DivX - seems I need help

[twotothree]

I have to encode a 6h .mov from QTPlayer to DivX pro. The encoding process always shuts down after about 10 hours, which is about half the time.
The movie is a 720x576, 25fps pal .mov. The movie has 1 audio and 1 video track and is dependant, i.e. it consists of two about equally large files. (But this should not be the problem - I made several test of depandant movies before). DivX is the latest pro version and MacOs is 10.2.8.
I made three multipass encoding processes now. The first pass just wrote a logfile (that´s normal). The second should update the logfile and create an Avi. But this just quit after about 13 hours and the Avi just disapeared. I tried another time, same settings, and the process also shut down after about 11 hours.
Can it be that the first pass created a corrupt logfile and therefore all following passes don´t go allright? But how can I see if the first pass went o.k.? It finished, while I was sleeping, so I have no Idea when it stopped, or if it went all the way through.
(It is extremly frustrating to wait three times 20 hours and have no result) ... does anyone have an idea?

[WiseWeasel]

have you tried contacting the Divx developers or posting on their help forums?

[twotothree]

ja, I did - but get no reply from either the forum or the support ...

[thoughton]

I've had a similar problem while exporting to divx5.1 from QTPro, where my output video would sometimes cut off halfway through. I was able to work around it by exporting to uncompressed AVI first, then exporting from that to divx5.1. You'll need loads of disk space though

My other thought is to try with a non-reference movie as your source.

Good luck!

[twotothree]

What do you mean by cut off halfway through? Did the encoding process also simply say thats all from me?

I tested shorter reference movies before and they were encoded just fine.
To save it as an extra non reference Avi I should need another 75 GB. But my disk space is now somewhat limited. I saved it this way, because otherwise it seems to have two video tracks in QTPlayer. And with two video tracks the audio gets corrupted in DivX.

Can it be that there is a time limit in DivX?
Can i see wheather the logfile read all 540.000 frames?
Can a logfile get corrupted and be the reason for following passes not to work?

(so I sit here and watch the next 22 hour test ...)

[thoughton]

When it failed for me it was exporting an xvid via QT Pro direct to divx5.1.

The export _looked_ like it completed normally, but on playback the video only got about halfway through then just a frozen picture for the remaining 60% (audio continued to play). I didn't see any message about "that's all from me".

Do you have one large audio and one large video file? Or two large muxed files? I'm thinking maybe encode each part to divx seperately then join them?

[twotothree]

I have two ca. 38 GB muxed files (QT mov´s), each with one audio and one video track.
Encode each part by itself and then join the avis sounds like a good idea! How do you do that with divX Avis? Simply in QTPlayer?

(I am just running another test - one pass encoding and I am allready at frame 275.000 - just another 11 hours more to go)

[WiseWeasel]

You could try saving it as a single file, self-contained, and then using that as the source for the conversion...

[twotothree]

ya + no ... I don´t have enough HD space anymore (I just have 36GB on one disk, 10GB on another and 23 on the other disk left and the self contained file would be about 76GB).

But like I wrote I am just running a 1pass test and it is way over the middle allready (frame365045, 55, 56... too fast!) so this seems to work. Lets see about the quality?

If the quality is not good enough in the end, do you know how to join two DivX Avis? (Iwould then just encode them seperatly) Just copy + paste and save as self contained in QTPlayer? Can you tell me.

And: thank you all very much!

[WiseWeasel]

You could do that. I believe ffmpegX has a Divx join feature, as long as the parts are encoded with the same encoder and settings.

[twotothree]

... it does´nt work this way! (another 20 hours wasted) I just got the news in DivX Forum that DivX has a limitation of 4 GB? I don´t know more yet, but this could be the reason. It´s a pity this is not mentioned in the manual. And it is a pity because DivX seems to be the only possibility to save very long films in an acceptable quality on some medium. But by splitting the film in two parts my DivX Player just plays one after the other with no noticable break - so finally everything is fine. Thank you all for helping + greetings from berlin - twotothree

[EJub]

Not sure if this helps, but FinalCutExpress 2 can encode to DivX.
Maybe you could import to FCE and then export.