not so Newbie settings help

[Enrico Ng]

I'm new to XviD in the sense that I don't really understand all the settings very well.

I've used XviD alot and I've also read many threads here about what settings mean how they affect things. I've also ran many of my own tests.

All my sources are TV captures (uncompressed video) and are pretty clear (in my opinion).
I find that for me, the best settings are to set:
Motion Search: 6
VHQ: 0 or 1
pretty much everything else off (B frames, chroma, etc)
I've tried MPEG and H.263 and don't notice a big difference.
I've also tried several custom matricies I've found here.
I also have to first run it through a smoother (AviSynth PeachSmoother) to get the results to look not so grainy.
The videos look great with these settings, but I guess I just don't understand why for me, these are the best settings.
When I use B-frames, custom matricies, or some of the other settings, it gets very slow and the results are much worse (or the about same)

I don't fully understand how all these settings relate or work, I just try to read all the suggestions and explainations. I feel like I'm missing something which is causing all these other settings to not work right since I see many of you have settings that are completely different that mine, yet you get good results.

Now with the new 1.0beta, I'm even less sure about what settings to use.

I'm getting good results now, but I'm not using most of those XviD settings so I figure if I figure out how to use them, it can be much better.

[communist]

Are you using a outdated XviD build where certain features didn work well together (like VHQ + B-Frames / no custom matrix with certain settings...) ?

Also you might want to get a DVD and encode test clips from there with different settings.

Things like H263 / MPEG should be easily recognizebale.

But if everything is fine for you - keep your settings :)

[Enrico Ng]

I'm using the one from here
http://nic.dnsalias.com/xvid.html
July 2003

I would try DVD, but 90% of video that I encode is from TV so I figure its better to "find" my settings with TV.

I found that VHQ did not provide that big of a difference, but it slowed down the encoding ALOT. so I stick with VHQ 0 or 1
Whenever I enabled B-frames, with or without VHQ, it always turned on worse.
I also tried some of the custome matricies, but they all either turned out the same or worse.

I do notice a difference between MPEG and H.263, H.263 looks smoother, but I guess its not really a big difference (to me).
I never tried GMC, trellis, lumi masking because I heard they did not work well. I tried Quarterpel but it always made it look worse.
I hear many of these options now work well with the new Xvid 1.0beta, but I also hear they do not make a big differece. But I have not finished reading through that long thread and trying to decipher what it means.

So I guess to give a full picture
I capture video 640x480 @ 29.97fps, uncompressed
I use AVISynth with FieldDeinterlance and PixieDust Smoother. I use 2 pass, on the second pass, I use the MiniCalc and try to shoot for 17.5MB/min with 128kbit CBR audio. so I can find a normal hour show (40min) on a 700mb cd.
The Xvid settings I use are
NICs July 2003 build
Motion search precision: 6
Quant type: MPEG or H.263
VHQ: 0 or 1
Max I-frame: 300
Min I-frame: 1
all checkmarks disabled
Bframes off

The reason I use the PixieDust smoother is because everything looks way too grainy if I don't. I try to smooth but not so much that I loose too much detail. I understand that my TV capture from my tv tuner connected to digital cable is not as good as cable, but I still think it is quite good quality.
Xvid seems to have so many options and features but I only use a few of them so I figure there is a possiblility for my videos to become much better, if I can figure out the right settings.