Fixed width at 512 good idea for 1024x769 playback.

[Codesmith]

I like to keep my monitor at 1024x768. Additionally my PC outputs to my TV at 1024x768.

Since I always going to playback my divx movies at 1024 I am thinking it would be a good idea to always encode at 512 and avoid any scaling problems.

Then again maybe I am better off letting AutoGK pick my resolution.

Anyone care to comment?

[killingspree]

imho it's better to let autogk decide which resolution too chose... as long as the encoding size is mod compliant (mod 16 or 32) you shouldn't have any scaling problems. and fixing your width may reduce the max possible quality!

cheers
steVe

[Codesmith]

Looks like you are right. I ripped an older movie both ways. I took screen shots of both after they were scaled to 1024. The rip where I let AutoGK chose the size is definitely less blocky.

Also DivX was slightly better than Xvid.

Right now I am trying Xvid vs DivX on a new movie to see which looks better given a noisier source.

Do most people just pick one codec and stick with it, or do the experts match the codec to the situation?

[killingspree]

Originally posted by Codesmith

Do most people just pick one codec and stick with it, or do the experts match the codec to the situation?

i'd say most 'experts' stick with xvid. as it will most likely provide you with the "better" results if you set it up correctly, which is far more difficult than setting up divx!

anyway, most people i'd say try both codecs, see which results they like better and then decide on a codec to stick with!

steVe

[theReal]

i'd say most 'experts' stick with xvid. as it will most likely provide you with the "better" results if you set it up correctly, which is far more difficult than setting up divx!

It's been quite a while since I was messing a lot with codecs and codec settings to achieve the best mpeg4 results. Like a year ago, I thought Divx wasn't worse than XVid and much easier to configure.

Since then I've seen a lot of XVid encodes and now I am convinced XVid is a LOT better than Divx if you know how to configure it. The results are so crisp and vivid, you can never do that with Divx.
I'm not encoding to mpeg4 anymore, but if I would I guess I'd use XVid by now.