How to make perfect encode

[indijay]

Hello All,

Came across following post on DivX.com forum but didn't get any reply So thought of posting here, hoping for some fruitful reply.

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Ok, so I own a DivX certified DVD player and I have acquired the DivX 6 Create Bundle and I regularly use GordianKnot (and recently StaxRip) for my encodes. My routine is pretty much this: when I buy some movies I rip them to my HD using DVD Decrypter and prepare them for a batch encode using either GordianKnot or StaxRip. I always use 2-pass encodes with Insane quality mode and a quality setting of 95%+ after doing a compressibility check with GordianKnot or StaxRip. I also always use Home Theather profile so that I can be sure to be able to watch my backups on my certified player. This way I hope that my encodes will be the best-looking possible, and although not lossless when comparing to the original practically the next best thing, while with a smaller file size and maintaining compatibility.

Ok, so I should be getting the best results, right? Wrong, unfortunately... Sincerely I have been more and more sure this last few months that I still have a LOT to learn about DivX and my encodes are far from what they could be. I mean, it`s not that they aren`t good, but I have seen and frequently I see encodes that look far better and have smaller file sizes so I concluded that I`m either doing something wrong or I am not doing something I should do and my guess is that I don`t know enough about DivX to be able to do a perfect or almost perfect looking encode... I mean I clearly see some flaws on almost every single one of my backup encodes, things such as blockiness, artifacts, solid or almost solid backgrounds with encode movement, etc. And I just get really pissed off when I sometimes download a movie (just to watch it before buying) and I see that perfect-looking, crystal-clear, block-free encode at 700 MB!!! This happened just recently when I downloaded Videodrome, a perfect-looking encode at 640x336 under 750 MB.

So I`m desperately seeking help, anyone who can point me to tutorials or technical info on DivX and anything that can help me make really high quality backups of my films will be really helping me A LOT. Thanks in advance

You are in breach of the forum rules and are being issued with a formal warning. "Download before buying"? That's warez - please re-read the Forum AUP before posting again.
/ Moderator Cobra

WARNING REMOVED - I didn't realise that this post was actually copied-and-pasted from another forum. indijay - my sincere apoligies. Jimmalenko - many thanks for pointing this error out.

[Baldrick]

please post dvd to divx in the dvd to avi/svcd forum. moving you.

read doom9s dvd to divx guides.

[manono]

Hi-

I mean I clearly see some flaws on almost every single one of my backup encodes, things such as blockiness, artifacts, solid or almost solid backgrounds with encode movement, etc.

It's the Home Theater Profile doing to to you. It's limiting the max bitrate. You can turn it off for better quality. No telling how it'll play in your player, though. You might try and see if they play without stuttering or temporary freezes during complex scenes.

[jagabo]

Use Divx's "Quality Based" encoding. Pick a quality level you're happy with and encode. That way you don't have to worry about how much bitrate you need for any particular video, frame size, etc. Of course, it will be hard to make a file that's exactly 700 MB to max out a CD. And if you set the quality too high you may find your DVD player can't play it (too high a bitrate).

At a Target Quantizer of 2 the resulting video will be nearly indistinguishable from the source, even with enlarged still frames. But you're Divx DVD player may struggle with the file at times. At 3 you can see a little macroblocking in enlarged still frames but it's not noticeable at normal playback speed.

By the way, the quality difference between Divx's Balanced and Insane settings is very small. I don't think you'll find it's worth the time. Here's an example of encoding time and file size (using a quality based encoding -- so the difference in output is the file size, not quality) for a short video with mixed content:

Fastest: 71 sec, 172 MB
HighPerf: 76 sec, 165 MB
Balanced: 82 sec, 163 MB
Better: 205 sec, 160 MB
Extreme: 250 sec, 160 MB
Insane: 400 sec, 159 MB

Most of the time there's no point in going beyond the High Performance or Balanced settings.

[indijay]

Thanks a million to Jagabo for these numbers of different DivX settings. I have been looking for but I got really weird reply from DivX expert on divx forum that graph says it all (when I was actually looking for numbers!!)

