Best Quality Possible in x264

[Metroidn1f]

What do I use to get the best quality possible for 1 pass? I don't care if it take 7 years to finish encoding, I just want to know what do I have to type to get the best quality possible. Like how many bframes and stuff like that. I will put it this way, what are the best settings that you can use for the best quality and there are no other settings then this for high quality?

I looked online what I did not find much, and if I did I did not understand. So ya, best settings for maximum quality that you can get for 1 pass.

Is the preset placebo the way you can get the most maximum quality you can get?

[Wolfen]

If you are just converting a file and don't care about the time involved then just use https://www.videohelp.com/tools/H.264_Encoder for the best quality. settings are automatic.

[poisondeathray]

What do I use to get the best quality possible for 1 pass? I don't care if it take 7 years to finish encoding, I just want to know what do I have to type to get the best quality possible. Like how many bframes and stuff like that. I will put it this way, what are the best settings that you can use for the best quality and there are no other settings then this for high quality?

I looked online what I did not find much, and if I did I did not understand. So ya, best settings for maximum quality that you can get for 1 pass.

Is the preset placebo the way you can get the most maximum quality you can get?

If you don't care about filesize and only about "maximum quality", lossless mode would be the best --qp 0

[Metroidn1f]

Thanks guys.

[Metroidn1f]

Have you ever seen 3Li uploaded HD videos? Also aolofflines uploads too? Well aoloffline HD upload video quality is okay, but there are all noisy, or statice what ever you want to call it, but when you see 3Li videos, they are so clean and clear even at low bitrates. Do you know what command I can use to deliminate the noise or what ever to make it look more clear like 3Li videos. Also, would you be able to tell me the exact command line parameters is used if I give you the details of one of 3Li uploaded videos? For example, it would say bitrate=2000 but the command is actually --bitrate 2000, but for everything that will be listed?

Also if you need me to upload pictures sources to show you what I mean about the noise or static, just tell me and I will.

Well here is the x264 details.

cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:-2:-2 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.2:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=32 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-1 / threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / slices=2 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / mbaff=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=6 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / wpredp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=42 / rc_lookahead=42 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=2759 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

Also, do you know an estimated time you think it would take or possibly the fps it would encode at? Do you know if this is just a regular preset that x264 uses like slow, slowest ultraslow or placebo? I would just use placebo but that would take me like 4 days to just finish one video at 1 pass if the video had the fps of 23.976. It encodes at less then 1fps when I use placebo.

Thanks.
Metroidn1f

[poisondeathray]

placebo is useless, the quality is 0.00001% better compression for 10x longer encode time (it's called placebo for a reason )

just use something like slow or very slow . These are just general guidelines. But the settings you would use are markedly different for some content like anime vs. live action

you're asking about custom encodes, and filters /pre-processing, so yes you would need to upload a source file

[jagabo]

The job of an encoder is to make the video look as close to the original as possible. If the source is noisy the encoder should reproduce that noise as accurately as possible. If you want noise reduction you want to use filtering software.

[Metroidn1f]

What would be good settings for a 720p or 1080p compression at a bitrate of 2337KB/s? I know I asked you this before, but can you just tell me what the command line for just the x264 would look like for this?

Writing library                  : x264 core 80 r1376M 3feaec2
Encoding settings                : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:-2:-2 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.2:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=32 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-1 / threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / slices=2 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / mbaff=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=6 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / wpredp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=42 / rc_lookahead=42 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1933 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

Here are the screen shots. These are the original ones that came with the movie.





And if you could step it down so it could be almost the same quality but with a bitrate of 2337KB/s, so like maybe changing the ref or anything else to make it faster, but instead for that bitrate and this quality, for the bitrate that I want for pretty much the same quality.

If what I am asking is to much, that is fine just tell me, and if you could then just tell me what the command line should look like for those settings at that bitrate, that would do too, I will just change the bitrate instead of changing the settings.

I am going to use MeGUI.

If you guys don't have the time to help me with this, I can wait. Just take your time, and if you can, answer this when you have the time and there are not more important questions then this.

Thanks. I really appreciate the help.
Metroidn1f

[poisondeathray]

Not possible. You're not going be able to cut the bitrate from ~5Mb/s in half and expect it to look good, not matter what the filtering or settings used.

The difference between using the normal preset and some thing much more intense like "veryslow" might only get you 5-10% bitrate savings for the same "quality" level , as measured by PNSR or SSIM , and it takes about 5x longer

If you have the original source, you can make it look as good as the sample video if you used the same settings and filters

If you plan on low bitrate encodes, filtering (e.g. denoising with avisynth filters) is way more important than encoding settings

[Metroidn1f]

Okay. I edited that post, forget about the 4000-5000KB/s bitrate. In this video, it states that the bitrate was set to 1933. The bitrate that I want to use is 2337KB/s. But I just don't know how and what to do to the setting to make it faster and be the same as it is now, but just with my bitrate.

For example:
Lets say that bitrate (1933KB/s) made it look like that with 12 ref, but what would the ref be for if I had the higher bitrate at 2337KB/s? How much lower could I go for the ref? Same thing goes for every other setting.

[poisondeathray]

There is no way to know ahead of time, you have to encode and check it. Every source is different

Look at your encode logs, they will tell you how many ref you are actually using for that source, using those particular settings. If your particular encode isn't using than many, you are wasting time. Same with b-frames

http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Stats_Output

But of course, you can't get the encode log, until after you've already encoded it! So there is no way to know ahead of time...

[jagabo]

What's the obsession with 2337 kbps? You need to put a four hour movie on a DVDR?

[Metroidn1f]

The number 2337 just has my favorite numbers in it, and I thought since this guy used 1933 as a bitrate, using 2337 would not make it worse. Okay then, can you just tell me the command line would look like by just looking at what I gave you in that code?

[jagabo]

Reencoding with any bitrate will make it worse.

[xhCh4K]

Hey Dude!
Don't use --bitrate, use --crf 17 instead

this is the best setting in x264:
x264 --crf 17 --partitions all --8x8dct --rc-lookahead 80 --bframes 9 --subme 10 --me tesa --merange 32 --ref 16 --muxer mkv --tune ssim --trellis 2 --weightp 2 --weightb --aq-mode 3 --b-pyramid normal

Use it and you'll see what i'm talking about!
cuz i've ripped AVATAR Blu-ray from 38GB to 3.68GB(Total size: video_track+aac5.1_audio_track)
The Quality 99.99% the source bluray! believe or not Try it yourself

encoder used: x264 core 122 r2184

[Atak_Snajpera]

--tune ssim only worsen quality. It is only useful for people comparing codecs.

just use
x264 --crf 18 --preset veryslow --tune film

[jagabo]

And I hope you never try to use a blu-ray or standalone media player. Most won't be able to handle 16 reference frames and 9 b-frames. And don't ever look in any dark noisy areas of your video.