divx quality vs dvd quality

[NateDizzle]

well i just burnt my first divx coverted movie to dvd, and i am very impressed with the overall quality. it basicly looks just like a copy of the actual retail dvd version.

anyways. whats everyone elses opinion on divx coverted quality on ur dvd player

is there any way to make it better? like maybe a little more clear and or crisp

thanks.


btw the divx file was a dvdrip 750megs
i swear the divx dvd rip looked better then my full dvd copies (all menus and extras) the quality on those ones u can tell has been taken down low, u can see pixels, and thats at like 60% quality (dvdshrink)

[redwudz]

EDIT: I misread your post. Some Divx converts can look fairly good if the source material is good to start with. I prefer the ones that are around 1500MB for any kind of quality conversion. But if you watch it on a big screen, you will notice the video is pretty 'soft' and there's not much of anything you can do about that. Fine for a small TV and you can't beat the Divx filesize. You would be a lot better off just to use a Divx settop player and then no conversion may be required. (If the video is Divx player compliant.)

I usually use ConvertXToDVD and the file comes out good enough, as the source quality is not usually that great.

[NateDizzle]

also, i was playing the disc on my very old dvd player (got it in 2000) and i could see pixels, but when i played it on my better newer dvd player (got it in 04) i coulndt see the pixels, the quality looked much clearer

is that just cuz the one dvd player is very old?

also im goin to be gettin a divx dvd player, will the quality be the exact same as the divx file on my computer?
the divx quality on my dvdrips on the comp, look basicly perfect, better then a dvd copy with all the menus+extras on a single layer dvd disc (much lower quality, pixely)

oh and btw i was using VSO (ConvertXtoDVD) for the divx to dvd convert + burn

[guns1inger]

I can't think of any movie that would look good shrink by 40% with a transcoder like Shrink, so I'm not surprised they look rough.

On the otherhand, I haven't seen any 700MB Divx/Xvid movies that looked 'DVD Quality". To me, "DVD Quality" means resolution as well as image quality. Even movies that have had the resolution reduced substantially in order to get more for the bitrate, show definite compression issues. These issues become very obvious when the video is resized back up to DVD resolution. The types of issues that I see are pulsing and blocking on areas with small tonal range - walls, dark areas like the night sky or windows etc, loss of detail in skin tones, and the inevitable blocking artifacts in high motion. From my own experiments in encoding Xvid, anything under around 2000kbps is too little. I have long since stopped bothering actually converting them, and just put them as is onto a data disc, 5 - 6 at a time, and watch them on my divx capable player. The image quality is no worse because it hasn't had the extra encoding, and it is a lot quicker.

However, if you want to go down this path a while longer, I would suggest the following

1. Never put more than one movie to a DVD. General wisdom around here is that mpeg2 needs at least 3 - 4 times the bitrate of Xvid/Divx to maintain similar quality. 1500 is way too low for mpeg2 unless you are using VCD resolutions (and even then it is too low).

2. If you are a virtualdub use, look at the MSU smart deblocker and MSU deblocking filters, and UnSharpMask by Antonnio Foranna/Donald Graft.

3. If you are an avisynth user, look at blockbuster and asharp.

4. Above all, be realistic. This movie has already had the living crap squeezed out of it. You cannot get that back.