There is the x264 Zones parameter:
x264 --fullhelp ... --zones <zone0>/<zone1>/... Tweak the bitrate of regions of the video Each zone is of the form <start frame>,<end frame>,<option> where <option> is either q=<integer> (force QP) or b=<float> (bitrate multiplier)
Use it like so: --zones 400,500,crf=10
I think this describes it best.