x264 BD compliant "perfect" settings

[spoRv]

It will take seven days and one week...

Of course, if you have another video file, you could replace it with your file.avi (or another extension); it should work!

[IcePrick]

Just one more question. Are DVD compliant MPEG2 streams also BD compliant? Can I just put them into a BD without transcoding or changing anything?

[spoRv]

I haven't tried it (yet), but AFAIK the only difference is the container (vob in the DVD, m2ts in the BD); so, demuxing the video from vob and remuxing it in m2ts should work, with no transcoding at all!

[IcePrick]

Okay, so I've tried your settings. At first pass 2 wouldn't work because pass 1 didn't generate a .stats.mbtree file. I could fix this by changing "--preset ultrafast" to "--preset faster". Does this happen to anyone else? After that, it worked fine, but I did get this warning: "x264 [warning]: direct=auto not used on the first pass." Does this cause any significant problem?

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the image quality with these settings is superb.

[DoomBot]

Ok so i added --weightp 0 in MeGUI but for some reason it won't let me disable open-gop. Any thoughts?

program --level 4.1 --bluray-compat --preset slow --tune grain --pass 2 --bitrate 23500 --stats ".stats" --keyint 24 --open-gop --b-pyramid none --weightp 0 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 40000 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 --merange 24 --sar 1:1 --output "output" "input"

[spoRv]

Here you are the settings you could use with x264:

pass 1:

x264 --pass 1 --bitrate 23500 --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset fast  --tune film --keyint 24 --sar 1:1 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 40000 --b-pyramid none --weightp 0 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 --merange 24 --stats ".stats" --output NUL "input_filename.avi"

pass 2:

x264 --pass 2 --bitrate 23500 --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset slow  --tune film --keyint 24 --sar 1:1 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 40000 --b-pyramid none --weightp 0 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 --merange 24 --stats ".stats" --output "ouput_filename.264" "input_filename.avi"

just copy the x264.exe file in the source folder, open a DOS window, copy all the pass 1 settings, paste, wait for the process to finish, then copy pass 2, paste, done!

Edit: you could always use --tune grain that *maybe* is better with film source

[DoomBot]

Perfect, i'll do a test right now!

Yes tune grain will definitely be used for. I did a test encode and grain was so much better with that.

Thanks Andrea

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I did a test, one thing though, is this normal?

[Image: 2PFIDfe.png]

Does AVISource now it's MagicYUV used?

[spoRv]

Yep, it knows somehow... don't ask me how!

[DoomBot]

Ok, as long as it's good to go, then i'll ignore the red test and error.

[Valeyard]

Hello to eveyone, I think it's time to share the "perfect" settings to use with x264, to obtain a BD compliant file; what you will get is a .264 file that could be used with any authoring software - I use MultiAVCHD, but also Easy BD Light is a good software, but the latter doesn't allow you to make menus... thanks to many OT members, in particular Chewtobacca, that helped me to find out these settings!

Code:

pass 1: x264 --pass 1 --bitrate XXXXX --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset ultrafast  --tune film --keyint 24 --sar 1:1 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 40000 --b-pyramid none --weightp 0 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 --merange 24 --stats ".stats" --output NUL "project_file.avs" pass 2: x264 --pass 2 --bitrate XXXXX --bluray-compat --level 4.1 --preset slow  --tune film --keyint 24 --sar 1:1 --slices 4 --vbv-bufsize 30000 --vbv-maxrate 40000 --b-pyramid none --weightp 0 --colorprim bt709 --transfer bt709 --colormatrix bt709 --merange 24 --stats ".stats" --output "project_final_output.264" "project_file.avs"

There's very little difference between setting --preset slow and --preset ultrafast on the first pass since x264 uses faster settings for the first pass anyway (they are: --no-8x8dct --me dia --partitions none --ref 1 --subme {2 if >2 else unchanged} --trellis 0 --fast-pskip). There's no need to specify --sar 1:1 since that's the default. I'll post back with the settings I use soon.

I'm pretty sure you don't need to specify the --colormatrix, Rec.709 is the assumed colorspace for standard HD material. Same for --colorprim (in fact if anything, you set it to what the original material was set to if it was different to Rec.709). --transfer, again, is assumed Rec.709 for HD material. So there's no need to specify any of that, and in fact using those specifications for something that came from a SD source is incorrect (the correct settings would vary depending on the source, but Rec.601 is  what you want for something originating from a Laserdisc, a DVD, or a SD broadcast, at least most of the time and depending on the source itself). Of course any decent conversion will use that avisynth file to output a Rec.709 correct picture and render tinkering with the colorspace settings irrelevant since AVC defaults to Rec.709 even for SD material (at least that's my understanding). In short: leave those settings alone unless you need to change them to something other than Rec.709.