mencoder ignores bitrate parameter when encoding H.264 video

[Austriaco]

After upgrading to Maverick, Mencoder ignores completeley the "bitrate" parameter, when encoding H264 videos, using ridculously high bitrates (10Mb/s for instance).

I have tried many combinations of parameters to the x264encopts option to no avail, so this one is the simplest in order to reproduce the problem:

The source material is in this case DVD quality vide (bitrate ~ 9000 kbps)

$ mencoder -ovc x264 -nosound -x264encopts bitrate=1370:pass=1:psnr -o /dev/null tmp/x264.avi
MEncoder 1.0rc4-4.4.5 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0x4004da2
AVI file format detected.
[aviheader] Video stream found, -vid 0
VIDEO: [H264] 688x560 24bpp 25.000 fps 8944.8 kbps (1091.9 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:3 fourcc:0x34363248 size:688x560 fps:25.000 ftime:=0.0400
Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
Pos: 0.0s 1f ( 0%) 0.00fps Trem: 0min 0mb A-V:0.000 [0:0]
1 duplicate frame(s)!
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect..000 [0:0]
x264 [info]: using SAR=249/172
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 Cache64
x264 [info]: profile Baseline, level 2.2

1 duplicate frame(s)!
Writing header...
ODML: vprp aspect is 16:9.
Writing header...5f ( 0%) 0.00fps Trem: 0min 0mb A-V:0.000 [0:0]
ODML: vprp aspect is 16:9.
Pos: 59.9s 1500f (99%) 80.09fps Trem: 0min 73mb A-V:0.000 [10300:0]
Flushing video frames.
Writing index...
Writing header...
ODML: vprp aspect is 16:9.

Video stream: 10305.644 kbit/s (1288205 B/s) size: 77292323 bytes 60.000 secs 1500 frames
x264 [info]: frame I:6 Avg QP:10.00 size: 57932 PSNR Mean Y:63.95 U:83.16 V:85.64 Avg:65.15 Global:57.10
x264 [info]: frame P:1492 Avg QP:10.02 size: 51572 PSNR Mean Y:54.84 U:67.46 V:73.02 Avg:55.72 Global:53.18
x264 [info]: mb I I16..4: 100.0% 0.0% 0.0%
x264 [info]: mb P I16..4: 25.5% 0.0% 0.0% P16..4: 57.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% skip:16.8%
x264 [info]: final ratefactor: 0.23
x264 [info]: coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 86.5% 48.2% 47.4% inter: 66.9% 42.4% 25.8%
x264 [info]: i16 v,h,dc,p: 27% 11% 46% 16%
x264 [info]: i8c dc,h,v,p: 71% 11% 11% 7%
x264 [info]: PSNR Mean Y:54.878 U:67.519 V:73.066 Avg:55.759 Global:53.188 kb/s:412.78

As you can see, I asked to encode at 1370 kbps on the first (of two) pass and mencoder encoded at 10305kbps. On the second pass I get similar ouput but in addition, the encoder complains about the "2pass curve convergence":

x264 [warning]: Error: 2pass curve failed to converge
x264 [warning]: target: 1370.00 kbit/s, expected: 328.52 kbit/s, avg QP: 10.0004
x264 [warning]: try reducing target bitrate or reducing qp_min (currently 10)

Changing the requested bitrate does not have any effect, AFAICS.

This was working just fine in Lucid. The same problem doesn't present itself if I encode with -ovc lavc -lavcopts vbitrate=1370:vcodec=mpeg4 for instance (Xvid).

$ lsb_release -a 2>/dev/null
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.10
Release: 10.10
Codename: maverick

Architecture is AMD64

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: mencoder 2:1.0~rc4~try1.dsfg1-1ubuntu1+medibuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-24.42-generic 2.6.35.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-24-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: medibuntu
Date: Sat Dec 25 19:33:56 2010
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: mplayer

[Gauvain Pocentek (gpocentek)]

Hi,

Could you test if this happens with the Ubuntu package too?

Thanks.

[Austriaco (lanieves)]

Yes, it **happened** with the Ubuntu as well as with the Medibuntu package.

Since the last libx264 to 0.98.1653+git88b90d9-3ubuntu1 the problem has been solved

[Gauvain Pocentek (gpocentek)]

Thanks for your answer.

I'm setting the bug status to invalid since it wasn't a mplayer bug.