[MPlayer-users] Is more than 3 pass really beneficial or am I just paranoid about quality?

[Nico Sabbi]

Giacomo Comes wrote:

>My experience is that for mpeg1 and mpeg2
>You need only 1 pass.
>I use 3 different set of libavcodec options
>and the PSNR of 2 pass encoding is always worst than 1 pass.
>For 3 pass, with some options, 3 pass is better than 1 pass.
>
>The story is different for mpeg4. Usually
>2 pass is bettern than 1 pass
>and 3 pass is better than 2 pass.
>4 pass is not that much different from 3 pass.
>
>Giacomo
>
>  
>

in my experience 2 passes improve visual quality by a large margin, 
whatever the codec used.
It's not the first time that PSNR figures and my eyes say opposite things.