what quality should I be expecting ?

[markmarkymark]

I have an simple avi movie (DIVX), it plays on most media players and look fab ...

I have gone through the whole process of turning into a VCD using TMPGEc (using all the advice and settings etc) ...

The resulting mpeg plays ... ummmm ok through the media players ... I mean its watchable .. but i see some bluring of people in the distance ... is this to be expected for a VCD ??

cheers

Mark

[caish5]

Coming from a DIVX source this is par for the course. For decent VCD quality you need DVD rips or TV captures as source.

[JamesB69]

Yep, hes right. TV captures dont always turn out so hot for me and i have had some below par dvd rips. But yeah divx to vcd will turn out significantly more blurry than the source no matter what.
This is because divx compression loses way more information. I think it depends on the movie. I seem to have better results with widescreen. Cant explain it but maybe something to do with the blackbars not taking as much bitrate?

[caish5]

You're correct its ALL about the black bars taking up less bitrate.

[crahak]

Oh my, I already feel this is gonna be a long thread

The DivX avi's are usually much higher quality than VCDs. I have yet to see a VCD that I really like, but I have lots of DivX movies I like...

Widescreen DivX avi encodes seem to generall have a higher number of bits/(pixel*frame), hence a better source. That's just normal. (I don't try to cram a 2 hour movie on a one CD DivX rip either).

Most of us actually completely crop the black borders when we're encoding. Why? Black bars have no useful information, and I see no point on wasting space for them. Ok, the bars themselves don't take so much of the bitrate, it is the black EDGE that does.

Just like markmarkymark says, a properly done DivX looks better than the VCD encode, even if they're both encoded from the same DVD VOB's imho. At least, if you were talking about CVD, or SVCD's with high bitrates, it would look better.

The thing that you got right is those DivX rips lots of people download, not to say more about that. They are encoded at really low bitrates, low resolutions, and low bit/(pixel*frame)... You can only expect so much from them... I don't even know why people waste time with these. (And we're not even mentionning bad encodes, bad IVTC's, bad AR's, ... you name it)

[caish5]

To clarify...
I'm not disagreing that DIVX can be of a much higher quality than a VCD. But if it's a VCD that you're going to make then a DIVX is a bad source, simply because there are a lot of artifacts in there that we can't see but an MPEG encoder can see.
And if you are making a VCD then the black bars are necessary as the format has no provisions for aspect ratios other than 4:3. Obviously with a DIVX encode you'd leave them out comfortable in the knowledge that the computer will display it correctly.

Caish5

[JamesB69]

I'm not trying to be against yall we all have our reasons. But i dont really like divx for the reason that it is not a standard. Just look at the number of different divx codecs, not to mention resolutions, bitrate, etc. It can be really good quality if done right but at the same time divx 5 runs slow. I have been unable to run some divx 5 witha athlon xp+ 1800. But my hatred of divx comes from the fact that so many people use it. I would like to download a star wars laserdisc capture of something other than divx because i watn to put it to a standard that doesnt bring my ssytem to a halt and can play on dvd players. But by the time I encode it , it is blurry. Give me a break people but A good divx is the same file size that a good mpg which is universal and much better for re-encodes will be.

Sorry this is probably the wrong thread for this but i had to say it.

[2573]

Use svcd, much better,although you use only cbr 1600, the quality is better than vcd.

[crahak]

I'm not trying to be against yall we all have our reasons. But i dont really like divx for the reason that it is not a standard. Just look at the number of different divx codecs, not to mention resolutions, bitrate, etc. It can be really good quality if done right but at the same time divx 5 runs slow. I have been unable to run some divx 5 witha athlon xp+ 1800.

Some people claim watching DivX (in other threads) with P200's, PII 450's and the like smoothly (mind you, I think they're on dope ) However, you don't need anything this big to play them by any means. Codecs, resolutions, bitrates, all that... It all plays fine on my computer. I never have problems with it. And if you're not liking playing them from your PC and would like a player that works better than those KISS whatever ones, you can make something yourself. Anyone interested in something like that can visit http://divx.reallybites.com It will be really featured packed.

[The Maynard]

For the best DVD rips it is highly recomended to NOT convert it from a DIVX to a VCD. That's compressing it twice. Convert it to VCD directly from the VOB files. That way it'll only be compressed once and will look a little better (or as good as a vcd can look)