MPEG -> AVI without quality loss

[Eric#]

Just another question:

Because DivX obviously has a much better compression than MPEG-1 has - which BITRATE should i use if i convert a 1150 Kbps MPEG-1 to DivX?
Should i keep the 1150 or can i put it even lower without any significant quality loss?
And - MPEG-1 seems to have (always?) 224 Kbps audio. So far i read all the articles here 128 Kbps is good enough. So is it useful to keep the 224 Kbps or is it better to reduce the audio-rate to get an even smaller file?

Questions, questions...

[KingJohn]

Oh, forgot to say convert the audio to MP3/DivX that will make a BIG difference

[Eric#]

Oh, forgot to say convert the audio to MP3/DivX that will make a BIG difference

Yes, of course, that's what i'm doing.
The question is only if 224 Kbps is needed or if 128 are good enough..

[KingJohn]

Use www.goldwave.com (Get the MP3 plug-ins as well) then you can save out a little audio test file with different rates, gosh they use 96Kb for MP3 downloads and even lower.

Gold wave will take an AVI for its input

[Vapor]

Should i keep the 1150 or can i put it even lower without any significant quality loss?

Pick a particularly heavy motion scene from your source and try encoding at different bitrates until you receive a result you find acceptable.

DivX bitrate is pretty uncomparable quality wise to that of VCD (mpeg1) or SVCD (mpeg2). DivX will nearly always provide higher quality results using a much lower bitrate than both other mentioned formats.

The bitrate does however dictate the time of clip you will get on a cd - grab a bitrate calculator from the downloads section on here or doom9.net and have a mess around.

Lame is heralded as the best mp3 encoder and with high quality settings using 128kbps VBR provides excellent alround quality. The AVI format does allow basically any combination of video and audio stream however and you may want to try ogg vorbis or even AC3 audio if audio quality is a high priority.