Speed/quality trade-off, in the spirit of x264’s -preset. The bitstream is
valid (and decodes bit-exactly) either way; only the encoder’s effort differs.
Fast (default) — built to mirror x264’s fastest presets: mode decision
by cheap SAD estimation (no rate-distortion trial-encoding; SAD
auto-vectorizes to psadbw), P_16x16-only inter, I_16x16-only intra,
and integer-pel motion (no sub-pel mc_luma interpolation — profiling
showed it was ~55% of the encode). Much faster; larger files, and a little
quality lost on sub-pixel motion (none on integer/screen content).
Quality — full rate-distortion mode decision (every candidate
trial-encoded for real J = SSD + λ·bits), 16x8/8x16 sub-partitions,
and the full I_4x4 intra search. Smaller files; much slower.