[MPlayer-users] Produce 422 format pixels with mencoder for mpeg4-encoding

[Tom Evans]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 4:11 PM, James Board <jpboard2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Does anyone have an opinion on the quality of MPEG4 video produced
> by x264 as compared to libav?  By itself, 422-format pixels are higher
> quality than 420 pixels.  But if the x264 codec itself isn't as good as libav,
> then the overall quality might be better with 420-format MPEG4 libAV,
> then with 422-format MPEG4 from the x264 codec.  Does anyone know?

Where are you getting that x264 is a "worse codec" than libav's
"mpeg4" encoder (and they aren't codecs, they are encoders that encode
to a specific codec)?

In my opinion MPEG-4 AVC always produces better results than MPEG-4
ASP for a given bitrate, almost regardless of any other options.
MPEG-4 AVC is the basis of almost all HD broadcast television, all HD
disc contents, almost all live streaming, and almost every "scene"
(pirate) release.

ISTM that pairing a less advanced and effective encoder with less
chroma subsampling is unlikely to produce higher quality results. If
you're doing this for post-production, you should probably use very
high bitrate (even uncompressed) MPEG-4 AVC for your intermediate
files, before producing whatever output you finally want.

Cheers

Tom