What's a good, free MPEG2 encoder?

[pandy]

x262? I didn't know such a thing existed. I presume the authors of x264 had nothing to do with it?

You may consider x262 also as interesting MPEG-2 (1?) experience.

x262 is build/developed around x264 coding tools by Kieran Kunhya - at some point it can be considered as x264 modified to use MPEG-2/H.262 syntax and coding tools and as such as MPEG-2(1?)/H.262 encoder. Try it - people reporting problems but overall even at this stage of immaturity quality is more than OK.
Sadly x262 is not actively maintained/developed.

[-Habanero-]

I tried x262 and the quality isn't better than FFmpeg's implementation.

Commandline:

x262 --mpeg2 --crf 11.35 --bframes 16 --b-adapt 2 --b-pyramid normal --ref 16 --rc-lookahead 250 --aq-mode 2  --analyse all --direct auto --me umh --subme 11 --no-psy --mixed-refs --8x8dct --trellis 2 --no-fast-pskip --qpmin 10 --qpmax 51 --keyint 250 -o "TouhouAnime x262 crf 11.35.mpg" "TouhouAnime.avs"

I just copied from what I would normally use in x264. mpeg2 mode ignores the inapplicable parameters but interestingly it does make use of the mb-tree feature so it puzzles me why this looked slightly worse than ffmpeg1.

[Steve(MS)]

Steve, no I don't need it DVD-compliant. This is just testing the limits of the codec. My source for the first test was a 480p CG video already compressed with DivX at 0.200 BPP. It was the best source I could find. Back in 2002 I grabbed a copy of the same video which was 240p done with MPEG-1 that had a lower frame rate, low bitrate and the quality was garbage as you could predict. Using this higher quality source, I wanted to resize to 240p and see if watchable quality could've been retained if better parameters were used.
I've done it with FFmpeg and achieved a fairly tolerable picture.

The second test is a 720p flawless anime source resized to 480p which modern codecs can achieve good quality with dialup bitrates. Currently, I got the same quality @ 380 kb/s with mpeg-1 via ffmpeg and got great quality @ 1300 kb/s.

I've tried HCenc and used what I thought were good settings but the quality was so visibly bad compared to TMPGenc that I abandoned it quickly. So unless I missed some silver bullet that's not on by default, HCenc is definitely not in the top 3.

The thing is I never knew very much (and didn't care) about the parameters however with mpeg2, it was a conclusion that it needs high bitrate and especially so with low quality input(for instance VHS source).
And for VHS, it was either captured lossless or material was de-compressed before fed into encoder.
I suppose free or low level mpeg2 encoders don't measure up on low price end as far as efficiency...a least without a secret sauce.
Like the following links a guy...who knows why, decided on out the top of the roof bitrates with hcenc:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/356706-Re-encoding-at-higher-bitrates-(Not-for-DVD-...nc#post2247694

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/346871-burning-a-very-high-MPG-2-MP-HL

I think a lot can be done with mpeg2 but it looks like more trouble than its worth unless one knows it inside out.

[-Habanero-]

Honestly, I'm not looking for the best quality at a pedantic level, I just want to have unbiased encoders and parameters. The best popular implementation is good enough for me and I'm satisfied with ffmpeg's version because nothing I tried so far could beat it.

Like, if I used Quicktime's H264 implementation (which sucks BALLS) as the candidate, ffmpeg's implementation of MPEG-1 might actually get the best of it. If I ever published something dishonest like this, I'd get flooded with objections.
So I just wanna make sure I'm using a good implementation of MPEG-2 and so far I'm convinced of that tho I'm not positive about parameters.

[pandy]

I would try also QSV MPEG-2 encoder from Intel.

[-Habanero-]

I couldn't find that, is it stand-alone or part of a bundle?

[pandy]

I couldn't find that, is it stand-alone or part of a bundle?

Generally is available as codec in some programs - ffmpeg for example or https://github.com/rigaya/QSVEnc