Tell me about divx5 and divxmpg4v3???

[Sgt Snuffy]

Hi, I've been ripping since 3.11, I am presently using 5.02 and after some initial bugs am making quality rips at basically the same sizes as 4. The other day I was traded a copy of The Green Mile, I was leary of it as it is only 685 mb, however now that I have it it is extremely high quality, as good if not better than what I make with divx5. If you are not aware of this movie it is 3hours and 9minutes long. This ripper managed to make that large of a movie crunch onto a 700 mb disk. Very impressive, I would have to rip this movie onto 2 disks to maintain the bitrate he has. The only thing that is different that i can see is my rips as listed as Divx codec, his rip is listed as divXmPG4 V3. What is this? Can the average user make these? Do I need more hardware? Software? I would love to be able to crunch to this level.

[manono]

Hey Sargeant-

He used DivX 3.11-nothing unusual there.

...I would have to rip this movie onto 2 disks to maintain the bitrate he has.

You don't mean that, right? I'll ignore that (incorrect) statement and just say that he almost certainly used a lower resolution than you, and perhaps used lower audio quality, encoded the end credits at a higher quant (or DRF in DivX 3.11), used smoothers and was familiar with the other tricks necessary to squeeze long movies onto 1 CD. Plus, that movie's pretty compressible anyway (although I agree that 3 hours is a lot to put onto 1 CD).

[Baghira]

Hi Sgt. Snuffy,

I'd really like to know some more details about the settings to get this movie on just one CD. What resolution and audio/video bitrate he chose? I think you should see it in the file properties (?)...

Thanks!

[Sgt Snuffy]

no, the bitrate really is near identical, I have gone through more of my rips that people ahve traded to me and found many other divxmpg4v3 rips, all super quality, I actually just got a copy of Ice age tonight from a peep, best copy I've been traded yet and again it's a divxmpg4v3. I've done a small bit a research today as time allowed and it is another codec obviously and apparently runs in different programs than what I am used to using, that is all I know as of now, still researching. Thanks for the feedback though, keep looking and if trading is interested for technical proof or just plain interest let me know.

edit,

although yes, the sound is a bit poorer, it's 92 whereas I rip mine at 128. Perhaps he does know a good bit more than me for ripping, I'm not the best by any stretch. But are you saying that if I rip a movie with 3.11 instead of 5.02 and look at the properties of the rip it will say divxmpg4v3?

[theReal]

Almost all traded movies are made with Nandub (some newer are XVid, but very few - the release-group rippers just don't like Divx 5).

IMO, you can make Divx 5 movies as good as Nandub movies, but you can mess up a lot more with Nandub (try using it... you'll soon know why...). --> I don't use Nandub because I never really learned how to use it.

For good 1 CD rips, you'll often need smoothing filters, plus you need a resizing filter that makes the movie more compressible. To be able to use the best filters, you'll have to use avisynth and VDub to encode to Divx 5 (start with Gordianknot and then figure out how to tweak the settings manually).

You'll have to read a lot and encode a lot to figure out everything - just start with Gordianknot and you'll get better with every rip.

btw. I usually encode DVDs without a lot of filters, I rather use one CD more. I don't want to release one-CD rips, and so I keep better quality backups with a higher bitrate and almost no filtering (except resizing).

[manono]

Hi Again-

It's OK to be wrong. That's only ignorance. We all do it from time to time (even I-I know-hard to believe ;)). But to be wrong, to be politely corrected, and then to insist on repeating the wrong statements, well that's just.... (several words come to mind). So lets try it again.

1. DivX 3.11 is the hacked version of the Microsoft MPEG4V3 codec.

...and look at the properties of the rip it will say divxmpg4v3? .

Yep-that's what I'm saying. Why don't you get GSpot (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Editing/gspot11.zip). It'll give you more information about the movies than Windows Properties.

2. no, the bitrate really is near identical,

No, the bit rate of a 1 CD rip when compared to that of a 2 CD rip is not anywhere near identical, since bit rate is a function of filesize (or perhaps the other way around). Maybe you mean to say the quality is near identical. But I don't buy that either. There is no way that a 1 CD DivX 3.11 version of The Green Mile can compare in quality to a well done 2 CD version of the same movie. The codec used doesn't much matter. It's the increased bit rate allowed for by using the extra CD that makes the difference.

[theReal]

There is no way that a 1 CD DivX 3.11 version of The Green Mile can compare in quality to a well done 2 CD version of the same movie.That's exactly why I'm doing 2-CD rips. 95% of all good 1-CD rips are good quality for the fact that they're 1 CD rips. However a (well done) 2-CD (or maybe 3-Cd, for extreme cases) rip of the same movie looks better, has bombastic AC3 surround sound and can be done with less effort.

If a 2-CD rip doesn't look better than a one-CD rip, it was probably done with FlaskMPEG ;)

[manono]

Hi theReal-

I had started my previous reply when I got called away. When I came back to finish the reply, I noticed that you had beat me to it. I decided not to read yours until I had posted mine, but after I finished I saw that we were in synch. But I'm glad you're watching my back.:)

That point about making good 2 CD rips with less effort than 1 CD rips is a good one. For a very long time I would try to make them for 1 CD whenever possible, but sometimes it just wasn't worth the trouble. Plus, movies that look OK on my 27" CRT might not look so good on the widescreen HDTV coming down the road. Gotta plan ahead. So lately I've been making more and more for 2 CD also.

