Xvid or MPEG 4?

[generik]

From experience when decoding form a dvd what is the best corse of action... A Xvid, Mencoder MPEG4 or ffmpeg Ripp?

cheers for your comments

[leaded]

The only applications that decode MPEG-2 streams that ffmpegX uses are mencoder and Quicktime.

ffmpegX can ENCODE a ripped DVD file using the Xvid format, DivX, MPEG1, and MPEG2, and some others, but those are the most popularly used.

Xvid and DivX are almost the same (Xvid is an open-source version of DivX). The differences are too technical for me to explain, but as far as personal preference goes, that really is determined by your source file. Different encoders encode different video sequences in different ways. The best way to figure out what'll work best for you, is to experiment. See what gives you the best picture with the best filesize.

MPEG1 and MPEG2 won't give you the quality the MPEG-4 (Xvid and Divx are MPEG-4 variants) will in terms of filesize and quality. What I mean is, to get the same quality, your file will be a lot larger.

Just play around with different settings, bitrates, image sizes, etc.

If I'm wrong anywhere here, someone please correct me