Hi all. First of all, sorry for the late reply but I am in a pre-format period and I have many things to close, so I can't troubleshoot now. DTS, yes, my system is rock solid. Despite the fact that I don't believe that this problem is settings-related (or even revision-related), I am giving you my shots, mainly to hear your opinion for them (I am looking for best quality, but I am not sure for some choices I made). I do supply the first-pass settings only, because the second-pass settings are actually the same. As I said, I don't think that the settings or the x264's version causes that. Why? Because I had another PC here (P4@2,4) and I installed GK 0.35, MKVToolnix 1.7 and x264 r600 VFW and I had also copied the .settings files (from my personal system) to the GK's folder. So everything were like my personal system (I have verified the settings from x264's GUI also). I did an encode without any problem (except the... 24-hour duration for a 2-hour movie), so the problem seems to be elsewhere. As you can see, I have 6b and Chroma ME enabled. I believe that there is an incompatibility issue with another software or something, because that second system was freshly installed with less programs than mine. I want to remind here that exactly THE SAME PROBLEM WAS HAPPENING EVEN WITH AGKP ADD-ON (which uses x264 CLI), so it's not a VFW error. The strange is that it's not there every time. For example, I did 2 successful encodings with AGKP, but then suddenly that error came up. The ONLY reason I tried a CLI-based encoding was because I had that error in GK, but it seems that this damn problem comes after me. As for the VirtualDub case, I tried to replace VDubMod with VirtualDub 1.6.16 (for that reason also I selected AVI as the container and mp3 as the sound format in GK settings), but unfortunatelly at the start of the process an error message came up which was saying that the switch /log is not supported (obviously the two programs have different sets of switches). As for the color depth, you probably mean that when the encoding has already started, I should go to VDubMod and select View-->Color Depth to see which is the colorspace? I haven't tried it yet. OK, I am going to format my system and I will post again here after a new try. I believe that this is going to happen in the next 5 days. Thanks. http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/1536/4535201bt8.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/723/4535202ke0.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/6994/4535203ec8.jpg http://img331.imageshack.us/img331/2461/4535204gc9.jpg PS: DTS, could you please tell us which is your favourite program for x264 encodings (mainly DVD rippings)? PS2: BTW, those file transfer services you mentioned require for sender to know the recipient's e-mail address (well I don't know yours). If I understood correctly, they don't upload the file providing the URL, except from www.rapidshare.de which is full now.

I wish you luck with the reformatting! A few tips in the meantime: Set max b-frame number to 3. You'd actually get more quality out of your encode by disabling Fast Pskip than you would with the fourth consecutive B-frame. Also, you might want to try a bitrate variability of 60. Quality-wise, this might not help (although I'm not familiar with your source), but GK might expect bitrates based on the default Qcomp, so it might help solve your problem. Anyway, good luck with the system reformat!

Hello DTS. I have my new system up and running, but unfortunately the problem persists. I have tried only with TV captures (lossless Lagarith codec used), not with DVD yet. Do you think that there is something to do with the nature of the source (eg codec)? I am facing the same error "Requested bitrate is too low. Estimated minimum x kbps" after the first pass. I have also tried with VirtualDub v1.7.0; when I am finishing the first pass and try to start the second, overwriting the filename.avi file, the same error comes up. So I think that there is nothing to do with GK, it's a general VFW issue. I have also tried with the default x264 settings in GK and no result. So it is not settings-related. I suspected a crop or resolution-related source of problem, so I tried with several output resolutions, keeping them always in 16-modul (maybe the cropped source has to be 8-modul). But I have also two more important things to add: I tried to isolate the first minute only of the 18-minute capture and experiment with it. I saw that the whole process goes fine and the x264 worked like a charm. So something else causes the inconvenience, which has to do with video size or length. I verified this result with another 1-minute part of another capture. The second piece of information is as follows: When I am using matterial from TV, mainly lossless, I am using VirtualDub to export the sound in a wav file, but due to big filesizes, I don't re-save the avi without its sound (in general, GK wants the video and the audio streams severally). Then I use GK to encode the video stream with x264 (from an avs input with only AVISource function) and the audio stream with Vorbis. If we suppose that the initial avi is 5000 MB (4800 video + 200 audio) and the encoded Vorbis is 15 MB and if I have set the final output to be 150 MB (135 MB x264 video + 15 MB Vorbis audio), then the filename_movie.mkv will be 335 MB (135 MB x264 + 200 MB wav) but the filename.mkv will be 150 MB (in the final multiplex it uses the Vorbis stream). So I suspected that maybe the presence of the uncompressed audio stream may "confuse" x264 encoder regarding bitrate. I decided to re-save the 18-minute capture without its sound and I re-try the process. Indeed, the encoding succeeded to finish... but the result was an ugly 18 MB mkv (11 video + 7 audio), instead of 148 MB. The quality was awful of course. The strange is that in the log file it is clearly written that filesize is 148 MB and that the bitrate is 1060 Kbps... I have verified this result with another 16-minute capture (exactly the same behaviour). Now, I am truly ready to hit my head in the wall, because I can't understand anything. If I suppose that other people work properly with x264 VFW, I believe that maybe there is an incompatibility with another software in my system. PS: DTS, I hope that the r600 does not have any internal errors.

