MeGUI settings

[molasses]

I have this bluray rip in mkv with dts format which is 1280x528. Been trying to convert it to avi (xvid + ac3). I use MKVextract, then MKVmerge (these steps I know...no confusion there). MeGUI converts audio from DTS to AC3. The problem is with the video conversion. I select the output size to be 1.6GB with screen size 720x304, and at the end of conversion, the file always comes to 945MB (vid+aud). Please help in fixing this and suggest MEGUI settings. Thanks in advance....

[Guest]

Where did you get the bluray rip?

[kalehrl]

I think the movie is very compressible and that's probably the reason why it is undersized.
Sometimes my xvid rips end up as little as 450MB or even 350MB, MP3 audio included.
I use CQ 3.3 and sometimes CQ of 3.0.

[hello_hello]

I use AutoGK for converting MKVs and MP4s (bit of a process because it doesn't support them natively). If I'm converting Bluray to SD AVI I generally convert the 720p copies I make as it's much quicker than starting with the original disc again, and due to the amount of resizing I can't see a quality difference.
I generally convert the audio to stereo 128k MP3. The file sizes can be a small as 450MB and sometimes as large as 2GB, but 800-900MB would be about the average. It seems due to the quality, using a HD source doesn't require as large a file size as when encoding the same video using a DVD as the source.... on average.

Think of it this way. You run a single pass encode using a CQ of 2. That's the maximum quality/minimum compression for Xvid. The resulting file size is 800MB. Now you run a 2 pass encode while picking a file size of 1200MB. It'll still only end up around 800MB if everything else is equal. You could probably try the same experiment yourself. Run a single pass encode on the same video using a CQ of 2 (maximum quality). The higher the CQ value the lower the quality. If you use the same Xvid settings as previously, chances are the output will be around 950MB. If it's way larger, then I guess something needs fixing.

PS The main reason I continue to use AutoGK is because it runs a compression test and reports the expected quality for a given file size. I don't think any current encoder GUIs do that. I do use MeGUI for x264 encoding though as I only run single pass encoding when using the x264 encoder.
Edit: Thinking about it, I think HDConvertToX has the ability to run a compression test. You setup the encoder, pick the desired quality, run the test, and I think it'll give you the appropriate file size according to the compression test result (minus the audio). I don't have it installed at the moment to check, but that's the way I remember it.

[kalehrl]

I use AutoGK for converting MKVs and MP4s (bit of a process because it doesn't support them natively).
There is a nice tool here on the forum - MkvТоMp4 which converts mkvs to mp4s in just a couple of minutes.
The resulting mp4 can be renamed to avi and encoded by autogk ;)

[molasses]

Thanks everyone....
But my question remains...
In autoencode mode, I select my preferred size as 1.6 GB, but it comes up as around 945MB. That is really irritating...
The indirect but cumbersome method I use now is that to use MeGUI to convert video with 'source' screen size- say 720p, then output muxed file comes as 2.2 or 2.4 GB. Then use autogk to resize it to 480p and 1.6 GB. Autogk has no problem in giving the output in desired size. But this method is really time consuming....
MeGUI used to work perfectly betore, but these things happened after a couple of scheduled updates. Has anyone found the same issue?

[Guest]

Closing pending OP answer to mod question. Please use PM.