mencoder XviD (2-pass) slow and broken?

[Jacke]

I have no idea why, but I can't get XviD mencoder to work properly. It's horribly slow: for a test file of 18 seconds, menc XviD took nearly 12 minutes to do 2 passes, while menc MPEG-4 took 2 minutes (same with ffmpeg MPEG-4).

XviD menc can't stay within the bitrate either: on the test file I had it set at 1067 kbits/sec, menc MPEG-4 produced a file of 2.6 MB, ffmpeg MPEG-4 a file of also 2.6 MB while XviD menc blew it up to 17.3 MB!

The 1-pass mode, while still taking about 4 minutes, managed to keep the bitrate roughly constrained.

This leads me to wonder if anyone else is seeing similar results with mencoder Xvid and what the reason could be.

I'm using the latest 0.0.9t release on 10.3.9. The last version that I've had it working properly on is 0.0.9k. I do remember it also on some later version, but I don't know which one, nor can I think of any change I have made to break it.

[Case]

I tried a VOB conversion four ways, and XviD wasn't much slower than the others on my tests:
(00:01:52, encoding to 288x160, 2 pass, v0.0.9t)
mencoder mpeg4: 00:02:46, 5.3 MB
mencoder xvid: 00:03:31, 5.0 MB
ffmpeg mpeg4: 00:03:31, 5.3 MB
ffmpeg xvid: 00:03:53, 5.3 MB

[Jacke]

Perhaps it's just me then. Will try encoding on another user and see if anything's different then.

[junkmalle]

Check Xvid's Motion Search Precision and VHQ settings. These can have a very large effect on encoding time. Easily 4x between the fastest and slowest.