My Xvid files are getting too big! (general questions)

[ABe]

First, here is what I'm trying to accomplish: I'm archiving all my DVDs onto external portable HDDs for playback on my Xbox 360. I am watching them back on a 90" projector, and I'm also archiving DVD-Rs that seem to be slowly becoming unreadable. As such, I'm looking to have them be the highest quality possible.

I'm currently ripping to my PC w/ DVD Shrink, then encoding with Handbrake.

The only file type that the Xbox 360 will play back with 5.1 AC3 surround sound is Xvid AVIs. So that is my only file type option.

The Xbox 360 can only read FAT32 HDDs, so that is a limitation as well.

I realize that there is no optimum bitrate that applies to all movies, so I found the easiest way to get the highest quality is to set the file size limitation to 4GB (the file size limit for FAT32), and just let Handbrake go to town.

This resulted in dark movies with little noise being fairly small, and larger brighter action movies being large, and older movies with lots of noise to the film (which I want to retain) are huge.

Here are some examples:

Dark City, duration 1:35:50, 1,296Kbps, 1.16GB
Big Lebowski, duration 1:53:03, 3.085 Kbps, 2.73GB
All the President's Men, duration 2:18:17 Kbps, 3,863 Kbps, 3.91GB (with only 1 channel AC3 audio!)

My question is, are there any encoding programs that would offer more options, and thus be more space efficient than Handbrake? I've seen Xvid files that clock in at 800MB (without 5.1 AC3 sound), that have less detail than DVDs, but look much better than an Xvid I'd attempt to make that would be less than 1.5GB.

My movies average 2.3GB each, which is okay, but I'm looking for any suggestions to help trim the files sizes while maintaining the current quality (which I like very much).

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I've done some more reading, and came back with more questions. I've noticed some encoders offer things like Dynamic Contrast and Edge Enhancement. Is that something that other Xvid encoders offer, or are they not available with Xvid?

[~bT~]

why not encode to cq and split final file if it is over fat32 specs?

[ABe]

why not encode to cq and split final file if it is over fat32 specs?

I don't know what you mean by cq >_< Constant quality?

I used the limit of 4GB files sizes as a way of limiting the size of the movies anyway. I decided that, unless it is a 4 hour movie, I don't want it bigger than 4GB. In cases of huge movies, those are often 2 DVDs anyway, so I'd just end up with two Xvid files.

My biggest concern is that there may be other ways to encode Xvid files with more options than Handbrake, that might result in a higher quality image at a lower bit rate.

[~bT~]

tried megui? thats what i would recommend.

[ABe]

tried megui? thats what i would recommend.

Haven't tried it yet, I'll look into it. Thanks!:)

[ABe]

EDIT: I had a question about resolution here, but I removed it, as it seemed more appropriate for a separate topic.
:p

[mariuskl]

With megui the movies are smaller but you'll loose a little bit from quality. And of course, compresion time is higher. But well, now depind what you want. Time or quality :)

[D734]

"I'm currently ripping to my PC w/ DVD Shrink, then encoding with Handbrake."
and hopefully encoding the source dvd and not the poorly compressed dvd shrink files (note dvdrebuilder with 9pass cce compresses much better and is a 1 click program). anydvd works great for copying the untouched dvd to the hard drive for encoding.

hand brake is never the best option for either xvid and especially x264.
megui isn't bad but i've never seen it be to common with xvid. one popular way is with virtualdubmod and using just plain XviD codec which on a fresh install has good default settings as long as its unrestricted profile. also to increase compression a little bit set quality preset to user defined, click more and set vhq to 4 and enable vhq for bframes. you just need to look up a little about avisynth and dgindex (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mpg/dgindex.htm) but by using the xvid codec and doing 2 pass encoding you can actually specify the file size you want it to come out at (its got a bitrate calc too). regarding noise... XviD and noise or grain never really work out to well so it may be hard to retain it.

