example, if I have a 15 min video of an interview in wich the camera doesn't move at all, only the person, and if I have a second video in wich the camera moves all the time and the camera angles change frequently, I can't give both videos the same bitrate of 1200 kbps if I want the minimum file possible based on the bitrate required to maintain the best quality possible.

3. anamorphic encoding maintains a better quality than the option of resizing the height, just because anamorphic doesn't involve resizeing? Or anamorphic encoding is redundant in terms of resolution or detail?

4. when resizing, how do I know what resize filter should I use, because some people say that "spline36" is recommended and others recommend "Lanczos"? It depends on the source? There are different types of resize filters for different types of sources?

5. I've heard AAC is more efficient at compression than MP3. Nero AAC encoder offers better quality than FAAC and others? And what is the minimum bitrate recommended for AAC audio if you want to preserve the best quality possible from source audio, while keeping aac file size as low as possible ? I think 128 kbps is too low, some recommend 160, but I know that in LAME MP3, 192 is recommended. Is 160 aac somehow equivalent to 192 mp3 because aac can achieve better quality at lower bitrates than mp3? And if, for example, you recommend me 160 and I set it to 160 VBR, it will vary to 192 whenever necesary, or it will stay within 160 limit ?

6. In AutoGK, audio is normalizrd before encoding. How can normalization be done in MeGUI ?

7. mp4 or mkv container?

8. Do you recommend a better tool than MeGUI ?

[Baldrick]

1,2: Why do you need so low bitrate? And go to forum.doom9.org and start reading about megui and h264/x264 encoding. But you wont find any easy/final answers to this.

3: For LOW bitrate use lower resolution.

7: What is your goal with the video?

[codemaster]

no, not too low bitrate, but just enough to to minimize quality loss as much as possible, but not lower, so that the file cannot be bigger than it's needed, but to achieve this, I don't know exactly how much bitrate it should have. Goal is pc playback only.

[deadrats]

no, not too low bitrate, but just enough to to minimize quality loss as much as possible, but not lower, so that the file cannot be bigger than it's needed, but to achieve this, I don't know exactly how much bitrate it should have. Goal is pc playback only.

perhaps the easiest way i can think of is to use an encoder that is "intelligent" enough to decide on it's own how much bit rate to use, perhaps something like x264 or xvid, using the crf feature or even better if you download the latest media coder you can set a target size and let the encoder to all the work (i even tried that it with the cuda encoder) and was quite pleased with the results of all three encodes, though i must admit the x264 encode using the "normal" or "fast" profile gave the best results, but not by much.