[MPlayer-users] advice on mencoder options

[D Richard Felker III]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 12:06:03PM +0200, Tuukka Toivonen wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Wed, 19 Nov 2003, D Richard Felker III wrote:
> 
> >> But I think that it might be possible that in the future vhq could set some
> >> other things than just mbd (or maybe it already does) and therefore I like
> >> to always use also vhq in addition to mbd.
> >No, this makes no sense. vhq is identical to mbd=1 and always will be
> 
> Well, then, why?
> 
> Why couldn't mencoder have two modes, fast realtime and slow but good
> quality non-realtime?
> 
> In that case vhq could be a synonym for enabling the slow mode, and it
> would set all sensible parameters to slow-but-good settings.
> 
> Right now one has to give long list of parameters by hand to achieve that,
> and I'm sure most people don't want to waste their time to find out the
> best options by reading documentation or even experimenting by hand.
> 
> Maybe it would be good idea to enable only features that still keep the
> bitstream simple profile -compatible, but things like trellis and mbd=2
> should be enabled with just a single vhq-option.

We've discussed why this is not a good idea many times before. But
regardless of your position on this flamewar topic, such an option
would never be named "vhq". Basic MPlayer policy is that you don't
change things like this in grossly incompatible ways. If we ever add
encoding profiles, they will be a completely new option with much more
flexiblity through the config layer, and _not_ a redefinition of vhq.

Rich