[MPlayer-users] black and white DVD

[D Richard Felker III]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 01:00:10PM +1000, Adam Nielsen wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> > > You can use -lavcopts gray, but some people have reported it being
> > > buggy in the past. You could give it a try at least.
> > For what it's worth, I've used -lavcopts gray a few times and never had
> > any trouble.
> 
> Is there any benefit for doing this?  Do the files end up smaller or better 
> quality when this option is used instead of the normal "colour" mode?

Maybe, maybe not. There's certainly a (small) benefit in speed, since
libavcodec can skip looking at the (relatively small) chroma planes
entirely for encoding. As far as improving quality, it depends on your
source material. If your source is properly encoded black&white movie,
with absolutely nothing in the chroma planes, then it will make no
difference. On the other hand, if your source has noise or slight
coloration in the chroma planes, using the "gray" option will throw
all that away, saving a few bits.

Rich