trott
19th February 2002, 20:39
Hey all,
One of the issues I'm usually struggling with before encoding something seems to be: what format do I encode to?
I mean, all formats have their advantages and drawbacks...Ultimately, an encoded movie only has one purpose for me: I want to watch it on my tv while comfortably sitting in the couch with not too much disc-swapping. (I can live with 2 discs, but 3 seems a tad much.)
The way I see it: divx already has a serious disadvantage here (no standalones)...I usually go svcd except when the source is not that good to begin with (vcd) or the length of the movie would require me to make 3 discs and I find that the 3rd disc will only hold a small amount of data anyway (also vcd, I mean, we have a vbr mode so why waste space using a cbr 2472 kbit mpeg-2 stream).
Now it would indeed seem that divx can solve the above problem, however...(and I realise there are no set rules here)
1) what resolution to encode to?
2) what bitrate to use at that resolution for acceptable quality?
While some guides offer hints to bitrate settings, they usually fail to mention for which resolution. and a setting just adequate for let's say 480x288 must logically be horribly inadequate for 640x480.
Can anyone guide me in the right direction:
1) which resolution is sufficient for normal tv output? (on the pc it can look like crap, I don't care...)
2) which bitrate to use for that resolution.
3) which tools are available to objectively check divx quality? (like the bitrate viewer for mpeg1 and mpeg2 which will show you the quantization level)
(After some personal experimenting I find that a 640x280 encoded divx would need at least 1200 kbit/sec...which prohibits making a 1-cd rip for most movies impossible: only about 70 minutes can be stored that way...)
Any hints?
One of the issues I'm usually struggling with before encoding something seems to be: what format do I encode to?
I mean, all formats have their advantages and drawbacks...Ultimately, an encoded movie only has one purpose for me: I want to watch it on my tv while comfortably sitting in the couch with not too much disc-swapping. (I can live with 2 discs, but 3 seems a tad much.)
The way I see it: divx already has a serious disadvantage here (no standalones)...I usually go svcd except when the source is not that good to begin with (vcd) or the length of the movie would require me to make 3 discs and I find that the 3rd disc will only hold a small amount of data anyway (also vcd, I mean, we have a vbr mode so why waste space using a cbr 2472 kbit mpeg-2 stream).
Now it would indeed seem that divx can solve the above problem, however...(and I realise there are no set rules here)
1) what resolution to encode to?
2) what bitrate to use at that resolution for acceptable quality?
While some guides offer hints to bitrate settings, they usually fail to mention for which resolution. and a setting just adequate for let's say 480x288 must logically be horribly inadequate for 640x480.
Can anyone guide me in the right direction:
1) which resolution is sufficient for normal tv output? (on the pc it can look like crap, I don't care...)
2) which bitrate to use for that resolution.
3) which tools are available to objectively check divx quality? (like the bitrate viewer for mpeg1 and mpeg2 which will show you the quantization level)
(After some personal experimenting I find that a 640x280 encoded divx would need at least 1200 kbit/sec...which prohibits making a 1-cd rip for most movies impossible: only about 70 minutes can be stored that way...)
Any hints?