Divx and VCD encoding quality

[Phibes]

I've made some tests encoding poor quality (Not so poor. Little old VHS) videos to Divx and VCD. I think that the results with Divx are not so good with this kind of video but VCD's "suffer" less with that. Even increasing the kbps the results with Divx doesn't get better as I expected.
What do you think ? Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[RoopeT]

How are you capturing (resolution, codec ...) and what resolution you're using with DivX. I think the best results for DivX are obtained when capturing at full resolution (Picvideo MJPEG or Huffuv) and then converting to DivX (2-pass) with Gordian Knot. Some deinterlacing and noise removal filter are also recommended.

[Phibes]

I´m capturing at 640x480 with PicVideo (19) or Huffyuv (best). The encode was made in VirtualDub with DivX 3.11 Low Motion 910 kbps, 512x384, 480x384....

I´ve already made a lot of good DivX videos from DVD´s or TV but I am saying that, when you get a poor source like old VHS, the Divx quality is not so good and the VCD´s results to the same source looks better.

[sean madison]

that may be the problem-

Low motion.

When u do movies, u gotta think, most movies use high motion and not only that, hehe, 910 is not enough for a source.

I use sonic foundry's media on demand producer(freeware from microsoft) and it has 1 feature that i LOVE the best unlike any other cap prog i have ever seen-

It has a prebuffer setting that u can tell it what u want ur vid file size to be. I always set mine to 1.98 gb and put divx 4.2(dont got 5 yet) to max- 6000 kbps and 70%. Even though it will never get to 6000 cuz of the 1.98 gb file size it has to fill, it uses the max possible which gives it Great quality!

[RoopeT]

DivX 3 low motion @ 910 sounds OK, you should try Gordian Knot to find out the optimal encoding resolution & to do 2-pass (Smart bitrate control) DivX 3.11 encoding. You have to use a lower resolution for a given bitrate when using captured source (compared to the situation you're doing a DVD rip).

I´m capturing at 640x480 with PicVideo (19)

So you're from NTSC region, right? If you're capturing PAL, you should use ??? x 576 for capturing to get all the fields.

[Bigswaffo]

since ya'll are talking about divx quality, low motion, high motion, etc. go to http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com and go to Divx Quality Guide

[Phibes]

So you're from NTSC region, right? If you're capturing PAL, you should use ??? x 576 for capturing to get all the fields

That's another point RoopeT. I'm not in a NTSC region. I live in Brazil and system here is PAL-M. I know that I shoud capture at x576 but when I'm trying at this resolution, a botton piece of captured video is blank. I don't know why yet for sure. Can it be the capture card ?
But even with this irregularity I already done good VCD's and DivX videos.

About other other advices, I'll try Gordian Knot and Sonic Foundry's media on demand producer.

since ya'll are talking about divx quality, low motion, high motion, etc. go to http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com and go to Divx Quality Guide

Bigswaffo. Months ago I read this article and I've tried other resolutions, bitrates, and all that stuff that he talks. These are good advices too.