x264 command line for max quality within Bluray spec?

[Asterra]

Quick, dumb question with probably a quick, easy answer. Probably belongs in Newbie Discussions but, hey. Video Conversion. That's what I'm up against. Got a Bluray that was unfortunately created as VC-1 (or more like lazily brought over from its HD-DVD roots) and I need to change it to H264.

Standard procedure seems to be to go with MeGUI but that program refused to correctly bring up a preview of my VC-1 video, and would shortly thereafter crash. Seems this is a common conundrum, and sometimes no amount of fiddling with Avisynth, ffdshow, Filter Tweaker or anything would fix it, as indeed it didn't in my case. Fortunately, I found another program that seems a little further along in the user-friendly direction by the name of AutoMKV. Unfortunately, none of its built-in profiles use "high profile" or "level 4.1" or other items even I can recognize as being standard for encoding for Bluray. And I don't know all the command line tricks for situating such things. ;p

So I guess that's about all I need. A full command line that ought to get the most out of x264 without exceeding or missing the Bluray spec. I'll be shooting for 2-pass at 25Mbps or so. Thanks.

[Selur]

http://www.x264bluray.com/home got a bunch of examples for blu-ray compatibility, to boost the quality a bit you can choose slower presets, like placebo,...
Bu this will probably not fix you main problem which is that libav can not decode interlaced VC-1 properly, you therefor would need a decoder application to decode the vc-1 content and feed x264 with the decoded output.

Typical ways are:
1. Avisynth + DGDecNV ('forced' donation ware, meaning you have to donate to use it). Pro: normally works; Downside: costs and requires a NVIDIA card
2. Avisynth + DirectShowSource. Pro: Free, Downside: problematic to get it working on some systems (this you figured out form what I'm reading )
3. mencoder + DirectShow Interface. Pro: Free, Downside: requires special wmv decoder libraries in the codecs folder of mplayer

-> all of these three methods can work but need some additional reading (personally I use method 3 and Hybrid as a gui; meaning: I install Hybrid and the 'Binary Codec Package' provided on the mplayer homepage)

Cu Selur

[Asterra]

http://www.x264bluray.com/home got a bunch of examples for blu-ray compatibility

Thanks. Looks like just what I was after.

Bu this will probably not fix you main problem which is that libav can not decode interlaced VC-1 properly

Hmm.. It's possible I'm missing something here, but actually the Bluray I'm dealing with is definitely progressive at 23.976fps. In fact I can't really recall more than a handful of Blurays having been authored as anything else. Interlaced VC-1? Yikes.

AutoMKV has no problems previewing the video (unlike MeGUI which fails and then crashes) so I am not anticipating any further need for semi-esoteric app combinations.

[leghorn]

To make things easier, you could use MakeMkv and create an HQ profile for further use. This way you could skip cmd.

[Asterra]

To make things easier, you could use MakeMkv and create an HQ profile for further use. This way you could skip cmd.

This is the second time I've seen MakeMKV referenced as being able to facilitate (or perform) the re-encoding for me. But if it can do more than rip discs and make MKVs from them, anything else is hidden very well. That said, I never knew it could stream video either, so maybe I'm just blind. ;p

[leghorn]

My mistake...I meant AutoMKV