And for the Sgt.- If he has put a movie on 1 CD that deserved 2 CDs (like The Green Mile), then he had to make concessions in 1 of 2 areas:

1. Sharpness-he gave up on getting a sharp movie and made it softer by putting on smoothers or using Bilinear resizing or using an especially low resolution or all 3.

2.If he kept it sharp, then he will have blocks in motion scenes. There are no 2 ways about it. It's one or the other-blurry or blocks. The fact that he made it only 685 MB also tells me that maybe he doesn't know as much as you think he does. No self respecting ripper would let 15 MB go to waste in a movie so heavily compressed to begin with. With DivX 3.11 it's especially easy to hit 700 MB on the head. And no fair studying the movie with sharpness added back in. When deciding on the quality of the rip, do it without all the post processing such as ffdshow allows.

[MvB]

If a 2-CD rip doesn't look better than a one-CD rip, it was probably done with FlaskMPEG

Why do you think Flaskmpeg looks so bad?
Ok, i'm using xmpeg4.5 but it should be nearly the same thing.
The picturequality of the flask-mpeg2 decoder should be very good, it's a reference implementation (i read). That's why it's a bit slower than other decoders. With Xmpeg I have: bilinear filtering, 2 passes AC3 extraction (works fine) etc.

So my question: why is Flask worse than virtual- or nandub with (i assume) avisynth?

[theReal]

As far as I can remember FlaskMpeg, the resizing filters were just not as good as avisynth or VDub resizing filters.
Then, you don't have any options for noise reduction (ok, mostly I don't need any for DVDs).

Probably Flask Rips also look bad most of the time because almost everyone using it is a beginner and doesn't yet know what resolution to pick for what bitrate and that you should under all circumstances cut off every remainder of the black bars for better compression.

When I was still using Flask, I always picked sharp bicubic resizing because I thought it will give the best results. I didn't know yet the meaning of the term "compressibility". After I did my first Gknot/Nandub rip, I got interested in why this looked so much better. From that time on, I learned a lot (and never used Flask anymore)

[Acaila]

I'd have to disagree somewhat that 2-CD rips are easier to make than 1-CD rips. Although the quality is almost always higher with 2 CD's, there is usually also more effort involved. Things like finding the correct interleaving settings for AC3 isn't always as easy, and splitting the movie at the correct place can be quite a hassle (with an Ogg container anyway :)), also you need to split the subs. Not everything is difficult, but it does take more time before the movie is complete.
For me the video quality isn't a lot better on 2 CD's, because of the bigger size of the AC3 and the higher video resolution I use and the lack of smoother filters (which results in decreased compression). So yeah it's a bit sharper and the audio quality gets a major boost, but the average quant isn't much better (just a little) than when done on 1 CD.

As for Flask, it's what I started with as well, but my movies always came out jumpy and not quite as sharp as the original (even with bicubic resizing). But then, I was a complete n00b as well, that might have contributed to the lousy quality :)

@Manono + TheReal:
I don't think I ever mentioned how much I appreciate experts like you two around here. Excellent replies. ;)

[Sgt Snuffy]

Thanks for all your replies, to validate some issues. Monano, your a bit rough on a fellow :P

The movie in question is The Green Mile, it is one cd, it is 96kb, period! That is what started my question, that is pretty standard for a 1 cd rip, around 770kb. The quality is quite impressive for a 3 hour movie, I personally have encoded over 100 movies, I cannot go through them all to get data for you, I just know that I have 3 basic configurations, 700, 900 and 1400 mb rips, with those 3 I have made all my movies to the quality where I watch them on my RCA 52110 TV, it is a HDTV and it is hooked into my computer as a secondary monitor not as a tv out. The quality on this screen is VERY good. I am happy and will continue to make rips as I do, I do not recall far enough back to know which of my movies I made back in the 3.11 days to have easily checked what the properties were, I Have over 250 movies at this time.

I will however look up gspot and see what it is about, it sounds like a interesting toy. I do not want to get overly technical with ripping as I had said I am happy with what I do now merely interested in what the fellow had done. I received another rip of a long movie, Meet Joe Black, months ago, the fellow tried to get it on one disk, it sucked, was encoded at around 20kbs, this history is what made me interested in what that codec was and what this fellow may have done to get it to the quality he had, I may be "not the smartest" but I do have a lot of basic encoding experience and the history to know what movies should and generally do look like at certain rates and settings, this is a extraordinary rip.

[manono]

Hi S S-

I'm sorry if I seemed skeptical, but there's something screwy going on here. I don't think it's you, since you seem an honest sort.:) But, The Green Mile according to IMDB (http://http://us.imdb.com/DVD?0120689), is 181 minutes long. By my calculations, with 92KBps sound (which alone is 119 MB plus another 15 MB or so for the overhead), that leaves approximately 415 KBps for the video, or 52kbps for a 685 MB movie.

that is pretty standard for a 1 cd rip, around 770kb.

No, it depends on the length of the movie. Your figure is for a 700 MB, 105 minute movie with 128 KBps Audio (its KB/second). So, perhaps the guy cut out whole chunks of the movie so that it's roughly 107 minutes long (for 685 MB)? Check it out with a bit rate calculater (I used GKnot's). Something just doesn't match up (and I may have mixed my bits and bytes-B's and b's-I can never keep them straight). I'll continue to remain skeptical.

[jggimi]

Yeah, you got the abbreviations backwards, Manono.

b = bit
B = Byte, or 8 bits.

e.g.: 415 kilobits per second (kb/s) is just under 52 kilobytes per second (kB/s).

[manono]

Oops-Thanks jggimi.