what settings worked for you? tips plz!

[galocza]

i've read a lot this forum and i hoped that there would be answers to my questions. what i found was this: NOTHING, NICHTS, NADA (almost).
what i'd like you to do, plz write down that: yes, this combination of settings at this bitrate range (eg 800-1000) worked very fine or i use those settings always and it is very good. i'd like something to start with. i used and use 4.12 and 5.xx is far more complicated.
sorry to disturb you, but i read a lot in these topics in the last months and did not find straight answers...
thx for your help
galocza

[Dreassica]

That's because there are no straight settings. Every movie has it's own perrfect settings and don't translate to other.

[mustaneekeri]

U've read the forum but have u read the DivX 5 Guide?
U just have to experiment with the bitrate and settings. What pleases ur own eye = good bitrate&settings.

[llemor]

Dreasicca is correct. You cannot apply the settings for one movie to another. You need to experiment it. Make a couple of test for a short clip and decide what settings that suit best to your preferences.

[theReal]

For most DVD's, with a bitrate between 800 and 1000, you don't need any settings at all (settings means special filters, IMO).

1. Use Gordian Knot
2. Resize to something between 512xnnn and 704xnnn with neutral bicubic (use the comp test to find out what resolution would be ok)
3. Encode with gmc and b-frames on.

:)

[guirlle]

I´m whit the Real. With this bitrate (800-1000) you don`t need any extra settings, just resizing the rigth way (whit neutral Bicubic)and leaving all options by default, You´ll have a pretty film, and if you encode the credits at a lower bitrate the film bitrate grows up....this is a perfet bitrate.

A retoric question: which films you rip in 1CD with 1000 b/s?

:-)

[John2002]

I've been using Divx5 @ 1200 and mp3 audio at 160 or 196 and I can usually squeeze a movie onto 2 CDs. Then I use GNU tar to break the avi file into two files that can fit onto CD. When DVD writers and the disks come down in price the two tar files can be reassembled into the original avi file and written onto DVD.

[theReal]

you can just split the avi into two valid, watchable avi files with nandub, and when you get a DVD Burner, put them together again with direct stream copy in Vdub/Nandub. No need to use tar.

[galocza]

thank you very much for your replies. a new question: will i have some improvement using divx5 instead of 4? i tried it before (DivX 5.01) and i found 4.12 better...

guirlle: there are some 70-80 min movies that fit onto 1 cd and 1000 b/s can be reached easily (cartoons, el mariachi, some old movies). with movies around 90mins my bitrate is around 950... anyway i wrote those values as examples.

theReal: "3. Encode with gmc and b-frames on." i did mean these under settings, not filters. i wrote that i use 4.12, so these are new to me.

[theReal]

ok, I thought because these settings (b-frames, gmc) are also mentioned in Doom9's guides I don't have mention them as "special tips".

btw. gmc is not so important, imo, but b-frames really make it possible to make smaller encodes with still (virtually) the same quality.

[Acaila]

galocza wrote:
a new question: will i have some improvement using divx5 instead of 4? i tried it before (DivX 5.01) and i found 4.12 better...
You'll have a LOT of improvement. To me the difference is like day and night. DivX4.12 gives the movie a visible blur, it looses a lot of detail. DivX5 on the other hand is much sharper, and combined with the new features it has, it really improves the quality over DivX4.12.
DivX5.02 has much bug fixes compared to DivX5.01 and is in general much more stable.

[NeVeRLiFt]

Guess its a big secret :rolleyes:
Are maybe its to hard for people to post the settings they used for a certain movie and tell how they worked and how the quality turned out.
You would be better off getting XviD and using it.

If you want the best quality possible right now you should use Nandub.

Anyone says others wise I'm ready anytime to compare movies or samples.


:D


Sorry I cant tell you any good settings to use for DivX5, DivX5.02 is less buggy and more stable though.

[theReal]

I can tell you one setting for a movie I just encoded which worked out great (however, you can't apply this to other movies, so what's the point?)

Con Air (PAL): 2 CDs, Audio: 1st track 384k AC3 Dolby 5.1 (160ms preload, 160ms interleaving), 2nd track 112k ABR mp3. Video Bitrate was about 1320 (something like that), resolution: 704x288, neutral bicubic resizing, no filters. Divx5 with B-frames and GMC enabled, compress test result was 69.2%.

