Can I set a minimum quality?

[Evil Ally]

I have read Doom9's guides, and I have learned a great deal from them. I have ripped most movies with good results, however there are a couple that have me stuck (this is with X-Mpeg).

A good example is Hunt for the Red October. I encoded it with a bit rate around 2000 with DivX 4.12 2 pass mode, but because there are a lot of dark under water scenes, these look very very blocky. The movie also compressed to a much smaller file than expected. I have tried increasing the bit rate to stupid levels, but it doesn't look any better. DivX seems to be mistakenly removing lots of detail from inapropriate places. Is there anything I can do about this?

Thanks

Ally

[LotionBoy]

well, you could try using Nandub with Divx3.11, which is much more comprehensive in codec control. That would allow you to set a rather high min. bitrate (like 450 or 500), which might help the quality a bit. However, MPEG-4 has massive issues with water scenes and underwater scenes and probably will for some time to come (I think B-Frames might solve some of the issues, but I don't see those in the immediate future of MPEG-4). So there is going to be a limit to just how good you can make the scene look.

LotionBoy