2 Questions (1 general and 1 audio)

[fr0sty]

1. I have spent the past two or three weeks ripping some stuff and converting it to xvid. Ive played around lots with the settings but I find that the only way to get a smaller avi is to lower the resolution. And also when I do have them at a decent resolution im thinking they could look a little better!

So basically im wondering if theres any tricks to getting smaller file size or any tricks to squeezing more quality out of ones with higher res?

2. I have one or two that have ended up with no audio. Can someone please tell me how I can take the avi and somehow join the audio to it without going through the whole process of encoding again in hope that it will be ok this time.

Thanks to anyone that can help!

[Skelsgard]

First of all, welcome.

1 - The size vs. quality is an eternal battle for compression. When dealing with resolution, u should always bear in mind that is only good to have more when it comes hand in hand with visual quality. A bigger frame size is not good if it only means more "blockiness" due to lack of enough bitrate to go along.
Some tricks:
- not too close keyframes.
- custom thresholds for scene changes, so keyframes will be placed where they´re really needed without having to set a high bitrate to keep quality in these changes.
- learn to use the quantizer options and values.
- custom matrixes, to squeeze most visual quality (wich doesn´t mean mathematical quality) per bit.
- speed vs. quality too. The more quality features used (GMC, etc) the slower the processing, but higher quality.
- credits can be encoded with really low bitrate (when simple white text on black background), saving MBs for the movie.
There are others, that u will learn during your stay in the forum.

2 - If for avi, u can use VirtualDubMod or AviMux-GUI to import video and audio (and some more) and export a muxed AVI.
In VirtualDubMod (not VirtualDub cause it has limited audio formats to import) load the video, go to Video --> Direct Stream Copy (so it would copy the video from source without recompression), then Stream --> Stream List.
Click Add and select the audio. If not compressed already, right-click it, select "Full processing mode", right-click it again, select "Compression" and chosse format and options. OK.
Now File --> Save As... and choose the name of the avi and done.

Cheers.

[doomdodo]

[removed spam]

[DarkZell666]

@doomdodo: When there are free solutions to a simple problem, pointing to commercial software isn't really a brilliant idea imho.

Skelsgard pointed out an easy solution too :)

@Skelsgard: I'm a bit sceptical about why you mentionned GMC though. It's not the best tweak you could have mentionned, lol :p

The "etc." stuff includes quarter-pixel, chroma optimizer, adaptative quantisation, ... all good stuff. Do note that quarter-pixel and GMC won't work on some particular standalone players, so beware.

[fr0sty]

I used autoGK today for the first time just tom see;) I set it to 90% of the original quality and it looks great, but of course the file size is huge. I was kinda looking for an easy way out cos everything mentioned abaove sounds complicated!

I got the sound problem solved now though so thats a start;) So thanks for that info.

The typical filesize for a typical length movie is around 700MB (one CD) but mine just dont seem to look quite like others

I can mlive with slower processing to get a better end result but is this at the cost of file size? I know you cant win evbery way but I will look into whats been mentioned above.. if anyone has any good sources to explain this stuff then pls post:) Ill look on the main page of this site now and see whats there.

[setarip_old]

One thing to consider is reducing the audio quality. What audio format and settings are you using?

[BigDid]

I used autoGK today for the first time just tom see;) I set it to 90% of the original quality and it looks great, but of course the file size is huge. I was kinda looking for an easy way out cos everything mentioned abaove sounds complicated!
Hi,

If you want to use 1pass target encoding, try between 75 to 65%, you should not see much quality difference with your 90% encode but much less size
If you want less size, go for 2 passes, size encoding.


The typical filesize for a typical length movie is around 700MB (one CD) but mine just dont seem to look quite like others
Because it is 2 passes encoding with 1cd as defined size and usually (see Setarip remarks) with audio set to 128 kbp/s MP3 or lower.

Did

[jel]

@ doomdodo

struck for repeated spam offences, and i have removed your post as it does not contribute in a meaningful way to this thread.

[Skelsgard]

@Skelsgard: I'm a bit sceptical about why you mentionned GMC though. It's not the best tweak you could have mentionned, lol
It was from the top of mi head, wasn´t trying to make a comprehensive list. And yeah, I could have picked more important options, I´m just too lazy :) .

I was kinda looking for an easy way out cos everything mentioned abaove sounds complicated!
Many things look that way, but compression is one of the things that eventually the more u do it, the more it grows in u until you´re infected to the point of feeling that the only reason for u to buy movies is to satisfy your lust. At least, that´s what happened to me (or that´s what my psychiatrist said :D ).

Cheers.

[SallyDog]

Many things look that way, but compression is one of the things that eventually the more u do it, the more it grows in u until you´re infected to the point of feeling that the only reason for u to buy movies is to satisfy your lust. At least, that´s what happened to me (or that´s what my psychiatrist said :D ).


Sad, but true ;)

[fr0sty]

Right well ive been busy with work all week but I left my pc one and queued up sone jobs in AutoGK and now I have about ten different rips in different folders and avi's of those rips that were made with different apps.

The ones I made myself with Gordian Knot are Much better looking than the ones I done with AutoGK... and the file sizes are much smaller! Even with AutoGK set to 70% I was still getting 2gig avi's that didnt really look that hot.

Oh and by the way I have been using either mp3 or ogg audio all along and the the ac3.

Im gonna look into some of the stuff Skelsgard mentioned (quantizer etc..) over the weekend.

Theres one I have that is 2cd's and im gonna setlle for it with the 1400mb total size. In general it wouldnt be the first time ive seen one that size.. and after all I am an ameteur:)