Anyways, regarding the original post, ripping DVD to just a CD, its true, even I searched around on the web and I could fund such movies, so I got few of my old DVDs, where size is exactly 4GB, not like nowadys movie where movie is about 2 hours but VOBs are about 6GB!!

By using AutoGK and Fairuse Wizard 2.2 with target size of the output as 2100mb XviD in 3 pieces, I get following results,

AutoGK
Resolution = 560x416
Bitrate = 1607kbps, 1923kbps and 1876 kbps
Qf = 0.276, 0.33, 0.32 bits/pixel
FairUse Wizard 2.2
Resolution = 672x480
Bitrate = 1785kbps
Qf = 0.221bits/pixel

By taking a look at the file on telly doesn't give me much idea (as I have 6 year old Samsung telly which has major issue with Chroma balance, screws up red colour) so I have to go with the numbers

Now I don't really know which one I should go for and the issue of final size is not yet addressed, its still 3 times the target size??
I downloaded one movie off the web just to see if I can get any idea about its ripping program and it was Nandub. I couldn't find much information about ripping with Nandub.

So my question now is,
If I am using same codec with same settings, why two different programs should give me totally different quality of the output files?
If there is so much variation just among the programs then how much should you go with the codec settings?
Is there any program which totally obeys codec settings?

My apologies for this drunken post but this ripping issue has left me totally in haze with so much of unorganised information floating around the web.

[Cobra]

Closed. Buy the movie, and if you want to try before you buy then rent it.

[Cobra]

Sorry - I made a bit of a mistake. I didn't check the links in the initial post made by indijay, and thus I did not realise that the post indijay made was actually copied-and-pasted from another forum. Therefore, it is actually a completely different user who was discussing warez and so no forum rules are being broken.

What is actually being asked, quite simply, is how to achieve the finest quality possible.

indijay - I apologise for this mistake. I hope it has caused no offence.

My thanks go to Jimmalenko who pointed this out to me.

[jagabo]

If I am using same codec with same settings, why two different programs should give me totally different quality of the output files?
If there is so much variation just among the programs then how much should you go with the codec settings?

Crap, spent an hour writing a reply and lost it.

In short:

The reason your programs aren't meeting your requested bitrate is probably the quantizer restrictions on the Quantizer tab of the Advanced Options dialog of Xvid. These are used to make sure the picture quality never drops below a certain level, and that the bitrate never gets too high (set-top Divx/DVD players usually can't handle very high MPEG 4 bitrates, and sometimes can't handle very low bitrates). If you set the minimum values to 1 and the maximum values to 31 you'll probably find the codec does a good job of hitting your target bitrate. But you may find that the video won't play properly on your Divx/DVD player.

Judging from what I've read here, there were some releases of Xvid that weren't good at hitting the target bitrate. I'm not exactly sure because I rarely use 2-pass VBR encoding -- it's a waste of time. Update to a recent Xvid release if you have an old one.

[indijay]

Cobra,

I was totally shocked to see in my mailbox 'You have received a warning' Thanks for clarification here.
BTW, downloading movie doesn't necessarily mean Warez, there are many movies which are floating around the web for free download without any royalty issue.
Thanks to Jimmalenko for noticing in time.

Anyways,

Jagabo, I am trying to recollect what I must have done because all that I knew till last week when I encoded that movie that to play around with bitrate but otherwise for this encoding I left everything to default so I guess, it would be quantiser 1 to 31, only limiting that certain program to file size!!

Its pretty confusing and equally frsutrating

[Cobra]

sometimes download a movie (just to watch it before buying)

This suggests beyond any reasonable doubt that it is copyrighted material, for future reference.

[jagabo]

I am trying to recollect what I must have done because all that I knew till last week when I encoded that movie that to play around with bitrate but otherwise for this encoding I left everything to default so I guess, it would be quantiser 1 to 31, only limiting that certain program to file size!!(

The programs you were using may have set the quantizer limits. I don't use them so I don't know what they do. I use VirtualDub, VirtualDubMPEG2, or VirtualDubMod for all my Xvid encoding.

I don't care about the exact size of any particular video, I care about the quality. So I use single pass, target quantizer (constant quality) mode. Every frame has the quality I specify and the file comes out to whatever size is necessary to achieve that quality.