rescaling xvid clips to play in my player

[zuck]

Hallo,

I'd like to rescale some short music-clips so that I can play them on my dvd-player. The source material is (as media player classic tells me)

Video: XVID 960x544 23.98fps 1927Kbps
Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz 5ch 384Kbps

Although my dvd-player CAN play xvid, even with 5.1 audio, screen stays black probably because the video resolution is to high.
I tried to filter the xvid/avi through VirtualDub, selecting a "resize" filter, to change the output resolution to 720x408 pixels (source x 0,75). The result played on my dvd, audio is fine (5.1) but movment on the screen is jumpy and not at all acceptable.
I tried fast-recompress and full processing, single-pass, multi-pass, divx6 and xvid for compression, always the same abrupt movement on screen.
I even tried to decompress a few seconds to uncomressed movie, the same jerky playback - but playing the source file is ok ...
I need to rescale the picture to max 720*576 (PAL)

- which tools will i need ? (i've got vdub, ffdshow, xvid and divx-codecs)
- what am i doing wrong ? settings ?
- as far as i can tell, the problem seems to be the decompression of the source file, but of course this is just a guess.

any help would be appreciated.

zuck

[manono]

Hi-

Does the 720x408 AVI play OK on your computer? If it plays OK on the computer, but not in the standalone, the resolution and/or bitrate may be too high for smooth playback on the standalone. I might suggest further lowering the resolution it 640x352 or thereabouts, with a lower bitrate, ands try again.

I need to rescale the picture to max 720*576 (PAL)

What's that mean? The max AVI resolution it supports? Some players support their max res better than others. Meaning that resolutions close to the max, or average bitrates above a certain level, or bitrate spikes above a certain level, result in the symptoms you describe.

[jagabo]

Try 640x360 with single pass Target Quantizer mode at 2 or 3. Be sure not to enable QPEL or GMC.

[zuck]

So far thanks for the help.

I have a avi with 720x576 pixels XVID, that plays perfectly on my dvd-player. That's why i thought i needed to rescale at least down to this resolution (and because thats the standard dvd-resolution.)
The original clip (hi-res) plays perfectly on my pc using media player classic (and probably any other play, though i did not try any other). The rescaled and recompressed clips play, but picture is kind of stuttering, movement is jumpy, abrubt - like a 15 picture per second diashow with 5.1 sound-track
I tried a simple decompression experiment : decoded a 30 second clip and save as uncompressed (RGB?) avi -> gives me 1 Gig of jumpy jerky 15 pic per second diashow.
I's guess my problem is the decompression phase - are there any parameters i can set/change that affect the decompression phase ? I only found options for the filter and the compression phase ....

zuck

[manono]

So the 720x408 reencoded XviD doesn't play well on either the computer or the standalone? Then something else is wrong, especially since you said you tried DivX and it didn't work either.

Maybe it's the AC3 audio. Try reinterleaving with the values of 96/96 ms (not frames). You can do that without demuxing. Just make sure that Video is set for Direct Stream Copy. Although the default preload and interleaving should work on a computer, they may not on a standalone. I had a standalone that would choke on the default 500/1.

Or try and run the original 960x544 through AutoGK with the ESS option enabled when you install it, and set the horizontal resolution to 720 (or 640) in the Advanced Settings and the filesize to what it was on the reencoded one. It's not going to give you a height of 408 though, but either 400 or 416. You said it's a music video, so it won't take long to find out. If it plays on the computer smoothly, it should also play OK in the standalone. Test it with a CD-RW before wasting a CD-R.

[zuck]

Yeeehaaa!
Looks very good now. I just started reencoding of a 15 second clip for testing - and this looks very promising.
I had a few problems getting AutoGK to work - gave me exceptions upon startup, but uninstalling all codecs and reinstalling only AutoGK solved the problem.
I set target quality to 100% and rescaling to max width of 720 with original AC3 audio - the 15 seconds clip is smoth, hi-quality and no problem so far. I now recode the whole clipset (about 45 minutes in whole) and then have to try if it plays ok in my yamaha s557 dvd player.
I will post my further results.
Thanks for all your help.

--
ps. I still don't know where my primary errors came from - but eventually i 'll try my old way (directly via virtual dub) to see if the codec uninstall-reinstall solved the problem there as well.

[manono]

I had a few problems getting AutoGK to work - gave me exceptions upon startup, but uninstalling all codecs and reinstalling only AutoGK solved the problem.

That's interesting. Good for you for trying that and succeeding. I don't know if you installed any codec packs at any time, but they're known to sometimes cause problems such as you describe. AutoGK at 100% may be overkill, and may make quite a large file size. It's equivalent to jagabo's suggestion of encoding for quant 2. The default 75% is pretty good (between quants 2 and 3). And of course, the 1-pass Target Quality will give you results much more quickly when compared to the default 2-pass encoding.

If it plays OK on the computer when done, but stutters or freezes temporarily during high action scenes (high bitrate parts), then maybe reencode to a lower resolution. It shouldn't if you used the ESS option when installing AutoGK, as it limits bitrate spikes for smoother playback on standalones.