Converting to XVID. What is the best bitrate?

[greator]

I want to convert my H264 to XVID. Based on what I read, Xvid can use small bitrate but high quality video in small file size.

I checked other xvid file with media player classic (in file properties), most of them are 500 to 700kbps. (I dont know if they use variable bitrate or not. are they?)

So I use SUPER and set the bitrate to 720. The output looks good but in moving scenes, they looks horrible. I used ffmpeg encoder.

But when i change it to 1200 or more, they look fine but now the file is larger than the original.

and somehow, when i change the encoder to mencoder, by using 1152kbps, they look better than 1152kbps using ffmpeg. I dont like mencoder cos it took longer time.

So, what is best bitrate for xvid? Or is there a better tool to encode h264 to xvid? Super doesn't seem to have option to use variable bitrate. Xvid or Divx?

And what is that ffmpeg2theora? is it better than ffmpeg? I never heard anyone say anything about this one.

[jman98]

H.264 might be the most efficient codec there is to give you excellent quality at low bitrates. While Divx/Xvid certainly can give you very high quality at relatively low bitrates, they can't give you better quality than H.264 at the same bitrate. Your files are bigger because you're probably having to encode to Xvid at a higher bitrate than your H.264 source video file just to get the same quality as the original file. Keep in mind that H.264 and Xvid/Divx are all lossy codecs, so converting between them is going to be tricky. You're going to have to use relatively high bitrates to avoid noticeable quality loss.

You don't want ffmpeg2theora. Theora is a video container format that has very little support at this time.

[jagabo]

Xvid will require 1.5 to 2.0 times the bitrate of h.264 to maintain the quality.

[greator]

h.264 does offer the best quality but with my P3 pc, I cant play them smoothly. Need to change them to Xvid so I can play them in my DVD player.

Now I have this 30 minutes video that uses WMV9 in AVI container. What is that? A new codec by Microsoft? I cant play it smoothly. Is it better than H.264?

How much bitrate should I use now to convert it to Xvid?

Why is some file that I've downloaded only uses 500kbps? And the quality is great. But I have to use more than 1000kbps to obtain the same quality as my other downloaded XVIDs?