What program to use for MPEG-2 to DivX for best quality?

[Viper187]

I have a rather large HD, but I still don't have enough space to keep a bunch of MPEG-2s laying around. Is converting them to DivX a good alternative? Is the quality as good?

[Tommyknocker]

I would say keep your MPEG-2. If you want HD space, why not store them on CD-Rs?

[Viper187]

Yeah, sure, I'm gonna throw a 2GB MPEG-2 on a 700MB CDR. lol

[Tommyknocker]

I would not keep two Gigs tied up on my hard drive for just a movie. I would cut that puppy into three parts, store it on three CD-Rs until I am ready to burn it on an DVD-R. LOL that.

[Viper187]

I don't wanna use CDRs. I guess I'll try converting to DivX 5 with Vidomi tonight. Unless there's a better program?

[GiantRobo]

I use Gordian Knot which includes a bunch of programs all in one to make it very easy. It works best with movie length video. You open the mpeg2 movie in DVD2AVI - Save as D2v project - Open project in Gordian Knot - tell Gknot what output resolution and what size you want (ie 700 MB) and what codec to use (usually divx3). It is available at Doom9.org

[fonoop]

What I did when I had a bunch of dv movies occupying many Gb of space on my hard drive, I just used Winzip to split them into 700mb parts so I could store them onto cd. This would take considerably less time than converting to divx and you would keep the original. But if you’re like me, you have to have a copy on your hard drive at all times.
So whatever floats your boat.

[fingernailX]

I strongly suggest Xmpeg 4.5 2 pass vbr to Divx 5.02. It accepts mpeg2 source files and keeps it in the YUV colorspace for fast compression. Check out www.doom9.org for a guide. Divx is the best current codec for high quality high compression and keeping everything in YUV saves the time loss going from YUV to RGB and then back to YUV. H.264 will be the codec of the future but for now Divx 5.02 is the choice.

[Faceman101]

It seems he knew the answer already, laughed at a suggestion (which would be his best choice), then just likes to post about it.

Putting them onto CD-Rs or DVD-Rs is your best choice, unless you want to re-encode them again to MPG-2 after your Divx. Other wise you are stuck with watching them on your comp.

But it's your videos, your choice.

[Viper187]

Thanx fingernailX. I needed that info.

[Viper187]

um... When I tried to encode with Xmpeg, it gave a fatal error. "Unable to open log file" ???