Avidemux vs Handbrake

[Joshray]

Is there any differences between these two programs in terms of quality when encoding DVDs? I have the same settings set on Avidemux as I did on Handbrake: X264 with constant quality @ 18. Does Handbrake do a better job at interlacing DVDs?

There are a few reasons why I want to use Avidemux: video filters (brightness, contrast, saturation, etc), target file size with 2-pass encoding, faster encoding speed compared to handbrake.

[aedipuss]

x264 and dvd interlacing have nothing to do with each other. dvd is mpeg-2 and x264 is mpeg-4. they are not interchangeable.

[hello_hello]

If you're willing to learn a little about using AVISynth, there's several plugins which can adjust brightness and saturation etc. MeGUI might be a good program to try. Once you've set up an encode (the usual cropping and resizing etc) you can manually add any plugin you choose to the AVISynth script MeGUI creates and if you add the plugin and the desired parameters to the script using MeGUI's script creator, then you can use the script creator's preview function to view the results. Here's a couple of examples:

This one's an internal filter, so you only need to add the parameters to the script. It just does fixed brightness, contrast and saturation adjustments.
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Levels

This one's an AVISynth plugin:
http://www.thebattles.net/video/autolevels.html

As far as de-interlacing goes, chances are most GUI's use the same type of de-interlacing these days. For straight de-interlacing, MeGUI uses Yadif by default. I think Handbrake does too. I've never used Avidemux.

[Joshray]

I don't want to get all technical with MeGUI. I know it has to do with scripting. If there's a good tutorial on how to use MeGUI with the best filters, please let me know.