x264 – My Preferred Video Encoder
If you have any experience with compressing videos, you probably know the h264 codec. What a lot of people don’t know about is a very good alternative encoder, x264.
A problem that the h264 encoder suffers from is the dreaded gamma shift. It seems to affect people on Macs who compress videos that are then viewed on PCs. x264 seems to not have this problem, or at least not as much of one. I don’t know too much about the specifics of the technology, but from my own personal experience, the x264 encoder seems to always yield better results.
The good thing is you don’t have to download anything special to view videos encoded with x264. As long as you can view h264 videos, you can view x264 encoded videos.
Now, you may be wondering where to get this encoder and how to encode videos with it. It’s simple! Go to http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/ and download the x264Encoder. I suggest you bookmark that page because the encoder is updated quite often. Once you download the DMG, open it and you’ll see a file called “x264Encoder.component.” Copy that file into your Quicktime folder (Macintosh HD > Library > Quicktime), and that’s it! If you have Quicktime Pro, just open up the movie and choose File > Export > Movie to Quicktime and click the Options button.
Next, click the Settings button under the Video checkbox, and choose “x264Encoder” from the drop-down list. You can mess around with the other settings (Frame Rate, Data Rate, Keyframes, Quality, Multi-Pass) just like you would with the h264 encoder…
…but there’s even more advanced settings if you click on the Options button at the bottom that I would only recommend you touch if you do further research. Luckily when you download the DMG from the site above, it comes with a number of documents that explain what each option does, but it’s still a bit cryptic to me, so I usually just leave all that alone.
If you don’t want to use Quicktime Pro, I know the encoder also works with Compressor. I’m not sure what other programs it works with.
For more information about the x264 codec, check out the following sites:
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