FlaskMpeg>Dvd>DivX>QUALITY

[Ihsan]

Heres what i have:
Pentium iii 900mhz (Which btw uses 100cpu power encoding into Divx)
Windows Xp
512mb Ram
Maxtor 80 and 30 gb harddrives, both at 7200rpms
Buslink 16x DVD-rom -Which suprisingly reads pretty fast for the price
To burn and encode I use:
Smartripper>FlaskMPEG


First off, i have done searchs on this forum and another and have definately found some useful information but i dont no if there somethings im missing or what. It seems whatever I do I just cant get a good quality movie under 700k. Or in my case under 1.2gb. Im talking about a 100 minute movie too.
I have downloaded lots of DivX movies that were 700k, 2+ hours long and still excellent quality.

Anyways. A movie im currently trying to encode a good copy of into DivX is: Tango and Cash(104 minutes long). This movie has both a widescreen and stantard version. I choose the widescreen side. With audio at 128kbs, bitrate suggested is 784. The lowest I experimented with was 750kbs and it looked pretty bad, watchable but heavily pixilated. I tried both low and fast motion, they both looked nearly the same. Ive tried high and low resolutions and the lower ones obiously are a little better quality but still lots of tiny pixels. Lowest i tried i 352x240(Which is a very small picture). Although i was able to make an excellent copy of this movie @: Low motion, bitrate 1600kbs, and audio 224kbs. But unfortunately the file came out to 1.2 gigs. THis was the quality i was hoping for, but cant seem to get. Anyways..ALong with lowering the audio to 128kps is there anything else i can do to up the quality and still have less then a 700k file?

All help is greatly appreciated!

[Innershield]

First off, what player are you using to view your file?

[Ihsan]

Hi. I am using "The Playa" from DivX.com

[Ihsan]

I think im just gonna start cutting movies into 2 cds to keep the good quality. Just dont know how some people are able to get such a quality and keep the file size around 700mb.

[droolian01]

The answer to your question of how do 700mb rips look so good is called gordianknot/nandub.
Goto www.doom9.net for more info.

[bilbogod]

http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/makefilm.htm

Haven't read all of this myself yet, but I too am interested in how the experts perfect their DivX rips. My first effort yielded results on an 86 min movie that were inferior to a 120 min movie which was approx 50Mb smaller!!

[Mordant]

Check out the FairUse and Madrona programs at Doom9. Madrona comes with FairUse in the download so I would just download that. FairUse takes care of Video encoding, Madrona uses a few other tools to encode audio and multiplex it with the video.

FairUse takes a long time compared to other encoders, but it is VERY easy to use and does a good job on most movies. Madrona is specifically aimed at people looking to make a one CD rip.

FairUse basically does four seperate encodes of the movie (if you use the default settings), 3 in low motion DivX3 and 1 in High Motion. It then cuts between them to supply a final output with the best video quality for the selected size. Because it does so many encodes you can expect it to take about 12 hrs (on my T-Bird 900) for a 2 hour movie.

[Ihsan]

Thanks for the replies. I did have Gknot already but it wouldnt work correctly, some files were bad in it or something. I kept trying to redownload and reinstall but no go. Sooo, I just downloaded FairUse and im encoding now. 12 hours to go . Sounds like this will work out well. I definately dont mind waiting 12 hours for a good quality 700mb DivX. I'll be sure and post my results on here tonight or tommorow.

[Ihsan]

Well I encoded a movie using FairUse and let me tell you it was WELL worth the 12 hour wait. The quality was near flawless! :) Thanks for directing me to FU, Mordant. Now i just need to add the audio. I converted it from ac3 to mp3. Now just trying to figure out how to add it to the video. I tried VirtualDub but there is no mp3 option under audio. Anyways Thanks again.

[droolian01]

hi there again,
well done! now i know nandub supports mp3 muxing as standard, but you could also try here:http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/virtualdub.html

At the bottom of the page there is a version of virtualdub that has mp3 support.
Get muxing!

[Ihsan]

Thanks alot drool. Downloaded it and added the audio in about 90 seconds. Quick and easy :D

[bilbogod]

WHAT !!!!!! Fairuse says it will take 60 hours on my system. That is a 1.2 Ghz AMD Athlon with 256 SDRAM. Is this for real ???
Ihsan, did your figure start high and drop substantially ??? There is no @~@ing way I am waiting that long. The electricity bill alone makes this an unrealistic proposition

[Mordant]

Ihsan, take a look at the Doom9 website and download a program called Madrona. Its really just a shell that runs around FairUse and takes care of the audio and muxing for you. I use it and it works great. It does the audio as ABR 96, which is low for some people, but you change it in the ini file if you like. I find the 96 actually works alright, and Madrona's point about sometimes wishing the video was better but rarely thinking "I wish I'd added more bitrate to the audio" has some merit. =)

Anyway, I'm glad you liked it. It's a great program.

bilbogod, I've got a t-bird 900 and it generally takes about 12 hours to encode. Did you use the "auto add 4 video and 1 audio"? Every encoding you add will add about 2hrs to the time, and also going for higher resolution adds time as well. Read through the hints in the program as you go.

Also, if you are running other programs it will slow things down alot! If I'm playing a game while its running or something the time will climb to 100s of hours sometimes, but will come back down when I shut down the extra programs.

[bilbogod]

yeah I used the auto fuction. I think I'll give it another go later on. There must have been something wrong, although I'm not aware of any other programs that I had running. At the moment I'm finishing a DivX low motion encode with flask which will be combined with a DivX fast motion encode into a utility called "Makefilm". Have you ever tried this??? If so what is it like. I got the methods from the link that I posted earlier in this thread...

[Ihsan]

Mordant,

I couldnt fina Madrona over there. I just used BeSweet and VirtualDub to add the audio, was pretty easy. But if Madrona is easier and you know the link that would be great!

Bilbo,

Strange that im a slower computer and it takes you longer!?!? When i first started it, the length went up not down like you were hoping. Could go down for you though, who knows. Try and run it for an hour or so. Mine starts at about 7 hours then shortly afterwards says around 12 hours. This for for a 100 minute movie also. Maybe your harddrive is full? Clean it up and or try a defrag and see if that helps. Gluck

Got me another one encoding right now
Not on this computer of course

[Mordant]

http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Encoders/MPEG4/setup.zip

That's the link for Madrona. You have to go to the Main Software Page on Doom9 to find it. I think it is easier, but mostly because you can just start the encode and forget about it until its finished. I've got it running right now. I'm trying an encode without any high motion codec encodes because a few people on the Doom9 forum have suggested you can get better results that way.

My encodes with FU have been great anyway, but I've got one film now that is not turning out very well so I'm playing around. I did a two disc rip and it worked out, but I like keeping DivX to just one where I can.

[statuspending]

you say the buslink 16x dvd-rom drive reads pretty fast?
how fast, exactly, does it rip?

i want to know before i open mine up. i got it for 20 after rebate at worst buy and will return it if it isn't up to par.

thanks