Anything I should be aware of converting XVID to XVID???

[dimtim]

I have some videos in XVID and I want to adjust the color slightly (it was shot outside and is kind of washed out). Is there anything special that needs to be done when converting XVID to XVID??

Thanks
Tim

[guns1inger]

Only that you are recompressing a lossy codec with a lossy codec, so expect some quality loss.

[dimtim]

Yeah I was wondering if that was the case. So you probably don't have as much quality loss if you go from mpeg2 to xvid right?

Would it be better to take the xvid, turn it into uncompressed or mpeg, and then turn it back into xvid?

Would the fast recompress option in virtualdub be better?

Thanks

[guns1inger]

Yeah I was wondering if that was the case. So you probably don't have as much quality loss if you go from mpeg2 to xvid right?

They are both lossy. It doesn't matter which order you convert in, there will be some loss. The issue is really the quality of the source. If you go from DVD quality to source to Xvid, you can get reasonable results. If you go from typical download quality Xvid to DVD, you get much poorer results because the quality of the source was so low to begin with.

Would it be better to take the xvid, turn it into uncompressed or mpeg, and then turn it back into xvid?

Wont make any difference because the damage has already been done going to Xvid in the first place. If you go to Xvid again, you are throwing away more data. Think of it this way :

Source video (100%)
Xvid - first encode (85%) : Video quality (85%)
Xvid - second encode (85%) : Video Quality (72.25%)

etc.

Would the fast recompress option in virtualdub be better?

Fast recompress simply allows you to pass through virtualdub without colour space changes. You cannot do this if you use virtualdub filters, so you would have to use avisynth to make your changes, then you can use virtualdub in fast recompress mode to encode them. It does not change the previous point however.

[dimtim]

Thanks a lot!