My DVD to XVID lossless settings with 2500kbps/s

[diego gr]

I converted various DVD videos to Xvid, without resizing and using "1 Pass - Quantizer 3" settings. The result was a DVD-quality video using only 2200kbps/s.
In case of someone's interested, here are the settings I used:

http://www.4shared.com/dir/6898014/454c2212/DVD_To_Xvid_Q3_2500kbps.html

PS1: That 1,1,1 values in CBR settings I learned in a topic from here
PS2: Why quantizer 3? Because I encoded with "desired bitrate: 2500kbps" 1 Pass previously, and the average quantizer value was 4, so I chose 3 to be "my default" for lossless encoding
PS3: These settings work great for low-motion and high-motion videos, as you can see in the sample
PS4: The source DVD was already pixelated, as you can see in the sample at 30 seconds

1-minute SAMPLE: http://www.4shared.com/file/46410349/f6711ea/Sample_Xvid_Q3.html

[diego gr]

Now I wanna know "2 Pass" settings for achieving a DVD-quality with the lowest possible bitrate, if you could help me...XD

[Brother John]

Some comments:
Those 1,1,1 settings are irrelevant because they only apply to 1-pass bitrate mode.
No resizing, yet you didn’t set the appropriate PAR. Why?
Since you already use quite strong compression, why don’t you enable VHQ for B-frames as well? Same thing for chroma optimizer.
For my taste H.263 would be too smooth. I’d rather go for one of the high bitrate sharktooth matrices. But that’s personal preference and would of course increase the file size.
From the look of the screenshots you’re Xvid version seems to be quite old. You might want to update.

With 2-pass things are a little more difficult. If you’re content with your 1-pass setup try a similar file size for 2-pass.

[diego gr]

No resizing, yet you didn’t set the appropriate PAR. Why?
Pixel Aspect Ratio? What do I have to set?

why don’t you enable VHQ for B-frames as well? Same thing for chroma optimizer.
Chroma Optimizer will not make blocks appear in dark areas?

I updated my Xvid version to 1.1.2 (2006) and my encoding speed decreased 50%, I need a new computer \o/
Why the hell didn't I know Xvid before? I never imagined that I could have a DVD-quality file with 2200kbps, I'm in love with this thing ;p

[unskinnyboy]

diego gr, ever tried reading the Xvid FAQ (http://www.geocities.com/atreya2011/Xvid-FAQ-Crusty-04-03-2004.pdf)?

[Ranguvar]

LOL, that would have been useful to me when I started in on all this stuff. Just never found it until now.

unskinnyboy, do you really need to be so negative towards newbies?

[unskinnyboy]

unskinnyboy, do you really need to be so negative towards newbies?This isn't the 'Newbies' sub-forum. Along with the OP, maybe you need to read rules 1 & 2 too and understand why they are there.

[diego gr]

LOL, that would have been useful to me when I started in on all this stuff. Just never found it until now.

Exactly why I created this thread

[Ranguvar]

This isn't the 'Newbies' sub-forum. Along with the OP, maybe you need to read rules 1 & 2 too and understand why they are there.
Ah, I see kindness is reserved for the Newbies forum. Thanks for correcting me.

It's your choice how to respond I guess, but does it really make you feel better to take your frustration out on a newbie? You were one once, too, and not everyone remembers to check all these things first. I know I haven't, almost everyone's done that before. You don't need to do more than link, but snappy words only make you feel bigger.

[unskinnyboy]

Ah, I see kindness is reserved for the Newbies forum. Thanks for correcting me.

It's your choice how to respond I guess, but does it really make you feel better to take your frustration out on a newbie? You were one once, too, and not everyone remembers to check all these things first. I know I haven't, almost everyone's done that before. You don't need to do more than link, but snappy words only make you feel bigger.Yes, it is my choice on how I choose to respond. As long as we have users who ignore the forum rules which they agreed to when they signed up, we are well within our rights to admonish them. Yes, I was a newbie once, but guess what, I lurked and read for many years before even registering on the forum. Why do you think we have a 5 day cool off period even after registering during which you are not allowed to post? If it wasn't clear already, let me break it down for you - Doom9 isn't a newbie forum! But if you must post newbie questions, do so in the Newbie sub-forum.

And while we are on a pacifying streak, why not reopen every single thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=137438) ever closed because users couldn't be bothered to search, and oh yeah, let's also remove all the smilies which say "use search", "read the rules", "read the FAQ" etc. :rolleyes:

[Ranguvar]

You know very well that's not what I'm saying. Don't take my words and exaggerate the meaning.

Every forum is a newbie forum. Meaning, like it or not, every forum will have hoards of "newbies". Find a better way to deal with that.

And yes, shockingly, it's possible to be decent, or even respectful, to fellow members (newbies and post-whores alike) without opening closed threads...

[laserfan]

Hmmm, an awful lot of energy expended over this comment:
diego gr, ever tried reading the Xvid FAQ (http://www.geocities.com/atreya2011/Xvid-FAQ-Crusty-04-03-2004.pdf)?
I think one would have to be awfully thin-skinned to take offense to this simple and straightforward suggestion? :confused:

[jsquare]

Diego gr, I been doing something similar for the past year or so but at 1200Kbps(+128K audio for a max of 10MB/Min), and so far my results are very good, specially with the VAQ build. Before that I was doing most of my encodes at Q2.5 but sometimes the target size will go above 10MB/Min, and the quality of some slow moving or dark scene suffered a lot with variable Q levels.

Also was thinking of sharing the results on a separate thread but some people here are only looking forward to trash any new ideas.