The result is amazing, I couldn't do any better and I doubt you could do any better with Nandub (just because the DVD is hardly any better!)

[theReal]

I have one DVD on my HD, still waiting to be encoded (Ghosts of Mars, PAL), but I think I'm going to have great results on one CD.

I tried with 2 CDs and thought I could use both English and German audio without reencoding (that would be 448k for each audio track, quite a lot!). But still, with 704x288 resolution and neutral bicubic resizing, the compress test was 118%!!! (the movie is very dark and it's only 94 minutes long)

So, you can't fill two CD's with it, now I'm going for one CD with one 192k AC3 Dolby Surround track and one 128k ABR mp3 track. The compress test still shows something around 70% (resolution still 704x288 and neutral bicubic resizing). I think this is also going to be a great rip.

I don't know how this could be of any help for encoding other movies, but due to popular demand, I posted two settings that I just used. ;)

[NeVeRLiFt]

@theReal

I have Ghosts of Mars, its 1cd and its beautiful quality. It was made using Nandub and I would very much like to compare it to the one you make using DivX5 :devil:
You can even make a 2cd version if you want ;) cause my 1cd look so good!

[theReal]

Not a good movie to compare, I guess, because Ghosts of Mars is so compressible, you cannot fill two CD's with it. As I said, with two 448k audio tracks, the compress test was still 118% at a resolution of 704x288.

On one CD, I'm sure it will look perfect with 192k + 128k audio, because the compress test is still 70% (and that makes it look very, very good at maximum resolution with Divx 5).

[NeVeRLiFt]

It does look very good. As for anything beating Nandub in making a 1cd rip.... I just dont see it. DivX5 cant do it! Maybe XviD can come close and actually do it. Only other option is Fairuse.

If its 2cd rips then I want say nothing. I was making great looking 2cd rips before Nandub even came out. But if you ask my friends are people that know me, you would know I was always a big 1cd guy and was always trying to make a great looking 1cd rip.

I have a great profile for Nandub and use it for every movie, only changing the resolution, bitrate, fps and my anti-shit settings.
I just use vbr mp3 for my audio and can make any movie thats 2hrs or less look great on 1cd.

[kilg0r3]

@NeVeRLiFt
i'd be glad if you'd share your profile so that we can use it too.

[theReal]

Now we're about to enter the old "which codec is better?" discussion...

In my opinion, Divx5 isn't that much regarded by the "pros" because it's too easy. With Nandub you can have your own secret special settings and you must tweak very much so that beginners won't achieve good results at all. This gives all the "professional encoders" a special status, and they don't want to loose it.

btw. I have seen a lot of recently made 1CD rips that were 1.5 to 2.5 hours long, all were done with Nandub by different people/groups. They are all good for the fact that they are one CD rips, but they weren't good enough to be really good encodes in general. In my opinion, too much work went into most of these only to make them 1 CD rips, they would have become much much better on 2CD's with less work on settings and filters.

[NeVeRLiFt]

@theReal

Wrong! Its easy and no work are filters just a resize and maybe a deinterlace or inverse telecine. I use precise bilinear on the resize.

My 1cd rips compared to most 2cd rips make the 2cd rips look like a joke ;)

I was talking last night about posting the profile.... I may do it.
That way others can enjoy Nandub and see the quality of great 1cd rips. This is no joke people Nandub lays the smack down on quality for 1cd rips and challege anyone to say otherwise!

Being legal, newer and easier to use dont make for better quality.

[Dreassica]

In my opinion, Divx5 isn't that much regarded by the "pros" because it's too easy. With Nandub you can have your own secret special settings and you must tweak very much so that beginners won't achieve good results at all. This gives all the "professional encoders" a special status, and they don't want to loose it.

At least for anime, divx5 02 seems to be the choice as i have seen some pro encoding groups switch over to that codec.

[galocza]

i do not want you to fight each other. i just wanted some suggestions, and i thank you all. besides, i also had that feeling that pros favorize divx3 to maintain their status - with newer versions even i can make a rip... but this is just a slight idea.

[galocza]

well, a new question if you are interested in replying. i tried to make a 2 cd rip (last temptation of christ, pal, 157mins)
method: dvd2avi, vfapi codec, virtualdub, divx5.02
divx settings: mv, gmc, bidrirectional encoding, 935kbps

as a result, i got a movie with SEVEN KEYFRAMES. 6 at the beginning, everything in place, the last at the end. and yes, i checked, max keyframe interval is set to 250. what could be the problem? i better not compress it again, my processor has other things to do... i've made 2 cd rips with the same method except for using 4.12 instead of 5.02, no problems.
thx for your reply,
galocza

[theReal]

Where do you see that it's only seven keyframes? From the log file?

