PAL DVD to DIVX ... best resolution?

[theboywonder]

Hi,

I've just ripped the 'Walking With Beasts' series (PAL) and made some excellent SVCDs .... but I also want to make some 350mb divx copies.

I've tried using divx calculators to choose an appropriate resolution (original = 720x576), but they don't seem to make much sense (Ecuador's AVI Bitrate Calculator suggested 480x480! = no!!!).

I was thinking 640 x something ??

If anyone can suggest a good resolution, that would be great! If not a good avi resolution calc would be cool instead!

Thanx
Robin

[Vapor]

It really depends on the length of clip you want to fit within your 350meg.

Use a bitrate calculator (see downloads section on this site or doom9.net) and work out the video and audio bitrates to fit your length of clip into 350meg.

Then with those settings encode a small clip of the highest motion part of the clip at the DVD res. Then keep reencoding the same clip using the same settings but a lower rez each time until you are happy with the quality.

I would always suggest using a horizontal resolution divisible by 32 as many gfx cards do not properly decode them properly otherwise. I start at 704 wide by just cropping 8 pixels either side of the image.

Good luck.

[theboywonder]

thanx for the reply but it wasnt much help

i know how to calc the bitrate for audio and video - thats easy... but finding the right resolution is not - there are no calcs out there that i can find, that do a good job of downsizing from dvd resolutions....

i didnt really want to encode at dvd resolution, since it takes longer to encode (especially when its NOT widescreen (these eps are 720x576), and requires more processing power to play.

i wanted to have a horizontal res of about 640, but what would the vertical resolution be for that?

hmmm !!!!!

[Baldrick]

http://forum.vcdhelp.com/userguides/94382.php

You can also use dvtool and fitcd to calculate resolutions.

[theboywonder]

lol, thanx baldrick... i was downloading it as you typed. checking it out now