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If there were a way to optimize things better than x264 has, it almost certainly requires working directly within the encoder's analysis code itself rather than carrying out a pre-encoding analysis process and then fiddling with rough-control knobs. I simply doubt the complex interplay of settings within x264 lends itself to mere knob-turning.You're treating x264 like some box of black magic.
As far as the perceptual tunings go, x264 already provides the three most important knobs (aq, psy-rd, psy-trellis) that, due to their nature, can't be a "one size fit all" deal. x264 makes no attempt to guess which of those settings would fit your source best and only offer a conservative Default and a series of tunings for marginally more fine-grained control.
A hypothetical, "better" approach would be to have an amazingly intelligent first pass be done to split the movies into scenes and calculate the perceptual weights for each scene. That way, in a movie like Kill Bill, the animated, fast-action, and talking-head scenes would all be perceptually optimized, as they all need vastly differently settings. Splitting the movies into zones also open up a whole plethora of options for fine-tuning quality. Again, you can always reach these options from the command line.
(Also, x264's psy-rd is hilariously unoptimized for high-stress bitrates. I'm not sure if the purported "service" being discussed in this thread can handle those bitrates, but it's an area needing massive tweaks. x264's main role seem to be high-quality archiving, however, so this is merely a tangent.)
> Even if they managed to build a pre-analysis model that figures out decent settings to feed into x264, it would break to some extent whenever x264's code/algos are changed. That doesn't seem like a stable base to build a business on.
One could just not update, or only update the required parts. I assume reading and modifying code is already a prerequisite here.