Tweaking mencoder options

[acid_burn]

The following is my script for ripping a DVD and converting it to XVID. The resulting video looks very blocky in appearance and parts of the video are very purplish in color. I'm looking for some advice to tweak this script to produce better output.

#! /bin/bash

TITLE="title"
BITRATE="777"
CROP="720:352:0:62"
SCALE="628:265"

dvdcpy -o /tmp/dvdrip -m -t 1 /dev/hda

mkfifo /tmp/audio.fifo
mplayer -quiet -nolirc -nocache -noframedrop -mc 0 -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:nowaveheader:file=/tmp/audio.fifo -af volnorm=1 -channels 2 -aid 128 -dvd-device /tmp/dvdrip dvd://1 &
oggenc -r -R 48000 -q 3 -C 2 -o /tmp/audio.ogg /tmp/audio.fifo
rm /tmp/audio.fifo

mencoder -nocache -noslices -oac copy -aid 128 -sws 7 -zoom -vf crop=$CROP,scale=$SCALE,hqdn3d=2:1:2,harddup -mc 0 -dvdangle 1 -o /dev/null -dvd-device /tmp/dvdrip -ovc xvid -passlogfile /tmp/xvidpass.log -xvidencopts autoaspect:par=vga11:chroma_opt:vhq=4:bvhq=1:quant_type=mpeg:nocartoon:noqpel:turbo:trellis:nogreyscale:nogmc:max_bframes=2:bitrate=$BITRATE:pass=1:threads=2 dvd://1
mencoder -nocache -noslices -oac copy -aid 128 -sws 7 -zoom -vf crop=$CROP,scale=$SCALE,hqdn3d=2:1:2,harddup -mc 0 -dvdangle 1 -o /tmp/video.xvid -dvd-device /tmp/dvdrip -ovc xvid -passlogfile /tmp/xvidpass.log -xvidencopts autoaspect:par=vga11:chroma_opt:vhq=4:bvhq=1:quant_type=mpeg:nocartoon:noqpel:trellis:nogreyscale:nogmc:max_bframes=2:bitrate=$BITRATE:pass=2:threads=2 dvd://1

ogmmerge -o "/tmp/$TITLE.ogm" -c "TITLE=$TITLE" --noaudio /tmp/video.xvid -c LANGUAGE=English --novideo --notext /tmp/audio.ogg

Thanks in advance.

[unskinnyboy]

How do the original frames of these two frames on the DVD look like?

777? Isn't that a bit low? Did you try raising the bitrate?

What was the average quantizer for this encode? Seems pretty high. You can check this by running the file through DivX DRF Analyzer. DRF = Quantizer.

[acid_burn]

I seemed to have fixed my problem by changing quant_type=mpeg to quant_type=h263 and lowering the frame rate slightly, which improved the quality. I need the bitrate to stay low to make the resultant file fit on a 700 MB CD-R.

All seems fine now, but feel free to add your two cents to my options

[unskinnyboy]

OK. If H.263 looks OK to your eyes, then by all means use it. If you are aiming for 700 MB, then you need to use a softer matrix like H.263, and also a softer resizer like Bicubic.

What do you mean by lowering the framerate though? Frame rate as in fps of the movie?!