MPEG4 and Xvid Confusion

[iceblueboy]

Hi,

Please forgive me for being a newbie...i have tried finding advice but still confused...

I have a large number of mpeg movies and have just bought a dvd player that is xvid compliant....is xvid this the same as mpeg4 ?

One of the things i was told was that mpeg4 is the same as mp3's are for music ie. that you can compress files to an eighth of their size.

Can someone please let me know if this is true and what software I can use to do this with...ie. converting my mpeg and avi files into xvid files. It would be great to have them on just a few disks instead...

Hoping someone can please give me advice as I'm not really sure about the xvid/mpeg4 format at all. I did try to use flaskmpeg to convert one of my files but it seemed to increase the size not reduce it.....

Thanks

[Poppa_Meth]

MPEG4 is the general compression standard. there are various compression types that evolved from that standard though. That is where Xvid, Divx, WMV, Quicktime and so on come into play. They are all different types of MPEG4. As for conversion to MPEG4 check the various guides in the Convert section on the left menu. There are many guides to do this in various compression formats. check the glossary for more info on the various formats.

[teegee420]

I have a large number of mpeg movies and have just bought a dvd player that is xvid compliant....is xvid this the same as mpeg4 ?

Xvid is a type of mpeg-4, yes.

One of the things i was told was that mpeg4 is the same as mp3's are for music ie. that you can compress files to an eighth of their size.

That's a gross overstatement. Especially considering the question: an eigth of what size? If you're talking about converting a DVD to Xvid then it's possible. If you're talking about avi and mpeg clips that you downloaded then it's not at all possible because those files are highly compressed already. As a rule, I don't put more than 90 minutes of Xvid on one 700mb CD. This amounts to a video bitrate of around 1000kbps. The higher the bitrate the better quality of video you will get. If you plan to put your Xvid movies on DVD then you can use an even higher bitrate for better quality and still manage to put a good 3-4 movies on one disc.

Can someone please let me know if this is true and what software I can use to do this with...ie. converting my mpeg and avi files into xvid files.

Virtualdub is a good tool for converting to Xvid. Head over to doom9.org for guides on converting to Xvid.