More than 2 passes

[marioval]

Is there a free DVD encoder/converter that does more than 2 passes?

[Baldrick]

hcenc (or together with frontend like avstodvd)

[marioval]

I don't see that option in AVSTODVD?

[lordsmurf]

Why?

[marioval]

I have a particularly long video that I am putting on a DVD5. Convertxtodvd did a decent job, FAVC with HCENC 2-pass VBR did better. I just wanted to try one more thing, wether it works or not, before I called it quits. I Tried AutoQmatEnc 4-pass with AutoQmatEncGui but it only output elementary streams with no audio.

[guns1inger]

So demux the audio from one of the other encodes and author a disc.

CCE is the other encoder that happily does more than 2 passes. However in most cases, after the third pass the refinements are purely mathematical, and not visual, and even when they are visual, the difference between 2 and 3 is very small and not in proportion to the time take for the extra encoding. Back in the day people used to boast of doing 5, 7 or even 9 pass encodes, swearing that you could see the difference. However if you looked at the actual variations in the data, the differences became smaller and smaller very rapidly such they could not influence the visual quality in any meaningful way. It became simple expectation fulfilment - more passes must be better, so it must be better. Except that it just isn't so.

If the video is really that long then you should either use a DL disc, split the file across two discs, or go half-D1, pretty much in that order.

[lordsmurf]

gunslinger beat me to it.