You're 100% right, the first instinct a programmer would have as a codec dev is "gee we def don't need that many bits to encode pure black frames" I can't wrap

You're 100% right, the first instinct a programmer would have as a codec dev is "gee we def don't need that many bits to encode pure black frames" I can't wrap my mind around this article and exactly what's going on because AFAIK VBR has been default ~forever. You don't even need multipass for that because you just have to look ahead N frames, it was received wisdom, statistically backed, as far back as 2007 that multipass was a waste of time because it was extremely marginally, like .0001%, better than just doing VBR, and using CBR was really dumb and wrong unless you had very specific edge case technical needs. I can't even remember what, maybe poorly designed initial H.264 decoders or people feeding into legacy broadcast system Little more context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40770734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40770734