Help, what resolution ?

[Yodae]

Hi

I'm wondering what resolution to use when encoding from DVD to DivX. Does it matter if the original film is Widescreen/fullscreen/anamorphic ? If so, what resolution to use ?

The guide http://www.polarhome.com:793/~afonic/divx5.htm tells me to use 640x480 (on all)

Also, which DivX version is the best to use when encoding ? Which one gives the best quality..

Thanks

[xtreemkareem]

If you use XMPEG or GourdianKnot, you specify (autodetects) your source AR and then it gives you a choice of resolutions that apply, and the options of autocropping. Frankly, it depends on the resolution of your source. If you want a decent DVD->DivX backup that fits on a single CD, run the movie length through a BR calcultaor. If it's anything lower than 700 something or so (or if you have a high action movie) decrease the resolution and crop out the black areas on widescreen movies... black bars just take up extra data that could be used on the movie. It can be tricky so use XMPEG... what's nice is that you can encode source range so you only need to encode a 1 minute clip to test out how it looks, no problem, you don't need to wait 10 hrs. Only drawback to XMPEG is it acts up trying to do multipass encodes.. which I prefer as it does best data allocation possible and stays more w/in projected filesize. As for codecs? I'd go w/ either DivX 4.12, DivX 5.03 (regular, NOT Pro) or XVID. DivX 5.1 is still way too slow and only offers marginally better quality... IMHO go DivX 5.03. Hope this helps.

[Gazorgan]

If you want a DivX on 1 CD (and the corresponding shit quality), then you want to be in the 320x240 resolution range.

2 CD movies can hit 640x480 range (depending on length). It depends on the amount of action in the movie. You may also see a lot 640x360 ish for widescreen encodes.

DivX 5.1 is okay, jsut everything you read for prior versions doesn't apply in the quality setting area. XviD is nice in that it wroks theother way, with final file size, instead of forcing you to use an archaic bitrate calculator.

If you wan to keep the AC5.1 sound, then you have to re-think your resolution to avoid artifacts.

[xtreemkareem]

Dude... I don't know wht you're talking about.. but I swear I have gotten awesome qulaity using DivX 4.12 or 5.03 FULL DVD reolution and getting the DivX to easily fit on one CD (using 96 or 128 kbps mp3 audio whihc sounds good enough for me). I encoded "The Mummy" fullscreen edition using DivX 4.12 640 kbps 2-Pass using DVDx @ 720X480 and 96 kbps mp3 audio.... I swear the results are better than SVCD... reall damn close to DVD quality. 640 kbps bitrate! Ain't that insane? Full DVD resolution on a fullscreen movie. DivX can do some amazing stuff... any movie around 95 minutes or so will easily fit on one CD (assuming not too much action) using DivX compression and near DVD resolution. Try it out sometime!