I never do 2-pass encodes, here are my 1-pass 1200Kbps settings if you want to try them, just increase the bitrate to 2500Kbps if you want to:

Profile = Unrestricted
Quantization type = MPEG (looks and compress much better than H.263)
Adaptive Quantization = ON (VAQ enable on my case)
QPEL & GMC = OFF (this make sure that it works on my Philips SA player)
B-VOPS = Default 2-1.5-1
Packed Bitstream = OFF

Encoding Type = Single Pass
CBR Settings = 2-2-100 (I don't recommend 1-1-1, it's too dynamic)
Target bitrate = 1200 (or 2500 in your case)
Chroma Optimizer Enable = ON

Motion search = 6
VHQ mode = 4
Use VHQ for B-Frames = ON
Use chroma motion = ON
Turbo = OFF

Quantization (Cap the quantizers)
I = 2-4
P = 2-4
B = 4-7

Here is an example of 2 of my latest encodes which are under my target size and they look as good as the original:

Hitman = 667.5MB 1:34 704x304
The Mist = 917.6MB 2:06 640x352

But again loss-less encodes with Xvid is not my preference, that's why I own the original DVDs. I just want to back them up to be play anytime via my XBMC or have several movies on one DVD.

[diego gr]

Hitman = 667.5MB 1:34 704x304

wow! I'm impressed with that filesize!

I changed my encode settings. My main objective is putting many XVID files as possible in one DVDR with "watchable" DVD-quality (no artifacts). Now I'm resizing all my DVDs to height 400px, it gives me resolutions of 608x400 and 496x400 (16:9 and 4:3), and allows me to watch that videos on full screen in the PC monitor without artifacts.

These are my current settings:
Original VOB files > Demux audio and video with VOBEdit > AC3 to WAV with DVD Audio Extractor > WAV to MP3 192kbps with RazorLAME
VIRTUALDUBMOD (to do all the video job)
Video: Full Processing Mode
Filters: Deinterlace (Blend), Resize Precise Bicubic 0,75 (height 400)
Profile Unrestricted
Quantization type: H263 (I didn't tested MPEG yet)
BVOPs: Default 2 - 1,5 - 1
QPEL, GMC, VAQ: OFF (I tested QPEL and it add artifacts)
Packed Bitstream: ON
Aspect Ratio: Square (for both 16:9 and 4:3 video)
CBR: 1,1,1 (I will test 2,2,100 soon, thanks for sharing it)
Target Bitrate: 1500kbps
Zone: All in Weight=1
Begin with keyframe: ON
BVOP sensitivity: 0
Motion Search=6
VHQ=4
VHQ for BFrames=ON
Chroma Motion=ON
Quantization: All in 2-31 (output average quant: between 6 and 7)
Trellis Quantization=ON
Join XVID video and MP3 audio in VirtualDubMOD.

My final audio/video average bitrate is 1400kbps, 10MB/minute, which gives me around 7 hours of video in one DVDR (objective accomplished).

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/7347/xvidstatus496x4001500keb0.jpg

[SeeMoreDigital]

diego gr,

There's no such thing as "Xvid lossless" :eek:

[squid_80]

Chroma Optimizer is buggy and AFAIK has not been fixed. Use it at your own risk.

[DarkZell666]

diego gr,

There's no such thing as "Xvid lossless" :eek:

+1, diego gr, what you refer to as "lossless" is in fact "transparent". Lossless is the exact same picture with all pixels being exactly the same, whereas transparent means that both pictures are very similar but that you can't spot the difference with your eyes during normal playback (which is your case).

And if you try using the same settings on other movies, you're not guaranteed to get the same quality or filesize (sometimes it's double for the same movie length, e.g. 1h30) because each source has it's unique compressibility value (which you can trick with some pre-filtering of course).

Why the hell didn't I know Xvid before? I never imagined that I could have a DVD-quality file with 2200kbps, I'm in love with this thing ;pYou might want to try x264 then, you'll get the same (if not better) quality at around ~1200kbps, hands down ;) (but this disqualifies playback on your SAP, unless it's h.264-compliant ^^).

[TripleA]

As pointed out, XviD is never lossless. And the bitrate required to achieve a desired visual quality will vary tremendously for different source material. Off the top of my head, try contrasting the bitrate requirements of "The Others" and "Bring it On", for example.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yeah, you can really get impressive results with x264 these days, especially with VAQ, FGO, and CRF encoding :)

~MiSfit

[Honeyko]

I very seldom kill any of the vertical resolution of DVD sources, and try not to alter the native pixel aspect-ratio much at all. If you want DVD quality on a speed budget, your typical black-barred 2.35 widescreen film looks much better ripped to, say, 720x368 (and then anamorphically fixed with MPEG4Modifier) than it will crunched to 720x304. CQ2.75 looks very nice around the 2500-3000bps range. (Files are big, but it's quite fast, and DVD5 blanks are cheap....)

[laserfan]

Chroma Optimizer is buggy and AFAIK has not been fixed. Use it at your own risk.I have actually seen single glitches (less than a second in length) over the course of a 2hr movie that *I THINK* were caused by this! :( So I found this the hard way!

At least I'd thought this might the case given the nature of the glitch, and so turned-off this option for my encodes. To clarify: the "Chroma Optimizer enabled" checkbox is in the Zone Options dialog, not to be confused with the "Use chroma motion" checkbox under Motion Precision, which I normally have checked.

Can someone here confirm that I have this right? :confused:

[squid_80]

Yes I'm talking about the chroma optimizer option under zones. It shouldn't cause glitches, but rather just doesn't do exactly what it's meant to and in extreme cases may smear colours to the right/down. Plugh found the error, documented in this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=136324