Dynamic Contrast and Edge Enhancement are just video filters in a program, its not a codec thing. with avisynth there are tons of filters you can apply to video.

i already had the resolution question answers before it was removed so i'll just post my opinion on it as its an easy relevent to xvid question.
upscaling dvd resolution is usually not the best idea as it takes a lot more space and time with minimal difference. players upscaling 480 height is usually done good anyway. in the long run your probably better off just doing 720x480 (16:9 anamorphic flag) or 848x480 if the xbox360 cant handle stretching it as anamorphic avi is hit or miss on players.

[ABe]

"I'm currently ripping to my PC w/ DVD Shrink, then encoding with Handbrake."
and hopefully encoding the source dvd and not the poorly compressed dvd shrink files (note dvdrebuilder with 9pass cce compresses much better and is a 1 click program). anydvd works great for copying the untouched dvd to the hard drive for encoding.

hand brake is never the best option for either xvid and especially x264.
megui isn't bad but i've never seen it be to common with xvid. one popular way is with virtualdubmod and using just plain XviD codec which on a fresh install has good default settings as long as its unrestricted profile. also to increase compression a little bit set quality preset to user defined, click more and set vhq to 4 and enable vhq for bframes. you just need to look up a little about avisynth and dgindex (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mpg/dgindex.htm) but by using the xvid codec and doing 2 pass encoding you can actually specify the file size you want it to come out at (its got a bitrate calc too). regarding noise... XviD and noise or grain never really work out to well so it may be hard to retain it.

Dynamic Contrast and Edge Enhancement are just video filters in a program, its not a codec thing. with avisynth there are tons of filters you can apply to video.

i already had the resolution question answers before it was removed so i'll just post my opinion on it as its an easy relevent to xvid question.
upscaling dvd resolution is usually not the best idea as it takes a lot more space and time with minimal difference. players upscaling 480 height is usually done good anyway. in the long run your probably better off just doing 720x480 (16:9 anamorphic flag) or 848x480 if the xbox360 cant handle stretching it as anamorphic avi is hit or miss on players.

Unfortunately my collection is all DVDs shrunk w/ DVD shrink. I wasn't aware that there was a better program for that...which is the kind of mistake I'm hoping to avoid with this project. I'll look into dvdrebuilder for my future DVDs. For new DVDs not on DVD-Rs, I'm just using DVD shrink to create VOB files that have the end credits cut (to save space), without any compression.

I think my confusion of features and filters of codes and programs is that I'm used to just using stuff like Handbrake, which I guess is a GUI. I think I need to do more reading haha. I'll look into avisynth.

I did a test on the resolution thing, which is probably flawed in some way that I didn't realize. I took a clip from a movie off of a DVD, encoded it at the native resolution, and at 1280 x 560. I played them back in Cyberlink DVD, took a screen shot of the same frame on each, and pasted into Paint.net. The higher resolution one does look much better, but I don't know if it is worth the huge file sizes.

[CWR03]

Unfortunately my collection is all DVDs shrunk w/ DVD shrink.
Does this mean you don't have the original DVDs?

[ABe]

Does this mean you don't have the original DVDs?

A bunch of movies I have, the original DVDs are damaged and unplayable. Luckily I made backups.

[bur]

If you want a quick and still good way to encode your videos, try GordianKnot. That's the tool I started with for my first xvid encodes and it's nice especially because all it really does is creating an Avisynth script that can be manually adjusted if needed to.

If you want even more control, use Avisynth directly. It's not that hard if you don't want anything to fancy and you can learn while using it. The only big problem I had with manual encoding was the PAR, pixel aspect ratio. Because most PAL-DVDs use a 16:11 pixel while the PC screen is only capable of 1:1 you have to change the aspect ratio of your movie.

It took me a lot of reading to get this right (Brother John's site was a great help) and I finally wrote an excel sheet that does all the calculations I need, like taking care of mod16, having enough bits/pixel and so on.

So if you need some help how to encode with AVS, just ask. At least for the basic stuff I probably can help... :)

[weaver4]

I would use AutoGK, Xvid, Constant Quality at either 75% or 67%. Or DivX at 50%. All my movies are smaller than 2.5G, quality is excellent.