720 x 480

[mr soft]

As a first time newbie I have lots of questions , eg are these the best resize values ? as Plasma lcd is out of the question .(the 1080 thing )
ps I have backed up most of my collection with these settings
Is it wrong to force settings ?

[shirohamada]

depends on your source.
720x480 is the standard res for ntsc dvd. you can encode as it is and tag it as 16:9.
if you have a hd source, depends, if its 1080i i'll resize it to 720p. if the broadcast quality is so-so i might resize it to 1024x576. let your eye be the judge.
upscale resizing is bad.

[Blue_MiSfit]

There is no such thing as a "best" resize value. It depends heavily on the type of source, how much bitrate you have to play with, and what your playback device is.

No resize (prior to encoding) is my preferred method, because I tend to target higher bitrate backups and view them on a very revealing high resolution CRT. Any time a resizer hits a video, some quality will be lost, so I prefer to keep the video as it comes to me, and just have ffdshow do the software resizing on playback (and add a bit of noise to trick me into seeing details, and hide x264's flat area blocking ;)). This also implies anamorphic encoding, which is usually how Hollywood movies are done - 16x9 anamorphic or 2.35 anamorphic.

I'm not clear on what your other questions are, but as a general rule it's a bad idea to upscale a DVD resolution source to (for example) 720p or 1080p before you encode. This is a tremendous waste of bits. You will get equally nice results by spending those bits on maximizing the quality of your unscaled 480p encode, and then using a high quality scaler like ffdshow on playback to match your display device.

For lower bitrate encodes like 1cd, or for mobile devices, you often have to resize - either because of decoder or bitrate constraints. That all depends on the application.

There are other opinions - Didee wrote a script called iip - integrated image processor - that is specifically designed to upscale standard 480p to HD resolutions like 720p. It's very slow, and I have very little experience with it, but the one time I did use it, I felt it wasn't worth the extra bitrate. Like all things that come from Didee, it's well thought out and has a lot of functionality. However, it requires an equally high level of understanding and effort on your behalf to effectively use it.

So in a nutshell, don't upscale your DVDs for encoding, unless you have a compelling reason to do so :)

~MiSfit

[mr soft]

Thanx for the replys , As I don`t have standalone divx player I was`nt able to test the quality of my movies on big screen
My next purchase is going to be packard bell dvx 460 with usb mmm
as this has divx 6 playback compat . My input settings are as : output frame rate - 25 pal detect 24 hz , force 24 hz , audio - 44.1 khz ( what about 48 ?) , deinterlace filter - interpolate. output settings : avi divx yuv , resolution 720 x 480 , resize tap bicubic sse , max frame 999999 divx 6.4 codec 1 pass quality . Extreme quality, adaptive single consecutive ,max keyframe intervals 300 , h263 optimized ,psychovis enhance off , interlace progressive source . audio 224 kbps quality high cbr mp3 This brings my 3200 + 2 gig ram to it`s knees for six hours a go. The whole thing has been trial and error for a long time till I found this site . Ps size is not a problem as I have 400 g and will be using big memory stick on usb drive to do away with dvds . I bet with these settings someone on doom could tell what interface I`m using .

[Blue_MiSfit]

I'm a little confused. What software are you using to encode your DVDs?


My input settings are as : output frame rate - 25 pal detect 24 hz , force 24 hz , audio - 44.1 khz ( what about 48 ?)

You shouldn't change the frame rates unless you are doing a standards conversion. Is your TV PAL, or NTSC, and is the source PAL or NTSC?

Also, you should never have to resample audio these days, unless you are making a VCD. Keep it at 48KHz.


deinterlace filter - interpolate.

Again, you shouldn't deinterlace unless your source is truly interlaced. More info on the source is required.


output settings : avi divx yuv , resolution 720 x 480 , resize tap bicubic sse ,

Okay, so you're encoding to DivX, that's fine. But as I explained earlier, if you're going to keep the full 720x480 frame (assuming you have an NTSC DVD, otherwise it would be 720x576), then don't resize it at all. DivX might be smart enough to see that if the input and output to a resizer is the same dimensions, then do nothing - but you never know.


max frame 999999 divx 6.4 codec 1 pass quality . Extreme quality

Not sure what all these settings are - the 'max frame' bit in particular. I don't use DivX though :). It looks like you are doing a 1 pass encode, which is a bad idea unless you don't have the time for a proper 2 pass. You can squeeze a lot more quality out of 2 pass. Unless of course you don't care about file sizes.


adaptive single consecutive ,max keyframe intervals 300 , h263 optimized ,psychovis enhance off ,

B-frame settings look ok, I would usually recommend using at least 2 B-frames, but not always. I usually set the max keyframe interval to 10x the frame rate. For a typical 23.976 hollywood movie this would be 240. For a PAL disc it would be 250, and for pure 29.97 interlaced it would be 300. Quantization looks ok, I would suggest basic psychovis. I dont use divx again, but if i recall correctly this is like turning on adaptive quantization in xvid, which is an always on thing for me.


interlace progressive source. audio 224 kbps quality high cbr mp3


EVIL! Never interlace a progressive source, unless you have a VERY good reason to do so! The audio bit is fine, but I would suggest that if you're going for such a high bitrate, that you just keep the original AC3.

Anyway, I think that with some tweaking you can increase the quality of your rips a lot. I would guess that you are using the DivX codec configuration inside VirtualDub or some other VFW encoder.

If you really need to deinterlace, or change the frame rate or whatever, then I would suggest learning a bit of AviSynth. It's a lot more flexible, and gives you more control than using DivX itself to handle those things.

Anyway, let us know how it goes. And please, this is a pretty professional forum, so punctuation and a spellcheck / proofread goes a long way here. Not to be rude or highbrow or anything like that :)

~MiSfit

[mr soft]

Merry Christmas to all.

Interface: I’m too DVD ripper 2.0 . My source is PAL, my output is PAL.

Sound has been changed to 48 kHz.

The divx codec has one pass quality based option that I’m using. This confuses me because with "I’m too DVD" , if I choose two pass it disables video . Size is not a problem.

Deinterlace filter options are as is: 1 none, 2 even field 3 odd field.

I would usually recommend using at least 2 B-frames, but not always. Not sure what this means.

Psycho visual setting options are as: 1 off, 2 shaping, 3 masking.

The interlace options are as is: 1 Progressive source, 2 deinterlace source, 3 preserve interlace. (I have selected 1)

I like the idea of AC3, the problem is I end up with separate files and I’m not sure how to join them later. These files will only be played later on my stand alone.

Sorry about the punctuation, I grew up in the bush but I’m backward compatible