Artifacts/noise around text in Xvid encoding, and not with x264?

[nyriador]

Hello all,

I have recently decided to transfer my DVD collection to my computer - I have a PS3 with a large hard drive, and want to transfer my library on it. I had tried a few times in the past, but had never been able to find a program that did exactly what I wanted it to do. This time around, I tried a few free alternatives, before deciding to use Fairuse Wizard - which does a fair enough job, I find. During that first round of research, I also somehow came to the conclusion that I should use x264 and not xvid to encode (noob mistake, as I would later discover, since I'm using an avi container).

After ripping a few DVDs, I discovered that, while x264-in-avi plays well on my computer, it is not recognized by my PS3. Bummer. Upon doing further research, I also discovered that x264 in avi is generally a bad idea. I therefore decided to restart the process, this time using xvid, which plays flawlessly on the PS3, as well.

Size is not an issue here, and I focus more on quality. The speed of completion is a bit of a factor. Because of this, I used the following settings when encoding:

x264: Single pass, constant quantizer (=18), AC3 sound.
xvid: Single pass, constant quantizer (=2), AC3 sound.

Generally, I find the image quality to be comparable between rips of the same movie. However, I have noticed that there is significantly more "noise" or "artifacts" around text (such as credits, etc) using xvid than with x264. Why is that? See end of the post for a screencap of a movie encoded with xvid.
(alternatively, click here: http://i424.photobucket.com/albums/pp325/Nyriador/Screencap1xvid.png )

See the artifacts around the text? It was a lot less noticeable in the x264 version (which I unfortunately destroyed, so I can't really post it for comparison. I really should be less impulsive...).

So, my question: Why would there be more "artifacts" with xvid? And is there a way to diminish this?

Cheers!

Nyriador

[poisondeathray]

So, my question: Why would there be more "artifacts" with xvid? And is there a way to diminish this?

Those edge artifacts common to xvid are compression artifacts and DCT ringing

x264 encoder offers much better compression. This implies at a given bitrate, it will be higher quality than xvid (if used properly)

you cannot compare "quality" if the filesizes are different. This means they use different bitrate because filesize=bitrate x running time

you can play back h.264 in PS3 , just remux the container to mp4 (e.g. use YAMB or mp4box)

[nyriador]

Thanks for the reply!

Just out of curiosity : the filesize of both files is almost the same (the xvid one is smaller by about 150 mb, and we're talking about roughly 2 gb files). I'm going to assume this just proves .h264 is superior to xvid?

[poisondeathray]

You can do a search , there are many many comparison threads. It's not even a debate. x264 is vastly superior to xvid in every way (even encoding speed for a certain level qualilty if you have an i7 or better cpu). Even hardware support for AVC is better than xvid these days (e.g. portable devices, phones, media boxes) - it used to be sparse for AVC

[nyriador]

Ok, thanks!