FluffyMuffin

That's what I implied. Either cccp or klite with coreavc. Otherwise he'd be missing ffdshow.

I recommend CCCP over other codec packs like klite because it is generally the most stable and supported ffdshow-based codec pack available. Klite used to be king back in the days of, well, klite. With all the movies downloaded from p2p, a codec pack became necessary and the one with the associated name became most popular. Awhile after klite died, the codec pack became pretty bloated and cluttered and ended up causing problems for people with being unstable. More recently though I see it has cleaned up its act and is a decent codec pack overall. I still recommend CCCP over it because CCCP tends to be simpler with one flavor (unlike klite's 4 different packs) that is still fully complete for all decoding needs. It also tends to be more widely used and comes with a useful settings dialog that is helpful for basic users. But if what you have is working fine for you without problems, it's not that important to make the switch. Though coreavc would definitely provide a massive performance boost in your case. As long as it overrides ffdshow's avc filter, you should be fine.

It sounds like your laptop just has a hard time decoding h264 at full speed. To fix that I highly recommend coreavc (commercial, but around on torrent). Any "stuttering" you experience in the HD videos will most likely disappear with that. I'd also recommend that you remove the klite pack and replace it with CCCP, but that's not entirely necessary.

Yup, that pretty much sums up his argument right there.

I really don't see what you're trying to accomplish from this. This container format war has gone on indefinitely and will never stop because people are always greedy to have free things presented to them in a way such that it will work immediately and conveniently on whatever setup they're using. AVI is out of the question unless you intend to release an SD xvid copy alongside the HD x264 release. The difference between MKV and MP4 is generally irrelevant as long as the avc track is identical. In general mkv is more stable and a lot more flexible/easier to work with. It would be a much better format to work with if you intend to incorporate all those subtitles tracks on your website into the video files themselves eventually. So all these people stating that mp4 is "less stuttery" or looks better than mkv are just frauds with bias for getting a format that works on their xbox/ps3/whatever incompetent device that doesn't support mkv (unless handbrake fucked up somewhere, which isn't totally out of the question). The choice comes down to if you want the most compatibility in exchange for a slightly less versatile and stable container, or vice versa. In the end if your releases are simple enough (single audio and video track and no subs) then mp4 is probably the better choice for your wider audience. Perhaps try a more vague poll that offers less of an option to make a biased decision on the voter's end, like what device they use for playback, to be able to make a better choice for yourself. Your issue here, Ross Scott, is not the video container but the x264 settings. Firstly, just drop handbrake. In the long run it'll cause you more problems than it'll simplify (mainly because it oversimplifies). If you used what it considered to be the "High Profile" setting, then you were duped. MediaInfo says the following about your sample: cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=6 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=300 / keyint_min=30 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=3 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00 I could go on in length about how this is simply suboptimal at best, but it has been awhile since I've been actively encoding things and I really am too rusty to be giving specific advice off the top of my head (I haven't read the x264 changelog for over a year). Considering all the animation work you do, I'm sure you have something along the lines of an i7 so you can definitely be aiming for something of higher quality. If you're uncomfortable around the cli, that's fine, though x264 officially only comes in this flavor. My advice would be the same as the poster above recommended, try megui. For the most part, it's the best frontend available. Its presets will probably be better than handbrakes out of the box, but I still strongly recommend that you config your own profile for it. The settings of x264 can seem pretty confusing at first, but after a few test encodes and some light reading, I'm sure you'll figure it out. That wiki is basically an expansion of the helpful tooltips in megui's x264 config menu. Good luck, I look forward to when fm38 is downloadable, actually more for the audio than the video (youtube <_<).