Convert mpeg to h264

[bijoythulas]

The videos that i upload to youtube dont look any good after going thru the youtube conversion process

so after googling found that most people suggest this to do to the video stream
1. h264
2. deinterlace
3. resize to 280 x 270
4. bit rate to 2000 kbps

and lot seemed to suggest to use megui to achieve all the above.

but megui appears to be way to complicated for me and also it involves several steps.

are there any other tools where i can just feed in the mpg/m2v+ac3 file , set the deinterlace,resize,bitrate options and just click convert.

also if you find any comparison links to graphs of H264 vs mpeg2 would be great.


also is tmpgenc editor a good alternative to achieving the above.

[Baldrick]

Try StaxRip or Xvid4PSP instead. But 280x270 doesn't sound like a good resolution...

[bijoythulas]

Hi Baldrick,

sorry about the late response. i have been really experiementing xvid4psp for the past few days. also this tool led me to a better understanding of megui.

but appear to have another problem with the generated file.

my 1.30 minute video when converted to wmv comes to 15 meg

the generated h.264 file size comes to 21 megs at the same bit rate/fps/size.

going by how much people rave about h.264 i am a bit dissappointed with the output file size.

[guns1inger]

If the video and audio bitrate are exactly the same, then the file sizes will be the same. It is a simple, immutable law.

However, if you are encoding with variable bitrates or constant quality bitrates, you will get variance.

[bijoythulas]

ok that settles it then. so for a given bit rate an h.264 output would be better in quality to wmv.

ok . i am beginning to get an idea ... i guess...

i was earlier assuming that for a given bit rate an h.264 output would be smaller.

but i guess what i understood is if i were previously encoding with wmv at 2000 kbps i should get similar quality with h.264 at say 800 kbps (just an example illustrate what i understood). I hope thats correct.

[guns1inger]

Again, it will vary from video to video, as compression and quality are very much dependent on the content. There are no absolutes.

[poisondeathray]

It also depends largely on the settings used.

You can make h264 look horrible by disabling features or enabling others.

Some settings are good for different different types of genres, but make others look worse (e.g. anime CGI, vs. live action scenes). You can't expect to use 1 "swiss army knife" setting for everything. You should do some testing yourself to determine for your own eyes what settings are "good enough" for you.

In my experience, using good settings with the x264 encoder it is better 99% of the time at equivalent bitrates. At low bitrate encodes, it is better 100% of the time, simply because WMV does not have inloop deblocking.

Note "WMV" also comes in WVC1 or VC-1 the "advanced profile" which offers much better quality than the regular WMV3. They both have the .wmv or .asf extension.

[bijoythulas]

Hi guys,

thanks for all your support during my h.264 learning curve here.

I finally managed to create the video using MeGui encoding my files at about 700 kbps bit and then uploaded them to youtube.

Have to say that i am simply blown away by the outcome in quality leap i have made by moving from wmv to h.264.

My h.264 vid at 700 kbps looks much much better than my 2000 kbps WMV vid. Stunned.