XVID video is skipping frames...

[Da_Nuke]

I have a bunch of Matroska videos encoded with DIVX, XVID and H.264 with a separate subtitle track, and I'm using VirtualDub Mod to hard-code the subtitles and save the video as an AVI file, so I can later convert it to MP4 for iPod. I'm not using AllToAVI because it doesn't supports complex subtitles which are very common in anime fansubs, which means explainatory notes end up replacing the dialogues, and that's quite a hassle because I don't understand the Japonic-Ryukyuan languagues.

But guess what? No matter what settings I use for the compression codec, playing the resulting video eats 40% of my Pentium Dual Core CPU, and I always get skipped frames during playback. Once I convert it to iPod format, I still see skipped frames, and the iPod's internal video player crashes when I skip to another time. I tried using XVID with some presets I found at Google and it skips frames no matter how much I change the settings. I used DIVX and it skips frames. I tried using SUPER, but it can't hard-code subtitle tracks. I've already sorted through 40% of Google and I've found nothing. And AllToAVI is not a viable choice for the previously stated reasons.

Any ideas of why this might happen?

[Baldrick]

It shouldn't matter if virtualdubmod just uses 40%, but have you checked the process priority in the virtualdubmod status window when you convert?

Does all your converted video skip?

And I would try other converters like xvid4psp, ripbot264 and see if they can add burned in subtitles.

[filmboss80]

What are your Xvid settings? Many players choke on files with packed bitstreams. You might also want to disable Adaptive Quantization, Quarter Pixel, and Global Motion Compensation when you do your xvid encoding. Max B-VOPS probably should be set no higher than 1 (Divx 5 standard, I hear), and you might want to try avoid interlacing. I am no expert on iPod format, so I may be off-base here. To save time, you should experiment with short video clips, using different encoding settings. See what works, then tell us about it, so that others can benefit from your experiences.

[Da_Nuke]

OK, I just tried Ripbot264, and indeed it can perfectly hard-code subtitles into the video. So, that means I'm done with this. Thank you, people! ^^