Anyone else think the new VSO Divx to Dvd SUCKS?

[maca]

I have the old 0.5.2.99 free version of this tool, and it's great. I downloaded the new trialware, and though there are a lot more options on the new one, the quality of my finished movie blows. Lots of breakup, and most of my authoring programs refuse to even extract the video. And this is with the same movies that work wonderfully with the old version. After a side by side comparison, I'm sticking to 0.5.2.99.

Anyone else encounter problems with the new one?

[ROBERT BLACK]

I find the pixel breakup is the most prevalent on DVD Players without Adaptive Error Correction. But I encountered the same crap on the older freeware version. The video is mostly excellent on Players that have AEC. My problems with Divx to Dvd is how it handles 23.976 Fps video to 25fps PAL. Not very well. The fact that both versions can't seem to encode beyond 4800 Kbps is not very good either.

[maca]

I agree with what you say about players with AEC being able to clean up the errors, but in my comparisons of the two programs, I was getting the errors with the new version and not with the old one on the same files. So there's something "buggy" about the new version, or at least there is on my computer.

The lack of ability to go above 48Kps is one thing that doesn't bother me. Since the divx doesn't have quite the quality of the original dvd, why waste the space making it take up as much room as the original dvd? I like that the VSO engine only uses as much bitrate as it needs to; I get two movies on a disc and they look as good as if I had done only one movie at a higher bitrate, padded to fill the whole 4.5 Gig.

[DereX888]

lol
this POS sucked since begining IMO

[maca]

Well, since the old program gives me drop-dead-gorgeous conversions with ease every time, I'm not sure why anybody could think it's a POS. And I've used just about everything, including the biggies like TMPGenc, Cinema Craft, etc. I had VSO 0.5.2.99 on my computer for a long time before I got around to trying it, and when I recently did I was amazed that converting could be so easy and maintain such quality. Wish I had tried it earlier; could have saved countless hours futzing around with those other supposedly "advanced" programs that ultimately offer nothing but bit-padding with no increase in quality.

[CSULB71]

maca, I agree with you about the older version 0.5.2.99. For my needs it is excellent in processing DV/AVI/XviD files (from my camcorder tapes via VrtualDubMod), both in quality and speed. I was tempted to try the latest trialware version, but after reading several negative posters, I'm glad I didn't. The only shortcoming of v0.5.2.99 IMO is the lack of authoring, but for most of my camcorder ----> DVD conversions, I found I can do without menus.

[maca]

I just use another program, like TMPGEnc DvdAuthor, to pull the video from the VIDEO_TS folder and re-author it with menus, etc. Takes a few more minutes but it's worth it, and the whole process still adds up to less time than converting the divx with most other programs.

[CSULB71]

I just use another program, like TMPGEnc DvdAuthor

I've been thinking of trying that program for some of my files, but do I need to have/learn TMPGEnc first? How easy, really, is TDA to use for simple menu's? Is there a simple, free (not trialware), version?

[maca]

No, nothing to learn; has nothing to do with the regular TMPGEnc encoder except made by the same people. Remarkably easy to make menus, etc. Doesn't have some of the advanced features of professional programs like Adobe Premiere and all that, but great for everyday creation of movies. I don't know of a free version; I got the trial and thought it was good enough to buy.

[jimmalenko]

Initially I thought that putting in a watermark, for one spoiling the picture, and for two causing the conversion to be half as quick, was a poor choice of limitation in the trial version. Luckily I was asked to be a Beta Tester and I now have the unlocked version. I can honestly say that it's the best all-in-one I've used, and that if I want the job done quickly and easily, I pull this out. If I want / need a bit more control then I go the AVISynth / TMPGEnc / TMPGEnc DVD Author route.

[guns1inger]

That it doesn't use a higher bitrate is only a problem if a higher bitrate is actually required. I have used both version of DivxtoDVD, as well as doing a lot of conversions the old fashioned way. When I don't use DivxtoDVD (which is often), I will do a two-pass VBR encode with ProCoder or CCE. I will studiously use the bitrate calculator to get the correct bitrate for the movie, plug the numbers in, set the encode going, and occassionally pop back in to see how it's tracking. What surprised me was that even if I specified a bitrate in the low to mid 6000 range, CCE would often come up with a much lower average bitrate during analysis. It then quite happily pads it out to the requested bitrate when actually encoding. This leads me to believe that Divx/Xvid strips so much out of the source to begin with, higher bitrates are not required to hold the same level of quality. When I use an encoder, I have also frameserved from avisynth or virtualdub, run it through some filters etc, and the encoder has no history to work from. It just sees an uncompressed stream of video to work with.

DivxtoDVD only does a resize (hence it is a little softer than the source), and uses the original vector data from the source compression to help speed up it's own calculations. This is, I believe, why it's bitrates are much lower than you expect them to be, and certainly why it is so fast. In every case where the output of DivxtoDVD has shown blocking or compression issues I have been able to go back to the source and see the same issues present. They often become clearer after DivxtoDVD has been through them because it has increased the size.

I would never use DivxtoDVD to convert DV avi that I wanted to preserve, or anything that held great value to me. It isn't built for that. It is built to quickly convert the low to medium quality source material available on the net to DVD complaint files as quickly as possible while doing as little damage as possible. I believe it achieves this goal quite well.