To reappropriate this for SD content, what would you suggest changing beyond the obvious stuff?
What I can think of:
1. bitrate (I guess 8 Mbps is the absolute max that makes sense here, so maybe 7000 or something depending on the audio and all that)
2. keyint and merange (30 for NTSC interlaced content? or should it be considering fields rather than frames, thus 60?)
3. Adding SAR (storage aspect ratio) for anything sourced from a non-square pixel source, so if I've cropped down to 704 x 480 (from a 720 x 486 LaserDisc capture for instance), I *think* this should be --sar 10:11 to get 4:3 DAR (display aspect ratio)
4. colorprim, transfer and colormatrix, all of which I *think* should be changed to smpte170m for NTSC content
Would there be any other things I should alter? Say, for instance, the bufsize and maxrate? I would guess because I'm targeting a lower average bitrate they shouldn't matter massively, even if they're waaaay higher than they need to be, but maybe I'm wrong there.
EDIT: I went with this in the end, feedback welcome...
Code:
x264 --pass 1 --bitrate 6000 --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset veryslow --tune film --keyint 30 --sar 10:11 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 7000 --vbv-maxrate 8000 --b-pyramid none --weightp 0 --colorprim smpte170m --transfer smpte170m --colormatrix smpte170m --merange 30 --stats ".stats" --output NUL "script.avs"
x264 --pass 2 --bitrate 6000 --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset veryslow --tune film --keyint 30 --sar 10:11 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 7000 --vbv-maxrate 8000 --b-pyramid none --weightp 0 --colorprim smpte170m --transfer smpte170m --colormatrix smpte170m --merange 30 --stats ".stats" --output "encode.264" "script.avs"
PAUSE