just wondering..

[EddyH]

Anyone else find that encoding to XviD totally hoses their system, if you try setting it to a mode where the quality is acceptable without being huge?

Just trying it out with my new DVDrip, at 640 wide it was pretty skanky at a size which would fit into 702mb with 128k mp3 audio. And took about 13 hours on a 850mhz Duron, with a couple filters (deinterlace (tricky to get right, argh), crop, resize, subtitle). Somewhat more than I would expect TMPGEnc to take with similar settings... and it's always been before that MPG was the slowest to encode on this machine.

Not a complaint or anything, just kind of surprised at the speed drop and how nasty it looked anyhow. Thought XviD was supposed to be the shiny new kid on the block so was eager to give it a spin
Ah well, trying again now. Size reduced to 512 wide (by 288) with a little sharpening, to give it a few percents spare bitrate, pulled out all the XviD stops (Q6, VHQ4, Modulated matrix, B-frames, killed lumi masking, Quarterpel, etc etc) and it's estimating about 21 hours (with the credits cut, to be encoded later as the subtitles need to be shifted).. yikes.
Set up some other things to do in the meantime and they're taking ages longer than they usually would if an MPG was going, so it's not like it's going easy on the CPU.. with them (audio processing for the vid, mainly) it's up to about 26. Hope the computer can hold together that long.

I realise quality takes time, but.. Divx5 any quicker? Considered using that but it's missing a few quality options, like it's Q-based mode uses a fixed quantiser, etc.
Or going out to hunt Div3 with nandub..

Well at least the xVCD encode of the same film went fine in the end! ...just...
Maybe its just an obstinate movie

[Gazorgan]

So, you took a 2 hour movie, encoded it to 1 CDR and it was 640xsomething ? Of course the quality was poor, your trying the impossible.

Flames aside, There are practical limits. You can't put 640xsomething onto 1 disk for a 2 hour movie without artifacts. Try encoding gladiator to 2 SVCD's, you get the same problem.

A 90 minute movie is borderline, and you are better off dropping it down to 480xsomething and keeping the audio at 128k. I'm sure there will be many posters that "I put a 2 hour movie onto 1 disk and it's perfect". DivX/XviD's Biggest problem is people force it to 1 disk with the bitrate calculator. 90 minute, 2 hours, 2 1/2 hours, doesn't matter, they just do it.

Stop that. :P These are the same people that take a 8 GB DVD9 with extras and put everything onto 1 DVDR and complain it doesn't look good.

If you must use only 1 CDR, drop the resolution down to 480xsomething or 320xsomething, and audio at 128k. This is lower res, but you won't be starved for a bitrate. Of course it will look bad full screen, well duh.

If you want perfect AVI's, go with 2 CDR's and AC3 audio. This leaves you over 1 GB for the video. For high action movies go with a downmixed 2 channel mp3 (dolby surround) and you will have over 1.2 GB for the video. Play around with the resolution so you have a nice respectable bitrate. I like XviD, which does 2-pass pretty well. DivX is more versatile, but also takes more work for the best results.

My backup of clones is 640x272 with 192k mp3 audio (ac3 downmix) and it jsut kicks but on full screen. And yes, it's 2 disks. I couldn't get a decent 1 disk backup until I went 320x220 (with black bars) with the same audio, and yes, it looks block on full screen.

[EddyH]

Uh? CBR with an AVI? You gotta be kidding me, it'd take some exceptional circumstances for me to do that CBR is for kiddies and overly restricted VCD/DVD players

I'm doing one-pass quality-based at the mo (just playing). Maybe try 2-pass later on if it proves impossible to get right (just transferring experiences with TMPGEnc CQ vs 2-pass, of course that may not work entirely right!). Not using bitrate calculator or anything, just setting a medium-high quality level (started at high 70s-low 80s, now shifting to high 80s) and seeing how big it came out. Got lucky with first pass, accidentally resized it using ugly nearest neighbour and it was small enough to use 160k audio (original soundtrack warrants _nothing_ better than 128 though). Changed to precise bicubic, upped the quality a little, was OK for 128 with some overburning but still ugly.
Like I said, only playing with it for now really, seeing how all the different options pan out. Most concerned by the system hosing/sheer amount of CPU needed compared to regular MPG (even though I tend to use a good number of TMPG filters and maximum quality). Even kwag's hi-rez templates are quicker/better looking than this, and they cover more area with a supposedly less efficient codec... maybe I'll see if i can import the K matrix into XviD.

Film's a kiss under 100 minutes long without the credits (which as they're simplistic, BW, lots of black space, and can be compressed at lower quality, probably count as no more than an extra 20-30sec all in).
Thought 640x352 with a 100 minute film, esp an old school ('79) anime with lots of flat colour and low frame rates in foreground, and fairly smooth scrolling oil paint backgrounds, would work fairly easily with an advanced MPG4 codec like XviD. After all I've got other AVIs (um.. a friend gave it to me.. yeah..) that do better than that and look ok. Guess those hopes were dashed pretty quick (or maybe it was the lumi masking gunking everything up), tons of blocking in places the encoder thought we'rent obvious but eyes screamed otherwise.

Haven't met a film I couldn't quite happily put onto one XVCD yet. I realise CDROMs hold maybe 12% less, but thought the efficiency of MPG4 may compensate. :/
400 wide I may do if necessary (not like I don't know how to change my screen rez) but aiming to see if the 512 will work. Think it will do, even if it has to be taken to 2-pass. KVCD looks like it might be able to do a fine job of fitting the film to one 80 minute XVCD, so if XviD can't do it, that's not very promising for the project as a whole. I'd even heard it had special animation-handling routines in it.. or was that DivX5.. muh.

That said I may yet go to 2CDs for making DivXs, the very very best one's I've had (used as stunning XVCD sources ) were 2-disc.. AC3 though, no need, at least for this one; it's barely in stereo (not sure exactly if it's DD 2.0, MPG stereo, or 48-16-S PCM..) and the noise level/treble muffle is "something else". No real surround sound setup anyway; when there is, it'll be connected to the DVD player as the PC's soundcard is "only" 4 channel.

Why'd you make an AVI with the letterboxing bars? And.. you had to take SW2 down to less than VCD rez to get a decent 1-disc encode with 192k sound..? your standards must either be very high, or the encoding power of these codecs really IS over hyped.