I’m excited about the new 2-pass option, but I’m surprised by a couple of quick tests I ran this morning. In comparing the encoded videos (identical except for the 2-pass checkbox), the quality seems the same (if not actually a tiny bit worse in the 2-pass), though the file size on the 2-pass is about 12% smaller.

I’m encoding to FLV. Perhaps my settings are wrong? Any other ideas? Bruno perhaps you can post an example comparison somewhere and include the encoding specs you used? I’d be happy to pay the extra for a 2-pass as long as I’m sure I’m getting the value out of it.

Thanks!

Hi Woody,

I’ve done a screenshot comparison:

We can clearly see the difference between the two pictures. 2-pass encoding is better. Small details make the difference. Of course you need to have a raw video with good quality and not a “macroblock” video, otherwise you won’t see any difference unless you really increase the video bitrate. The other benefit of the 2pass encoding is the lower file size.

The best thing to do is to tweak your format by changing video bitrate and try to get the best quality / size.

Yeah, it’s weird. My source video is high quality. My only guess is that my encoding settings are just too low quality- so the difference isn’t there other than a reduction in filesize. I’ll keep playing around. It’s still great to have the option available for other uses even if I don’t take advantage of it for this app!

Yes, in fact if your bitrate is too low, high resolution, ... you won’t have better quality with 2pass (you can’t see the difference). You need to increase the video bitrate and / or decrease the resolution.