Scintilla beat me to it, but I'll post anyway. BTW, I love the feature that shows new posts to the thread while previewing your own.
Vax wrote:Scintilla wrote:Did you try encoding it with a constant quantizer (like XviD's full quality first pass or x264's constant quantizer mode) and see if the bitrate changed any?
And How would I go about doing this?
In XviD's configuration, that would be accomplished by clicking on the button next to the quality slider, switching it from Target bitrate (kbps) to Target quantizer, or vice-versa. This is, of course, assuming you're compressing from VirtualDub. Personally, I just make sure XviD's other options are set correctly (generally speaking, in alignment with the tech guide's recommendations, albeit with some differing points) and set a bitrate of 4000kbps - it almost never hits that ceiling, it just ensures that there's ample breathing room.
Also make sure you're using the newest version of XviD - version 1.2.1 was released this past week or so, which means 1.1.3 and the other 1.2 builds are outdated.
http://koepi.info/
For x264, it varies by the GUI used. I use MeGUI (when I even use a GUI, anyway), where that option is controlled by the drop-down on the config page's first tab - setting it to Const. Quantizer (-qp) or Const. Quality (-crf)*. I'm certain Zarx's has a similar choice, I can't see a reason for it
not being there, at any rate. The terms might be different, though - if you set the GUI to display the command-line then a difference in language won't matter because the options passed to x264 remain either -qp or -crf, and you can use that as a guide when choosing from the drop-down menus or whatever.
*I mention -crf because it's a semi-related mode, and commonly gets suggested as preferrable.