DivX to DVD - errors on black parts

[cheeseplease]

I converted a DivX to DVD and when I watched the DVD the black and dark parts of the footage were full of artifacts. the rest of the video looked okay though, so is there any recipe for avoiding that crap?

[mats.hogberg]

If you are sure those artefacts are not present in your DivX (have you played it on your telly?) there's no other option than to raise the bit rate of your mpg. However, my bet goes to that they are in fact present in the AVI, and then the only solution is to get a better source.

/Mats

[cheeseplease]

hmm, I cant play the DivX on my telly (thats why I convert it to DVD)

but I watched it via DivXplayer and played around with the brightness settings, and no, these artifacts arent there.

I mean I wonder why. I had this 700MB divX video of 100 minutes whatever, and converted it to a 3,8GB DVDmpeg2, so the bitrate wasnt the lowest too. but its there

[mats.hogberg]

With 224 kbps audio, that'd give you 4939 kbps video. If you're using LPCM audio, I'd guess it's more like 3500 kbps. Both are lowish. I think some artefacts are inevitable. Try encoding a good source (like a commercial DVD - but then even they have arefacts in dark areas) using the same method (and settings) as you used when encoding your AVI.

/Mats

[cheeseplease]

okay, just looked at the DVDmpeg with Avicodec, and as you said it's got 5030 kbps Bitrate only. but anyway, thats a lot more than what the divx has...

so this is kinda dumb. I mean is mpeg the worst format on earth or how come this turns out this way? I mean the original DivX file has a bitrate of 810 kbps, and even if I go up to 5000 kbps it still fucks things up?

Isnt there just anything I could do to keep the quality, I mean I just increased the filesize by 4.

[mats.hogberg]

Every time yoiu encode one compressed format (like DivX) into another (like mp2) you loose a bit of quality, that's inevitable.
DivX AVIs are usually of lower res than DVD res, so just that fact makes the DVD mpeg require a higher bit rate to maintain the same quality.
Third, DivX and other mpeg4 compression schemes are more efficient than mpeg2.
So, there's no relation at all between source bit rate and destination bit rate when encoding video.
You can only say that the higher destination bit rate you use, the more like the source it will be (but never 100%).

/Mats

[fritzi93]

Might help a little to encode at 1/2 D1 ( 352x480 NTSC or 352x576 PAL ), rather than D1. More bitrate to go 'round. But considering the source, it's not likely you'll get rid of the artifacts entirely.

[teegee420]

Same as above.