Assistance in selecting optimal variables please?

[jzeroboy]

I'm about to graduate from college and wanted to back up the favorites from my DVD collection since when I moved to my university, the shipping company misplaced some of my possessions.

After playing with ffmpegx for about a week I have been unable to get the program to meet the criteria that I wish it to perform at.

I'm hoping that someone can provide me with some help please?

I ripped my DVD and saved the VOB onto one of my externals.

I wish to encode into 250MB file roughly 44 minutes in length, a resolution of 512x384 with NTSC, audio quality of about a sample rate of 44100Hz with an audio bitrate 96kbs.

I am having trouble finding the appropraite codec, the video bitrate for said codec, and the correct selection of features under the options tab that can meet my requirements.

A friend was able to get one of my files to work on their PC under these requirements using DrDivX, and the end result was nice. They used a Divx5 codec, a feature not available it seems in ffmpegX (I don't know if that makes any difference or not, I'm more of a sound tech than video).

I would appreciate any assistance as I don't want to ask my friend to back up my movies for me since that Dr DivX program causes her computer to lag more than a VAR.

If someone can point me in the right direction that would be wonderful!

Thanks in advance

~Cheers

[major]

You may use the "DivX mencoder" target format. Set 512x384 (though you should better crop and use 512x288 or 512x224), set NTSC FILM, set audio, set 250MB as size and 44 min as duration & click "Rate" to determine the bitrate and encode.

[jzeroboy]

Thanks for the info, however when I select those settings the bit rate is calculatd as being too slow, would using any of the Options or Tools features help? If so, which, should I use the default quantizer or would you have any interval suggestions?

Also when I autocrop it changes the resolution... and, obviously, the crop values change depending on the start time location... how will this impact bitrate?

Thanks in advance for any additional advice

~j

[major]

First autocrop, then set 512x288 or 512x224 depending on the aspect ratio (16:9 or 2.35:1), and finally do the other steps. Bitrate should be 620 for the 512x224 size which is just fine.

[jzeroboy]

Awesome, I appreciate everything, just one remaining question DivX 3 ffmpeg works while DivX 3 mencoder does not, I receive an error in Terminal that reads as the following:
multi threaded encoding not supported by codec
Could not open codec.
FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver.

Is one either faster or better at encoding than the other or does it not matter?

Thanks so much for everything!

[major]

Prefer the "DivX mencoder" target format, which uses the "mpeg-4 mencoder" codec, comparable to DivX 4/DivX 5.