HIGH quality re-encoding

[astroruben]

What preserves the best quality for re-encoding, standard DVD MPEG2 8000kbps or Divx Hi-Definition profile at 8000kbps? Thank you.


P.S: I'm thinking about getting Divx capable DVD player.

[SaSi]

MPEG-4 encoding (e.g. DivX) offers better quality compared with MPEG-2 for a given bitrate. This becomes apparent in lower bitrates, such as 3-4MBps.

I have read in several places that MPEG-2 encoding with a descent MPEG-2 encoding at 8Mbps offers very little if untraceable loss in quality. That means that MPEG-4 at 8Mbps will be an overkill. I have encoded with DivX with constant quality at 2 (the max) and the effective bitrate was always well below 8Mbps on average.

You are now obviously refering to DivX v. 5.05 or so. I have not tried that one yet an am unsure what Hi definition profile actually means. If it means the obvious (HDTV standard), then I think the output will be unusable in almost any DVD player that even supports MPEG-4. HDTV resolution and bitrates are not yet supported by DVD players (except the SONY Blue Ray player), so if that is what DivX will produce, it's use is only theoretical.

[astroruben]

Ok, thanks, I thought so too but I wasn't sure. Yes, Hi-Definition profile can be selected in ver 5.0.4 or higher. Then what Divx5 bitrate matches 8000kbps of standard MPEG2?

[FulciLives]

Then what Divx5 bitrate matches 8000kbps of standard MPEG2?

I would uncheck the profiles and use the 1-pass quality-based encoding option set to a quantizer of either 1 or 2 (1 is best). This will produce a VERY large file for DivX but compared to other codecs (such as MPEG-2 at 8000kbps) the file size is still very managable.

In any event my understanding is that using those DivX settings you will get quality that is as high as DivX can get. As for resolution I normally use 640x480 which seems to translate well to 720x480 when I then convert the DivX to MPEG-2 (at some time in the future). My understanding is that 640x480 is standard "full screen" resolution for the DivX format and that since it uses square pixels one should not use 720x480 as that is not a square pixel resolution. Thankfully 640x480 is very close to the NTSC DVD standard of 720x480 but if you use PAL then I don't know how well the 640x480 will translate to 720x576

- John "FulciLives" Coleman