If you have DVD Burner [MPEG2 or DiVX]

[Sergey Nameless]

What would you choose as encoding, MPEG2 or DiVX if you would burn final result on DVD?
Both would be used with highest bitrate to provide highest quality, but which one is better at high bitrates?
MPEG2 Average 8000,
DiVX Average 10000.

[theReal]

Divx will not reach bitrates of 10000. If you encode a movie at full resolution with Divx in 100% quality, you will probably reach 2GB-2.5GB for most movies. There will hardly be any movie that will get 4.7GB in size with Divx.

Of course you can use a DVD for 2 to 3 Divx movies that will have virtually the same quality as one movie with 4.7GB mpeg2. However, I think you can reach slightly better quality with very high mpeg2 bitrates plus you can watch the movies on stand alone players.

[Sergey Nameless]

I was encoding DV movie (1:26:41 18.4G, deinterlaced 640x480) with 100% quality and it took about 4G. There is a lot of motion (water) and some video noise, that why I think it make huge file.

[theReal]

I just realized that DV movies can easily fill up 4.7GB per hour with Divx - DV compresses really bad in comparison to (pre-filtered and pre-mpeg-encoded) DVD Video.

If it's DV we're talking about, I'm not sure anymore if I'd prefer mpeg2 on DVD. I guess a 100% quality full resolution Divx could be pretty good. However, with mpeg2 and high bitrates you can keep it interlaced which is better than to de-interlace if your main goal is to watch it on tv.