I guess we can try the pieces one by one, then, to see exactly where the error occurs. See if you can isolate the video only and open it directly with the la-*test*-('") stable version of VDub. Set video mode to "Fast Recompress" and audio mode to "No audio." In codec configuration, reset x264's defaults and set your pass/bitrate requirements only. Now see if you can encode the file correctly to AVI and reach the target video size. Any reason you're using mkv in the first place? A few notes in case it fails: -Make sure the video stream when fed to x264 is mod16. If it's mod16, it's automatically mod8 anyway, since anything divisible by 16 is also divisible by 8. It doesn't matter what the initial resolution, resized resolution, intermediate resolution, aspect ratio, etc are as long as the video that goes into x264 is mod16. -Try a framerate of 25. If this works, we can try to increase the number of variables in the encoding process until we figure out which one is causing the trouble (mkv container? framerate? resolution? vorbis? vbv buffer problems? etc). Well, hope this works!

i dont have problems anymore. i dont know what is was. i just uninstalled everything and reinstalled it. why i use mkv. well most of my encoded 90% or so are Dual audio or are i profide subtitle that ppl can switch on and off. cant do that with avi. unless you hack the avi :)

Hello DTS and everyone out there. I don't know what to do anymore. I really can't believe that I am the ONLY ONE that has this error message! What is happening? Has anyone else tried a DVD ripping with GordianKnot and x264 VFW? If yes, which was the result? I am starting to believe that maybe something is wrong with my filters configuration. Maybe I have to change something in ffdshow. Has something to do with the GraphEdit's output of a vob file? DTS, in GK which is the resolution "that goes into x264"? The cropped one (eg 704x560 for a PAL 4:3 DVD) or the output resized resolution (eg 704x512)? Or maybe the initial input resolution (720x576)? IS THERE ANY OTHER TOOL, EXCEPT VIRTUALDUB AND ITS DERIVATIVES, THAT I CAN USE TO ENCODE INTO X264 VFW? Which software do you use for your encodes, DTS (and other people)?

There's AVS2AVI, an excellent little program that converts an 'avs' file into an AVI, and allows you to use the guide's settings exactly. To use this tool, you must download a program called "AVISynth" and try to load the vob via the avs (use DGIndex if you have to). Well, it's still less work than you'd do with the cli, seeing as the visual VfW configuration is laid out for you here.

Hi everybody. Today is a happy day for me. I think that, after 5 successful encodes, I can report safely my conclusions. During an effort I was making to fix a crash problem with the famous messenger Gaim, I started uninstalling my programs one-by-one (I have noticed the last month that after I had installed/updated a set of programs in 3 different machines, Gaim started crashing in all of them). I have come into the point to have only 20 essential programs in my system (btw I found the source of Gaim's problem: particular version and build of Outpost Firewall). Then I thought to re-re-try an x264 encode to see whether I was double lucky. Indeed, I saw that everything was like the good old past, as if my system had been touched by a magic wand. This obnoxious error message disappeared (both in VFW and CLI frontends) and now I can encode with my favourite good old GK. As for the cause of my problem? It's obvious that another program (or its configuration) or combination of programs was interfering with x264. That's why I am having this problem even after my format (I am using almost the same set of programs as before with identical configuration). That's why this issue doesn't appear in other systems I have tried to encode. Now I will start installing and configuring my usual programs and the same time I am going to -*test*-('") x264 encodes. This way, I believe that I will detect the source of this nasty problem with both versions of x264 (settings, resolutions, frame rates, containers etc have nothing to do with that issue). When I have news, I will repost. La vita e bella! PS: DTS, I want to thank you again for your answers, advices and in general for your interest, during this tough troubleshooting.

Hi to all! I read the whole topic, but i still have a little problem. From several days i learn to use - x264(DTS version) with Gordian Knot 0.35, but i have a problem with movie's cropping. when i use Xvid-codec and crop any movie, i haven't problem! I need a help or other program that havent this problem with x264. PP Sorry, but my english is not very good!

hmm i never had a problem cropping with x264 and knot :P i'll just crop it then resize it to like 720x480 or 640x480 :)

I'm so glad the problem was finally solved! Congratulations to your successful system-cleaning, too :) La vita e bella!:D Slammer: make sure the resolution you crop to is mod16 (evenly divisible by 16), or else all sorts of odd things will happen. ThaNeko also has a good solution: crop it to whatever resolution you want, and then resize it to a standard resolution like VGA, or Widescreen resolution, etc as long as the resized resolution is also mod16.