[galocza]

no, i opened it with vdub and read 'file information'. but i can also count to seven while forwarding to next keyframes in vdub (i'm that good in maths 8).

[theReal]

weird... I have no idea, sorry.

[Mac Sidewinder]

@neverlift - why do you continually tell everyone their WRONG in all of your posts? This is very rude. You even insult the moderators when they reply to you. If you like you 1cd 3.11 rips - fine but don't keep telling everyone that its the best and they can't do any better with divx 5.02. Its all in the eye of the beholder.

For noobz starting out - they should probably use gknot with 5.02 and after they understand what they are doing THEN start trying other methods (vdub w/3.11). Then decide for themselves what they like. It makes the learning curve easier.

As for your profile - you've posted it in atleast 3 different forums. And I still don't agree that you can use the same profile for every movie.

Now I don't want to start a flame war - I'm just letting you know that you come across (imho)as being very arrogant. Chill a little.

Mac

[h00z]

I can personally say that DivX 5 does better with hard to encode movies, especially anime. Try making a rip of Jin-Roh with DivX 3.11a, XviD and DivX 5.02 (like I did) and see which turns out better. Pay special attention to macro-blocking in the dark areas of the movie and you'll see why DivX 5.02 is the superior CODEC.

I won't even get into the pros and cons of the hacked 3.11a vs the legitimate DivX 5.02 (or Xvid).

I used to use 3.11a and Nandub for all my anime encoding, now I use DivX 5.02 (Pro). It handles it much better, and I was no stranger to the inner workings of Nandub either ;)

"But but... All the release groups still use 3.11a and Nandub!" Heh, if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you? The dyed-in-the-wool "release" groups only recently started allowing ABR/VBR audio tracks, and we have all known for quite some time that they are superior in every way to CBR. Just because the "release" groups are doing it doesn't make it any better.

As for settings... I usually always use B-frames and GMC in my encodes. SimpleResize is my choice for resize plugin as it doesn't mess with the actual picture like bilinear and bicubic do. As always, YMMV.

[h00z]

After reading Neverwhatever's posts, I think I'll put my system(s) specs in my sig. That way I can be a l337 DivX h4x0rz too!

You tell me guys, what do you think?

---------------------------------------------

MSI K7D Master L
AMD Athlon MP 2100+ @ 1733mhz (x2)
1024mb Crucial PC2100 Reg'd ECC
Matrox G400 Max (32mb dual-head)
SB Audigy MP3+ w/Live Drive 1
Promise Ultra133 TX2
WD 300BB (30gb) and 1200BB (120gb)
LiteOn 16x10x40 CDRW
LiteOn 16x DVD
Pioneer DVD-R
Antec SX1000 Series case
Enermax 431W PSU
Ohh... TWO 15" LCDs for dual-head loving!

----------------------------------------------

So what do you think? Does that make me a better DivX encoder?!? :rolleyes:

If not, I can always list the specs of my dual 2.4ghz Xeon system too.

Disclaimer: This post was written after the author had seen one too many long signatures in various forums detailing every last detail of the person's system. This is not meant to inflame or offend anyone... Okay. Maybe it is.

[manono]

Real l337 DivX h4x0rz also put their fan specs.

How ya doin' h00z? Where ya been hidin' yourself?

[h00z]

I guess if I was -really- l337, I would even mod my heatsinks, eh? Something like this maybe?

http://www.hooz.org/misc.images/alpha_shot.html

Heh. Anyway... I have been hiding on the beach in South Carolina for the last week :D

Hey, while you're here, have you played with Unfilter yet? I've been meaning to, but my playtime has been short lately. If it works well, I can ditch the last of my VD filters that I import into my AVS. That should be good for a few more FPS on the encode time.

[manono]

Hi h00z-

Yep-I've played a lot with the Unfilter. Great for softening or sharpening the picture (and fast, as you said). I haven't found it all that useful for getting rid of the pixelation of Edge Enhancement, but together with TempSoften2 it works OK. For example, I tried it on Jin-Roh without much luck.

Me too-AviSynth all the way. Nice site you have, by the way.