Need some help, Xvid or h.264?

[ziggy1971]

I need to convert some videos to a more friendly long term solution.

I was thinking of converting the videos to a high quality Xvid using Gordian Knot (2-pass, etc.) or is it better to go with the newer h.264 codec.

Is h.264 better than Xvid, quality wise? How about file size, are they at least comparable?

Also, I've read some info on the .mkv container and it's various options like subtitles, audio tracks, chapters, etc. However, I really don't have a clue how to create them.

I know how to use avs scripts and Gordian Knot. The question is, is the increase/decrease in quality of h.264 worth learning a new way of encoding videos?

Should I just stick with Xvid due to it's "Portability"? For example, I can watch them on my TV with a DVD player where the mkv format requires me to connect my PC to the TV.

Just looking for some advice from experienced video editors as they likely have done a lot of testing and comparing already. I haven't learned much about the h.264 codec, yet, even though Gordian Knot seems to have support for it.

If Gordian Knot isn't a good choice for the quality that I'm looking for, I'm willing to accept any other suggestions you may have.

Thanx for now,
Cheers,
ziggy1971

[jagabo]

h.264 is superior to Xvid in all respects except processing power required to compress and decompress video. Your choice of container depends on your intended playback device(s). h.264 and Xvid can both be used in AVI, MKV, MP4 containers. DVD players rarely support MKV or MP4. But there are lots of inexpensive (<US$100) media players and Blu-ray players that do.

[ziggy1971]

I was kinda expecting that h.264 would be better, at the cost of some minor issues (Computing power that is); I've seen some videos done by other people and the quality is simply undeniable, IMHO of course.

But there are lots of inexpensive (<US$100) media players and Blu-ray players that do.

By "media players" are you referring to the media players such as "Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player" or "WD TV Live Media Player"? I don't have one yet, but have been reading reviews and thinking of getting one.

Back to encoding; I found the following info on h.264 encoding:

Last updated: Jan 9, 2010
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/MeGUI_H.264_Conversion_Guide_page1.html

Posted in Jul 20, 2007
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/273096-Blue-Ray-HD-DVD-TS-DVD-AVI-TO-H-246-using-MEGUI

Not sure when this was posted, also, I'm not ripping DVD's, I'm converting several thousand music videos (over 98% are in MPEG-2 format) and everything from The Beatles to Micheal Jackson to Taylor Swift to Rhihanna and so on. I guess you could say I like music,
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/111/26/

As for computing power; my backup/alternate PC is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Dual-Core and the PC I currently use has an Intel Core i7-2600K, 16GB RAM, several HDD's (some single and some in RAID). Don't get me wrong, I'm not gloating about my system, just letting you know what kind of hardware I have to work with and that it probably won't be an issue to slow me down.

Currently I usually follow this process:
1. Convert the video to either HuffYUV or Lagarith using VirtualDub; applying filters such as deinterlacing, IVTCing, some color correction, etc.
2. Convert the audio to uncompressed wav format
3. Import the media files into Sony Vegas and apply whatever filters I need, sometimes it's as simple as normalizing the audio tracks (I really hate it when you listen to a playlist and have to change the volume for each song or video )
4. Render the video to another avi file with HuffYUV or Lagarith
5. Render the audio to the required format
6. Mux audio/video together (if needed)

Pretty simple and straightforward for converting home movies to DVD, but now I want to do something with my music collection and am in need of some help deciding which way is the best way to go.

I guess it comes down to which method to use for the best results for archiving (once done, I really don't want to do it again). Right now the videos are scattered all over the placed on several Hard Drives, a few hundred DVD's, etc. and I would like to organize them better and convert them to a more common format. While MPEG-2 with interlacing looks fine on a regular TV, it looks like crap on the computer even with the software set to deinterlace during playback.

Any suggestions or recommendations on what software I should use or settings that provide great results are more than welcome.

Again, thanx for any advice and hope you have a great day!!!
Cheers,
ziggy1971

[jagabo]

But there are lots of inexpensive (<US$100) media players and Blu-ray players that do.

By "media players" are you referring to the media players such as "Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player" or "WD TV Live Media Player"? I don't have one yet, but have been reading reviews and thinking of getting one.

Yes. I use a WDTV Live.

[RogerTango]

Byte for byte, Ive found 264/AVC to provide superior results than XviD/Divx. However, given a HIGH BIT RATE, XviD can provide exceptional quality also! The short is, you cannot take a 5mbs XviD and encode to a 1mbs 264 video and expect the same quality... Maybe 4.8mbs but not much else.

Andrew

[ziggy1971]

After doing some research and some testing, I have some other questions.

I want to encode the videos with the full size (i.e. keep the black bars, resolution, etc.) of the original video so I don't lose anything during the conversion process, but I'm not sure about how to resize the videos to convert them to square pixels so they play correctly on the PC screen.

For instance, when playing the original 720x480 .mpg video with Media Player Classic I see that it's displayed as 720x540. Is this the resolution I should be encoding my video to to get square pixels or should I simply resize to 640x480 for SD and 848x480 for SD widescreen?

Basically all I want to do is deinterlace the video, resize to change to square pixels and encode the video to a smaller file size using either Xvid or h.264. (obviously 60-100 MB/video is much better than 200-500 MB/video)

Also, I'm thinking of using the "Unrestricted 1pass Const. Quality HQ" setting in MeGUI 2050, or should I use the "Unrestricted 2pass HQ" method?

Also, should I convert the audio tracks to aac (I'd actually like to keep the original ac3 audio because some of the videos have 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks, but I haven't figured out how to keep them with MeGUI)

Thanx again