Vdub ruining my movies!!! HELP!

[shawnr10]

ii have many downloaded divx movies, im just resizing them in vdub with the resize filter, and reconverting to divx 5 with a slightly higher bitrate than the original to preserve what quality it had. I have successfully created many vcds using this resize method.

Now, im noticing that after i finish resizing, i skim through the video to make sure everything is ok. but its not. Things look fine at first but at random spots in the movie, "usually only one spot" runs about 10-15 minutes. There is major artifacting that wasn't in the original i mean MAJOR, not watchable. The rest looks great. I've checked the video numerous times for errors and freeze frames. Whats GOING ON!!!!!. someone please help me out.

[SaSi]

By artifacts, do you mean large square blocks of a size about 30x30 pixels with colours approximatelly the ones the movie should have moving around approximatelly as the movie picture should? Are the colours sometimes greenish?

I've had the problem described above. It didn't happen everytime and didn't happen with all codecs. I had it with DivX and also Tmpgenc sometimes produced garbage video. I've been testing around several different codecs, DV, MJPEG, etc. Everything's gone now, after I re-installed the OS. I also made a back-up image of the freshly installed, verified and complete installation, just in case.

If the problem is the one I'm guessing, before resorting to drastic measures, perhaps you may want to try using DXMan. It is a codec un-installer. I read about it in a recent posting, can't remember which one and don't have the URL. Perhaps a search in the forums will reveal it. It was suggested that codecs can be removed with it and what's needed can be re-installed.

Hope this helps.

[shawnr10]

I reinstalled my divx codec, and it made one movie ok, but like 3 others were still messed up. and yes, by artifacting i mean big blocks.

HOWEVER, what it looks like is that vdub is dropping the bitrate really low, and thats whats causing the artifacting.

can anyone out there help me? is it my divx codec? should i purchase the divx codec instead of dl the free one?

[SaSi]

The commercial version only adds a couple of additional options you don't really need. The free version is fully functional and doesn't make any bad tricks.

Re-installing DivX 5.02 by itself wont' help. If you have installed numerous codecs (as I had) there is probably a problem with each one interfering with another. I had the same problems. I used another HD to install as a system disk, installed ONLY what I needed and retried encodings. All are fine now. As I said, in a previous posting about un-installing codecs, see https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=149543 BJ_M suggested to use DXMAN which you can download at
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/dxman.htm. Try that to unload all the video codecs, reboot and re-install DivX 5.02. Then repeat the tests.

[Gazorgan]

When converting DivX to DivX, what makes you think you can up the bitrate? I mean it's already DivX, short of forcing the issue with CBR, you can't increase the quality at all. When you say resize; from what to what? VCD resolution? You can get much better results by NOT re-converting it to DivX, try Huffyuv or mjpeg, the results out of TMPG will be much better.