Optimal Divx settings for archiving

[mike lowrey]

I am currently trying to find the best way of archiving short minidv films I have made and Divx seems to be providing the best results.

My question is what are the best output settings to give optimal picture quality using divx5.03?

The films are around 15mins 720x576 pal dv, edited in ulead msp and the final output file size is not an issue, around 1-2 Gb would be acceptable.

I would just like to keep one hi-res master to be able to create svcd's and dvd's in the future.

thanks for any advice.

[Gazorgan]

15 minutes? DivX or XviD are perfect. Old school says you shoot for 350 MB file size @ 15 minutes so you can archive 2/disk. Try an encode at this rate and see how it looks? That a total bitrate over 3000, and on DivX/XviD that will look better than DVD quality.

I won't even suggest you shoot for a file size of 230 (3 archives/disk ).

A video bitrate over 2000 average, with 4000-5000 peak will give you an archive AVI of superior quality!!! Even with 192kbps stereo audio you have plenty of bitrate.

[mike lowrey]

cheers for that, 350MB seems pretty small though, i dont mind a bigger file size to get top quality image. There are a lot of other settings in divx 5.03 processing box that i'm not too sure about though...