Loosing quality when converting?

[rrrredrum]

I'm loosing quality when converting from Divx to mpeg1(later to vcd). Am I the only one who this happens too?, Is there any way to avoid the loss?.

There are lots more and bigger "squares" or boxes" that can be seen when watcing low quality ditgital video(usually in divx, can often be seen at the sky or other "large fields"... you know what I mean)

Using tmpenc's "wizard" to convert.

[Acaila]

You are converting from one lossless format to the other, so naturally the quality will suffer. This is normal, and unavoidable.

You could try to minimize the blocks by using smoothing filters, but then you'll lose detail. Either way you'll lose something.

[DJ Bobo]

"You are converting from one lossy format to the other,..."

That's what Acaila ment :D

[rrrredrum]

Then why the darn are people using Divx?, I know the file size is lesser.. but why not use mpeg 2? It's not THAT much bigger, and hsa great quality on SVCd.

[Acaila]

@DJ Bobo:

Whoops! Thanks for correcting me, I didn't even see I wrote that :D

rrrredrum wrote:
Then why the darn are people using Divx?, I know the file size is lesser.. but why not use mpeg 2? It's not THAT much bigger, and hsa great quality on SVCd.Because not everyone converts their movies to (S)VCD. MPEG4 is much more efficient, so unless you really NEED MPEG2 (like for watching on a standalone DVD player), there's not much sense in using that instead of MPEG4.

[DJ Bobo]

@ redrum
Sorry, but to achieve the same quality as DivX, MPEG-2 needs almost the double size! ;)

[theReal]

plus, SVCD has a limited resolution, Divx does not.

[rrrredrum]

Yeah.. but how nerdish and boring is it not to view on the Computer.. or have to use TV out.. in 10 years all your movies will be gone, if you hav'nt got them on vcd.

Will I loose quality if I convert to Svcd/mpeg2?

[theReal]

do you think you're still going to watch your svcd's in ten years (unless they are some home videos) ??

By that time, every movie we compress today will look like shit on our 80 inch hdtv plasma tv's ;)

[rrrredrum]

The old movies black and white movies, are people not watching them? I watch movies cause Iw anna hear a story, not to tell if the qualty is good or bad. And the quality of a divx is not that much worse that a video.. which i can assure you people wills itll watch in 10 years. LP's, they are old, and the quality is crap. Still I buy them.

So: Will I loose muc quality in such a conversion?

[theReal]

I wasn't saying people don't watch old movies. I just assumed that good movies will be professionally re-encoded by the studios for new media and better tv screens and then it's like today when people are buying DVD's of movies they already have on old videotapes, but they want to have it on DVD because of better quality.
I admit that 10 years will not be enough for a new standard that will be much better than DVD. So, yes, we will still watch SVCDs and DVDs and Divx from today in 10 years.
However I hope that I will be able to play Divx on so many devices in 10 years that it will be even less of a problem than today to watch it on tv screen.

[Acaila]

rrrredrum wrote:
So: Will I loose muc quality in such a conversion?You will loose less quality when converting from DivX->MPEG2->SVCD compared to DivX->MPEG1->VCD, but you'll still loose quality there's no avoiding that.