Which output is better? Nero Digital or DIvx from Dr.Divx?

[jtoolman2000]

Now that I have the Phillips DVP640 that plays Divx as well as DVD and others, I am regaining my interest in playing around with Divx encodes. Nero Digital Mpg4 format looks great on my LCD but the resulting Mpg4 will not play on the Phillips. Only Divx and raw Mpg2 files burned to cd will play. So I am considering buying Dr.Divx to do some conversions. Has anyone made a comparison between the 2 formats as far as video clarity and general quality. Of course I would always opt to do a dvd backup of my best DVDs but I do a lot of video tutorials about hobbies like model making and such for that I don;t need extreme quality and CDs are much cheaper than DVD blanks.

[teegee420]

I think Dr. Divx would be a good investment if you don't know a whole lot about converting to Divx. In my opinion it's great for beginners, but lacking in many features contained in Virtualdub that a more experienced user can exploit. Dr. Divx's strength is ease of use, whereas the same isn't exactly true of Virtualdub.

That aside, I also believe Divx is a superior compressor to Nero Digital. I've played with ND quite a bit and though it is very fast and produces decent results, it stumbles at lower bitrates and makes for blockier encodes coimpared to Divx with a simillar bitrate. Bear in mind that my tests were purely unscientific but it appeared to me that when it came to higher bitrates(above 1100kbps), the difference in quality were more subtle. This only applied to multipass ND encodes though. In the end, I still prefer Divx but ND is definitely a reasonably decent alternative that can stand in the same category.

By the way, it's unfortunate that people might be buying standalone mpeg-4 enabled DVD players with the hope that they'll be able to play Nero Digital mp4 files. I try to warn people whenever I can that it isn't possible yet. I'll say this, once a few viable mp4 players comes along I think I'll be doing a lot more Nero Digital encoding.

[jtoolman2000]

Thanks for your honest reply. I have grown to respect your replies to other posts. I was one those who dearly hoped the Phillips coulc play ND. Like you said, for the fairly inexperienced encoder, it makes the process pretty idiot proof as Dr. Divx seems to do. So far my experience with the Phillips Player has been very ++. I have quite few Movies in Dvix that I DL from one of pay sites over a year ago. Clearly these are titles I would not consider buying in DVD but at the time 4-5 bucks seemed reasonable. not any more though. To make a long story short, they played amazingly well. Of course I am talking about a small 25" tv.

Thanks

[teegee420]

I think it's great that your interest in mpeg-4 hasn't disappeared since you got your DVD writer. Most people never look back. By having an mpeg-4 enabled player you really have the best of both worlds. You just can't beat putting 3-4 full length mpeg-4 movies on one DVD without sacrificing a tremendous amount of quality. Good luck with your future encoding, and more imprtantly have fun.