Best settings for H.264/AVC for low power laptops

[a.wright]

Hi,

I have been testing converting video to H264/AVC using both Nero Digital & TMPGenc Xpress 4 (Main Concept) and have managed to get decent quality for target file sizes. However what I don't know is whether certain settings cause a decoder to work much harder & therefore a) cause CPU load issues & b) drain the battery faster.

My feeling is that anything making compression more efficient is going to lead to (a) & (b) above so are there any templates or reference guides suggesting best settings that maintain quality with the least system overhead but still gives a decent level of compression for the purposes of using netbooks or low power laptops? I certainly can't find any. e.g. does using CBR or VBR make a difference, using a higher number of reference frames etc? There are so many variables that I could spend the next 10 years fiddling and the manuals don't really give any clues.

Andrew

[guns1inger]

The bigger power drain comes from the constantly spinning HDD during play back.

[a.wright]

Very true I guess... it's just that I thought H264 was well known for generally being more resource hungry than Divx etc due to the better efficiency of compression. If there is really nothing much to be gained from playing with all the settings, that just makes life alot easier!

[guns1inger]

It is more resource hungry, but it depends on a number of factors. If you are working with HD material then you do need a fair bit of grunt. However if you are working with standard 640 x nnn type material the difference is a lot less. Also, if you start to tone down the settings to get back to Divx type performance, you lose all the benefits of encoding with H264