Does 2 pass improve quality or only time?

[presto]

If I want to make my svcd look more like the source (as perfect a copy as possible) do I set TMPGenc for 2 pass?

My source is a very degraded vhs tape and I have allready found that the capture motion setting does make a big difference.

[mrtristan]

I really can't tell the difference. I usually use the constant quality variable bitrate and set it to 100. 2 pass encoding might allow for a smaller filesize, though.

[SiCN]

Well, encoding time will significantly increase, but it's imho worth it. Especially if we are talking about TMPGEnc Plus' new 2 Pass VBR. Nevertheless, I find the encoding quality in CQ mode (100) very good as well and encoding will go faster. You don't have control over file size thou. For VHS tapes which are quite degraded in quality I can only say that the best is to use a combination of filters and configure them to which looks best to you (you always get a preview). TMPGEnc's filters are in my opinion more than sufficient, still they use very slow algorithms so you end up with nearly two times the encoding time (if you have to do lots of cleaning up to do). Otherwise you can of course capture and frame serve the tape with VirtualDub, it contains many good filters as well and those are quite fast.