any genius out here that can....

[susie]

Hi all,
There are so many SMART and TALENTED people participating on this message board. So I am just wondering if anyone here is able to come up with firmware for Apex AD-700 to play DivX videos ?

[tonyp12]

Probably never gone happend.

1:
The Firmware rom have a limited space, and fitting in a
divx software player there will not work.

2:
DIVX require more CPU horse power to be played back.
and no firmware fix could change the CPU/GPU in your APEX.

[susie]

Looks like I will have to stick to VCD format as long as my Apex is not broken.

I read somewhere that Apex will start manufacturing standalone DivX players soon.

[tearex]

Use TMPGenc to make your VCDs if you don't already. With "Highest quality" motion search and "reduce block noise" options, and maybe Joint-Stereo mode for Sound, VCD quality really isn't that bad.

I also use the following AVISynth script together with TMPGenc & DVDx with FPU iDCT, 720x576 output for PAL, "Nearest neighbour" scaling (better since there is no scaling at 720x576) and HQ 48->44.1 as frameserver and in my own opinion it improves picture quality once more compared to the built-in resizer of TMPGenc.

AVISource("C:\Windows\Desktop\IPCserver.AVI")
BicubicResize(360, 288, src_width=540, src_left=90)
Crop(4,0,352,288)

This script is for widescreen movies played as Pan&Scan which is IMHO better on VCDs than letterboxed - vertical resolution is low enough as it stands.

For noisy originals (old movies and stuff) TMPGencs noise filter comes in handy as well.

[tearex]

Edited away.

[susie]

tearex,
I have been saving movies and tv captures in VCD format already.
All your settings are so complicated for a beginner like myself. I always use the default setting in TMPGEnc template because I don't know much about video. But thanks to the constant improvement on every new version of Tmpgenc....there is no need for beginner like myself to worry about tweaking settings.

Thanks

[tearex]

Susie, I admit I'm being complicated (probably I have to much free time...)

However this part: "Use TMPGenc to make your VCDs if you don't already. With "Highest quality" motion search and "reduce block noise" options, and maybe Joint-Stereo mode for Sound, VCD quality really isn't that bad."

...is IMHO easy enough (about five clicks) and it does help a lot. The main reason they're not enable by default is, they make the encoding slower. Just click the "Settings" button right before you start the Encode; most options will be grayed out anyway so it is easy to find the right ones.

Good luck....

[susie]

tearex,

Tell me all the setting parameters you are using to encode to VCD with TMPGEnc. I will try it out in a few days when I encode a DivX anime to VCD.


Thanks.

[tonyp12]

Start with these two settings:
Load the regular VCD templete, click load again and select the
unlock-templete in the extras folder.

Select non-standard VCD mpg1 in the last tab in tmpgenc settings.

Now apply:
Rate controll mode: 2pass VBR

If your DVD player allows xvcd use these numbers:

Max rate:1450, avarage: 1150, minimum: 300

If not try these ones:
Max rate:1150, avarage: 1000, minimum: 300

This second one you will fit more minutes on a CDR.

Motion search: highest (very slow)
Will take twice as long to encode, but is worth it.

Now save this templete as "MyVCD"

P.S There is a VCD scene on Kazaa instead of Divx, no need to re-encode.

[susie]

tonyp12,
Cool. I will give it a try and let you know the result in a few days.

BTW, when selecting "Motion search: highest (very slow)" to encode will the resulting video playback also become "slow" on the DVD player or it is just slow when encoding ?

[tearex]

Tell me all the setting parameters you are using to encode to VCD with TMPGEnc. I will try it out in a few days when I encode a DivX anime to VCD.

I've never done any DivX encoding, only DVD so maybe my idea isn't so good for DivX. So just take the following as a series of guesses please.

If you want VCDs that play on *every* VCD 2.0 compliant player it's best to leave the locked settings alone and not to use the "unlock" template from the Extras folder as Tonyp12 suggested. Right before you'd normally start the encoding, chose "Settings" in the lower right corner.

