More than two xvid/x264 passes with Gordian Knot?

[frazie]

Hi, how would I do more than two passes on a video conversion while using the X264 or xvid codec? its easy with divx as it has a drop down menu allowing passes upto about 7, but the others dont have this, and I prefer to use x264 or xvid codecs.

[manono]

Hi-

I don't know anything about X.264, but XviD allows only 2 passes, whether using GKnot as the front end, or encoding directly in VDubMod. Only DivX allows you to do a bunch more passes.

[guns1inger]

As with most mpeg encoders, 2 passes is enough to get 92 - 96% of the quality out of the encoder. The final few percent, generally only perceptable at the data level, and not visual, is gone after the 3rd or 4th pass. Given the amount of time required per pass, most encoders don't both allowing more passes on the basis that the effort (or time) required isn't justified by the small difference in the quality resulting from it.

[Scorpion King]

I'm pretty new to x264 but I just tried to do multipass with 3 passes. I used VirtualDub v1.5.10 and x264 core 50 snv 569 (an older version).

I simply setup as I would when using divx. 1st pass - job control, nth pass - job control, nth pass - job control. Then job control - run.

Worked like a charm. As you can see the program wrote 3 stats files during this 3 pass test.

My 3 pass test was 2K smaller than my 2 pass test. That may not mean anything by what I remember reading before.

Hope this helped.
Good luck.

[frazie]

Thanks for the replies lads, if two passes is enough then theres no point in bothering with more passes I reckon.