These options are applicable for H.264 encoding.
1) If you are planning to upload your converted video to the Internet so people can play it back on the webpage or download it, you may want to make use of progressive download option.
If you turn this option on before converting, your converted video will be processed with webpage player progressively, i.e. from the beginning, without the need to be fully downloaded before watching.
Similarly, if you download such video onto your PC, you can open it up with a media player and play it back before it actually fully downloads.
This option is available under Advanced options within current format settings window.
Click Settings button to the right of the chosen format first, then click Show Advanced button in the lower part of the window.
Set "Progressive download" checkbox and click OK.
2) Tune is an exclusive setting used when converting with H.264 video codec.
- film – use for high quality movie content; lowers deblocking
- animation – good for cartoons; uses higher deblocking and more reference frames
- grain – preserves the grain structure in old, grainy film material
- stillimage – good for slideshow-like content
- fast decode – allows faster decoding by disabling certain filters
- zero latency – good for fast encoding and low-latency streaming
- PSNR and SSIM – these are the options to optimize for good peak signal to noise ratio and structural similarity values only.
Better metrics do not necessarily mean better quality though.
3) Two-pass encoding
You can use this method if you aim for a specific output file size, and if output quality from frame to frame is of less importance.
Two pass encoding is a video encoding strategy used to retain the best quality during conversion.
In the first pass of two-pass encoding, the input data from the source clip is analyzed and stored in a log file.
In the second pass, the collected data from the first pass is used to achieve the best encoding quality.
In video encoding, two-pass encoding is usually controlled by the average bitrate setting or by the bitrate range setting (minimal and maximal allowed bitrate).
Conversion with two-pass encoding is slower than one-pass encoding.
So if you are short of time, you can select one-pass solution.
4) Profile
If you are interested in more settings, choosing the profile enables you to adjust the settings for a particular goal.
The difference between profiles is usually not significant, however, it might be useful to know the possibilities of each to use them successfully.
Baseline Profile
This profile is used for applications with limited processing resources and real-time applications, such as various mobile applications and video conferences.
Main Profile
Universal and mainstream consumer profile for broadcast and storage applications, predating the High profile.
High Profile
That is the primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly for high-definition television applications.
This is the profile adopted into HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc).
High10 Profile
This profile builds on top of the High Profile to add a support for up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.
High 4:2:2 Profile
Primarily targeting professional applications that use interlaced video, this profile builds on top of the High 10 Profile, adding support for the 4:2:2 chroma subsampling format while using up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.
High 4:4:4 Profile
This profile builds on top of the High 4:2:2 Profile supporting up to 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, up to 14 bits per sample, and additionally supporting efficient lossless region encoding. It also supports coding of each picture as three separate color planes.