Capture to divx..resolution, bitrate HELP please

[hardwork12]

I tried two things with help of a few guides of course and just some things are not clear to me yet.

I did a DVD rip and encoded a movie (men in black II) using DVDx (2.0 was available). I left the resolution to export at 720x480 and used a bitrate from the calculator for 2 CD-r's which was 2091 kbits/sec. Problem with this is I can not run it on my PC as it slams my CPU to 100% and it runs kind of like what things look like when watching the encode its not smooth but jumps from "still" shot to a future "still" shot. Put another way its like watching TMPGEnc during and encoding. EDIT: More information is that I lowered the bitrate to 950 and still does not play it does the same thing just faster now.

I also did a capture using virtualdub 704x480 (used this with a CVD). This was captured using huffyuV compression in case that matters. I then used virtualdub to encode this clip to divx 4.12 and lame MP3 sound and a bitrate of 2070 kbits/sec Good This played fine.

Now I don't have a clue what is wrong and what the approriate settings are. At first I thought that the DVD to divx did not work since I either had too high a bitrate or too high a resolution but the captured video worked just fine at almost the same settings.

Appreciate some help here Thanks.

What is the appropriate resolution to use?

What is the acceptable or recommended bitrate to use? I used what the bitrate calculators showed for the DVD to divx.

Is this correct? it seems that divx conversion is done at whatever the *.avi was I do not see any way to modify it. When I do CVD for example I can capture at whatever I want or do a DVD rip but the CVD resolution is always 352X480 (NTSC) regardless of the *.avi resolution.

Thanks again

[hardwork12]

I tried a whole bunch of settings in DVDx so does this make sense.

By just dropping the resolution on the encoding of the DVD RIP from 720x480 to 512x288 (maintain the 16:9 aspect ratio) my CPU usage dropped from 100% to 51% and runs very smooth now and looks quite good.

Problem is now the video looks like it on drugs. It is running too fast and the audio is way out of sunc with the video. Its better if I set the bitrate at 900 than if I set it at 2500 but bad in either case.

I know divx should run fine on a 900mhz system like mine so what would be some possibilities on what is wrong. I am using the lame MP3 if that makes a difference.

[hoola_loop]

divx at 720 x 480 will slam the highest of pc's imo i think anything over 640 x 480 is just overkill. i myself use 512 x 384 and it runs perfectly. i output to tv with tview scan converter and the movies look like dvd. settings you use when encoding also has a lot to do with playback and pc usage such as using b-frames-gmc-qpixels and psych enhancments all together will put usage to 100% very easily even on high end machines if encoded at higher res's. peace

[hardwork12]

Problem is now the video looks like it on drugs. It is running too fast and the audio is way out of sunc with the video. Its better if I set the bitrate at 900 than if I set it at 2500 but bad in either case.

From my post above:

The video runs too fast and the sound is choppy and out of sync. I tried divx 3.11 and 4.12 using the DVDx program and still the same problem. The movie I am testing with is a RIP of "Men In Black II" so maybe there is a problem with that movie. I ripped with DVDecrypter and Smartripper same problem. I did get an error something like this "the disk may be locked" in DVDx (2.0) I clicked OK and the program let the encoding to divx proceed.

Anyone have ideas? Is the error I got possibly related to a copy protect?

[Gazorgan]

There's more to DivX than just a bitrate calculator. It will get your the right size, it will NOT get you quality. Quality and bitrate are tradeoffs. Higher bitrate usually improves quality. Then at a certain point for divX it doesn't help. since you mention bitrate, I assume you aren't doing a 2-pass encode( a shame really, MIB in 2-pass is impressive, it goes from action to slow to dark scenes too much for single pass )

Generally speaking, especially for MIB 2 at 720x480 (you keep the AC3 sound?) your talking 3 CD's, maybe 4. Drop it down to 512x384 and you can hit 2 CD's.

Your problem is you have too much video information for the size of the file. And as for slamming your computer, CPU? RAM? OS? HD type? Player? Think of playing as the opposite of encoding. You see a lot of DivX at 512x384 or 400x300 (4:3) and 480x270 (16:9). the reason is you simply can't compress 720x480 to 1 CD for a 2 hour movie, the codec isn't that magical. 2 CD's pushing it sometimes at lower resolution.

Add in the AC3 soundtrack and you just don't have the bitrate to display the movie. Try a lower resolution, you won't be able to tell anyway.

[hardwork12]

Gazorgan

I think you are giving me the answer but I do not quite understand yet.

From My post above I stated the following. Are you saying to drop the resolution Further?

By just dropping the resolution on the encoding of the DVD RIP from 720x480 to 512x288 (maintain the 16:9 aspect ratio) my CPU usage dropped from 100% to 51%

Did not know I could do divx with 2 pass that was not an option in DVDx (2.0) how would I do that?

For the sound I used Lame MP3 encoding so I assumed I no longer had AC3?

As for the size of the encode I am confused. If I set the resolution to 512x288 the size is then dictated by the bitrate for the divx conversion as best I can tell. If I use 900kbits/s it fits on 1 CD I will have to check that again. to force the file to fit on 2CD's I have to double the bitrate. I am missing something here if i further lower the resolution the file will be even smaller.

the reason is you simply can't compress 720x480 to 1 CD for a 2 hour movie, the codec isn't that magical. 2 CD's pushing it sometimes at lower resolution.

Appreciate the help. Please bear with me sorry.