Mencoder: x264 [error]: no ratecontrol method specified

PsypherPunk · 01-12-2008, 08:35 AM

I've been using mencoder to encode x264 video for some time. However, after a recent update I've suddenly started getting this error:

Code:

x264 [error]: no ratecontrol method specified
x264_encoder_open failed.
FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.

Just as a test I'm using this command:

Code:

mencoder -nosound -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=1 input.avi -o /dev/null

This has been working for weeks! However, I found that if I pass in 'qp' then things progress normally but I'm not certain that I want to be doing this (as 'qp' effectively nullifies multi-pass encoding according to one source).

Any ideas what could be amiss?

MPlayer-1.0rc2-2.pm.0
ffmpeg-0.4.9.11482-1.1
x264-0.57.719-1.1

PsypherPunk · 01-12-2008, 08:45 AM

Okay, finally found some x264 documention and RTFMed - it seems later versions of x264 explicity require one of qp, bitrate or crf to be specified (so while pass=1 formerly worked I'd now need pass=1:bitrate= for mulit-pass encoding).