I take it all back... divx5 rocks

[prom3theus]

I just used the gordian knot package from doom9's site and managed to encode 2010 (letterboxed and 110+ minutes long) to a single cd, at 544x224, and it looks fantastic full screen!

I attribute this to the rather slow and cinematic nature of the directing, preferring wide landscape shots will a still camera to the more familiar pop-hollywood continuous pan with forced perspectives of current movies.

My conclusion is that for maximum quality and easy scanning, stick with divx3 and some program like aviutl with scene change detection, but for movies you don't want to scan in, and just play for hours straight, divx5 is awesome. I used light psychovisuals, quarter pel, I frames, and let gordian and divx5 do the rest. Now, if divx5 just had a luminance correction built it...

[Dali Lama]

What do you mean for movies you "scan in" in aviutl?

Peace,

Dali

[manono]

Hey Dali-

Good question, but as near as I can figure he means seeking to keyframes isn't so good when playing back DivX5 movies. Although I don't think the default scene change detection is so good myself, it is tweakable, and by setting it to 45% or so, it usually picks them out OK.

Hey prom3theus, come on back and elaborate a bit more. The DivX5 features that you can't set in GKnot, you can set by going into DivX5 in VDub (Video-Compression-Configure). In there you can set them anyway you want.

Did you also do a DivX3 encode of 2010 so you could compare them directly? Comparing one movie done in DivX5 (and at a fairly low resolution at that) with different movie done using DivX3 isn't exactly apples to apples.

And the Psychovisual Enhancements include Luminance Correction (not that I'd ever use it).

[JohnMK]

Why aren't you a fan of PE?

[manono]

Hi JohnMK-

The DivX5 people aren't real clear about what they're doing with the PEs, but I assume they're doing both Luminance and Motion Correction. They do mention specifically lowering bit rates in dark scenes, though. That's one thing that I don't like, because it leads directly to the so-called "Black Blocking" problem, which is especially serious if you watch your DivX movies on TV, as I do. They're spending a lot of time in the XviD forums trying to lick that one. If anything, I think you should be able to throw more bits at dark scenes, and not fewer.

As for motion correction, I don't want fewer bits given to the action scenes. I want the bit rate curve to scale linearly. That is, I like the action-motion scenes to look just as good as the static scenes.

I can see where PE might be useful in cases where you're bit rate constrained, like in 1 CD rips, but I still wouldn't use it.

I'm not making any recommendations here. I certainly wouldn't condemn anyone that used PE or even Pre-Processing (*shudder*). I realize that being a mod is supposed to give me a certain authority. But don't kid yourself-I don't know any more than anyone else that's used DivX5 for awhile and done a certain amount of experimenting. As usual, you're ripping for yourself (and maybe to show your skills to a few friends), so you should always do what looks good to you. But you asked, so I answered.

Edit: See, I told you we (I) weren't infallible. Acaila reminded me that PE does actually boost the bits to dark scenes (thanks, man). So I guess that's one area where PE might actually help. The Link is here:

Gej's DivX5 Guide (http://www.divx.com/support/guides/guide.php?gid=1)

[Dali Lama]

Ya Manono, I agree that PE in Divx5 or Lumi in Xvid worsen parts of the movie at the expense of helping other parts. Namely, degrading very bright or very dark scenes. For some reason, I seem to notice that a lot. So I don't use it either.

>Although I don't think the default scene change detection is so good myself, it is tweakable, and by setting it to 45% or so, it usually picks them out OK.>

Yes, I have noticed this too. Recently I've been encoding in Divx 5 and I think it doesn't find all of the scene changes. So, does putting 45% increase or decrease scene change sensitivity?

Pre-Processing isn't so bad I think. I have tried it and find that normal doesn't really blur that much and it increases compressability significantly. I will obviously need to use it on other less noisy sources and see.

Bye,

Dali

[manono]

Hi Dali-

I came across the scene detection problems when trying to split 2 CD movies at a convenient place, but found there often weren't keyframes set at the scene changes where I wanted to cut. I looked around and found that it often ran my max frames setting (450) before setting a keyframe (and then it wouldn't be at a scene change). This seemed to be a particular problem with dark or black and white movies. So, setting it to 45% seemed to make it more sensitive.

As for Pre-Processing-as near as I can tell, they're using fairly primitive algorithms for the temporal and spatial smoothing, and when I want to do some smoothing, I'll use some other AviSynth filters. But it's way fast when compared to something like convolution3d, for example. But to each his own.

[prom3theus]

Hi.

Yes you were correct about what I meant by scanning. I meant scanning through the video during playback, and obviously divx5 sucks for that.

I found that my 2010 does seem to freeze sometimes. It is like the divx3 freeze frame but it doesn't show up in virtualdub at all. It might be the lame mp3. It doesn't happen always at the same frames, it just happens sometimes.

I don't know much about the divx5 settings. I've left most at defaults. If any of you can suggest some basic changes that work for you I'd love to hear em.

I tried some tests with star trek NG episodes from dvd and found divx5 won out by far over divx3 with aviutl scene change, with most episodes between 200 and 250MB at 384x288, and they look very nice at full screen.

I can't find any luminance settings for divx5. It seems to be a pretty universal problem among those I know who deal with dvd ripping, taht the dvd is always a bit too dark on the pc.

My conversion was a 2-pass one, and I ended up with about a 620MB video file, and I compressed the mp3 to 96kbps and it all ended up I think just under 700MB (true size, not windoze size).

Does gordian knot allow a CBR mp3? I assume I could set a lame commandline parameter to force cbr. I'm not sure why people use vbr, it doesn't seem to save much, and it is a pain in the a$$ to deal with if you have to reencode.

[manono]

Hi-

Freeze Frames-try and turn off "Smooth Playback" in the playback filter settings. You might try ffdshow (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Filters/ffdshow-20020923.exe) to decode your movies and see if you like it any better.

Luminance settings-so you meant you wanted to adjust brightness, and didn't mean luma correction. Well, if you don't want to do it in the playback settings, then you can do it with the Tweak Filter (http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/tweak/tweak13.zip). You throw the .dll in with the other .dlls in your GKnot folder, and add the plugin by replacing one of the other plugins in your GKnot generated .avs with "Tweak", and then add the line Tweak(Bright=5) or however bright you want it, in the .avs before encoding. Open the .avs in VDub before encoding to see if it's bright enough. You can also do it with Levels, but it's a bit trickier. If you have installed the new AviSynth 2.0.6 (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/SupportUtils/AviSynth_206.exe), then you don't even need to add the Plugin, but only the Tweak line in the .avs.

GKnot and CBR audio- I may be off base on this one, so someone correct me if I'm wrong. The default is -h --abr 128. So, hit MP3 Custom Parameters (Experts) and put in -h --cbr 128 or whatever bit rate you want. So now you're an expert:)

[smok3]

scene detection question: are there any special movies/scenes/wipes/dissolves where the default settings fail? (i never noticed a missing keyframe when cuting the movie in half for 2 cds), tia.