So Far So Good!

[metrum_eng]

Decided to make the divX 5.02-pro leap with my G-knot encodes. So far I've encoded two long (over 2 and 15 minute movies) while using divX 5.02 pro and following TheWEF's guide to a tee and using the exact pro features he suggests in the guide. The movies look incredible and I used 2 cd file size rips because they were over 2 hours and 15 minutes long.

I'm now going to encode a movie that is only 1 hour and 30 minutes and try to put it on only 1 cd as overkill file size suggests when using the pro features on the new 5.02 pro codec. My question to the more advanced users are, I would like to hear any "OPINIONS" on their encoding number of CD methods. Taking into account the length of the movie, IE. 1 hour and 30 minutes (90 Minutes), Bit rate under 1000kbps, and how low shouldn't I go? If the bit rate is say only 750kbps on a movie, should I up it to 2 CD's?

Now I'm asking all this by taking into consideration the current G-Knot guide and using every feature TheWEF suggests in the guide with the divX 5.02 pro features.

[goauld]

hi..

well, I'm novice in Gordian Knot (I did only around 15 films) but after my first Gordian Knot try I realized that it is fantastic. I used to code my films with another tool (I did more of 50 or 60 with that tool) but now I'm using Gordian. Frankly,in my personal opinion, it's a fantastic tool.

Now I control a lot of parameters and can do quite long films on a single CD. For example, I did AI (2h 20 m), The Pledge (2hours),Don't Say A Word (1h 48 m), etc in a single CD and all of them have two audio stream (spanish and english). All of them have an amazing quality (my friends are really impressed).


Here you are my advise (simple..but it works) but you must realize that quality depends on movie (not all movies can be compressed with the same quality):

1.-Do the compressibility test and go to values in the range of 50-70% (not more) increasing/decreasing the resolution.
2.- Try error aspect ratio equal 0 (I'm almost sure that it improves a quality a lot)
3.- I usually use 96kb by each audio stream.

Gosh...Gordian Knot is incredible!

[ivan_alias]

Quality is always subjective.

However having said that I only have a couple of 2CD rips. Saving private ryan is my only 3 CD rip (has ac3 track). The quality you can get really depends on the movie. For example Harry Potter fits on 1 CD very easily with a bitrate of only a bit over 500 because its so dark. Terminator 2 however is not too good on 1 CD. Both these films are over 2 hours long.

In order to answer your question you need to try a few things yourself. Simply make 2 rips of a film you are not sure about. A 1 Cd version and a 2 CD version and compare them.

I did this with 'Proof of Life' and while there were clear differences when you looked up close, the 2 versions of the film were pretty much indistinguishable when watched full screen from my sofa. Don't be over critial with yuor rips. How many people watch films with their nose right up to the screen looking for tiny macro blocks or weird artifacts?


Essentially the answer to yur question is you can't decide on how many CDs to use simply by takin the running time of a film. Each film looks and compresses differently.

Have fun
I usually use vorbis audio these days which has great quality at lower bitrate to give you more bits for your video, especially important in 1 CD rips.

[CaPPyD]

Originally posted by ivan_alias
How many people watch films with their nose right up to the screen looking for tiny macro blocks or weird artifacts

I DO!! I DOOOO!!!!!

[ivan_alias]

@ CaPPyD you are a crazy cat!

[BluDChyLD]

I agree with these guys, you can't really decide how many cds to fit a film on by it's size... I've had two hour movies fit on one disc at 720x304 dvd res because their so compressible!

But old movies tend to have a grainy effect which decreases the compressibility. You can get around this by using the noise filter in avi synth although i don't recommend it myself and it makes encoding slower.

Bottom line, it varies from movie to movie Usually if it's a film i really like i'll put in on 2 cds anyway, but if i dont like it that much ill compress onto one as long as the qualities watchable...
BluDChyLD

P.S ivan_alias, can you explain about using ogg vorbis a little? Im not very familiar with the format, can you still encode through gordian knot when using it? Cheers

[ivan_alias]

@BluDChyLD

Have a read of the audio forum for vorbis info. Essentially you can encode your video in the normal way using gknot, just dont do the audio.

Make your vorbis audio using besweet or headac3he and mux it using oggmux.

I'm sure there is a guide for this in the guide section

As a rule of thum you can use 90 kbps vorbis audio for films and its as good as 128 kbps mp3 to save you a few kilobits for your video. It's not a big difference but it all helps. Some people even go as low as 80 for virbis, it all depends on your taste.

Muxing into ogg streams also uses less overhead which also saves you space, and it has much faster seeking.