Then just go through the tabs and enable the following: "Highest quality motion search (very slow)" from the Motion Search quality drop-down list. Basically this tells TMPGenc to be really environmentally conscious and to try as hard as it can to "recycle" elements of one picture in the next one. Not encoding those again will save some bits and thus those bits will be free for encoding the new stuff in the picture at a better quality.

For DivX you want to chose "Non interlaced / progressive" as the source material. Material inteded for the computer screen should always be "Non interlaced / progressive" if the creator knew what he was doing. "Top/Bottom Field first" is irrelevant for noninterlaced stuff so just leave it alone. Also pick "1:1 VGA" as source aspect ratio, unless the original picture size is one of 352/480/704/720 x 240/288/480/576 (and unless the guy who made it was a weirdo that is ;-) If the size matches exactly two of the numbers given, it's probably a good idea to chose 4:3 PAL (y= 288 or 576) or 4:3 NTSC (y= 240 or 480) instead. The difference between all those settings isn't THAT big though, try to find a scene that shows a spherical object (soccer ball, Palantir, Logo with circle in it, wall clock filmed in closeup from up-front...) and check if it is round and not egg-shaped in the resulting MPG !!as shown on the TV screen!!. Don't go by the computer screen, that can be misleading.

For Anime select "CG/Animation" from the Matrix drop-down list on the tab with the lots of numbers in little squares on it. For "real" film you should leave this at "Default". The Animation setting is better at handling images that have rather large, sharply separated areas of constant color, the Default setting is better when the colors are more "muddy" as in real film. The "MPEG standard" setting is crap for pretty much everything.

Chose "Reduce Block Noise" at the bottom of that tab but leave the two numbers alone. Also leave the other settings alone, they're fine as is.

From the "Audio" tab keep the Bitrate at 224 but select "Joint Stereo" instead of "Stereo", this is included in the VCD 2.0 standard and a compliant player should handle it just fine. "Joint Stereo" means that at times when both speakers play pretty much the same thing, it encodes a.) (large) sameness and b.) (small) diference instead of a.) left channel and b.) right channel. Since more bits go to the "sameness" part it should improve the audio quality in the more demanding parts, like dialog over choral background music. However a few players reportedly have slight problems with Joint Stereo mode, so if it sounds bad turn it off again.

That's it. Close the settings dialog with "OK" and push "Start" to go. If the result looks good, you might want to "Save" those settings for the next time around by pushing the "Save" button next to the "Settings" button in the lower right.

If you want to try AVISynth resizing please write again as this probably isn't for the faint hearted and minimal programming knowledge helps immensly in that area. By "minimal" I mean if you have once in your life written a 10-20 lines program in BASIC or whatever else, it should be enough.

If you don't care to make disks that work in any VCD player, you only want them to play in the one player you currently own, and you're willing to do some experimentation, take tonyp12s suggestions as well and some trial and error will show you what you can get away with on your player.

BTW: I use TMPGenc 2.59, I don't know which of this is applicable to other versions as well.

Unbelievable but true: My rant is over.

Take care,

[tearex]

BTW, when selecting "Motion search: highest (very slow)" to encode will the resulting video playback also become "slow" on the DVD player or it is just slow when encoding ?

It's only slow during encoding. It's sort of like a handwritten letter: slow writing makes for more pleasant reading if done right.

[susie]

Thanks Tearex for the brief explanation on the setting paramaters and also would like to thank Tonyp12 for the follow up reply.

BTW Tearex, I am also using TMPGEnc 2.59 Plus

[susie]

Hmm...I noticed after I started using TMPGEnc 2.59 for the first time a few days ago that it encodes very slow comparing to previous versions and if I enable "Motion search: highest (very slow)" then it would take many many hours to encode a DVD to VCD ???

It took me 2.5 hours to encode The One DVD to VCD with default setting in TMPGEnc 2.59

It's only slow during encoding. It's sort of like a handwritten letter: slow writing makes for more pleasant reading if done right.

[/quote]

[tearex]

Yes, TMPGenc can be slow. That's the price for quality. On my 450MHz Pentium III it took 24 hours for some long movie (dont't remember which).

The result speaks for itself though.