DVD -> DivX or DVD -> SVCD?

[DragonZeal]

I'm wondering what is best mentioned in the title.
I'll have to make a choice between connecting a PC to my TV or a SVCD compatible DVD player.
So what is best?
What offers the best quality on a television?
If I'm going to put the movies on CD than I just want 1 CD.
And if possible 6-channels.
For the last I'm thinking of using mp2(Dobly Surround 2).
Is this possible for DivX? For SVCD it is.
Ok when the decission is made.
Which guide on Doom9.net should I use?

Thanks

[hakko504]

First 1 or 2 CD rips?

SVCD can never be single CD rips, unless you have very short movies. In fact you may more often than not actually be using 3CD in order to get best possible out of a SVCD. Usually you will be able to fit between 35 and 50 minutes on a SVCD.

DivX will easily fit a 2h movie on 1CD, but not always with 6-channel sound. On the other hand if you go for 2CD, then you can keep the original AC3 sound, not needing to transcode the audio -> better sounding audio.

Second, which looks best on TV?

SVCD sure has the advantage here, especially with multiple CD rips.

DivX is competitive when comparing 2CD rips at equal bitrate, but in general I think SVCD has the higher potential.

Other things to think about:

SVCD is by definition 4:3. You can put 16:9 movies on a SVCD if you have a TV able to stretch the video manually. If not, you have to encode all video as letterboxed.
SVCD requires a MPEG-2 encoder, most of which are not free. DivX on the other hand is completely free.

DivX on the other hand has a problem with interlaced video. On my system I can encode stuff as interlaced, but my video card (Matrox) refuses to output it to TV that way.

If you decide on DivX then I'd recommend that you start with Gordian Knot and encode a few movies to DivX5.02 to get the feel of it. It's an easy and automatic solution for DivX, and when you get the hang of it you can go on to perfecting the methods by yourself, maybe switch to XviD if you think it will look even better.
Or if you decide on SVCD the there is a lovely little program called DVD2SVCD that will do the job for you.

[DragonZeal]

Does Xvid require 2CDs or can it be done on 1 CD?

[hakko504]

XviD and DivX5.02 are not very different, they are both based on the same code, but they diverged about a year ago. You will not be able to make a huge difference by substituting XviD instead of DivX, at least not enough to motivate a change from 2CD to 1CD.

Let me just state that the reson I recommended DivX is that GKnot is a good program to start with, as well as having huge possibilities for advanced experimenting, but at the moment it does not natively support XviD. When you have learned to do an automatic rip, and wish to go on doing some experiments outside of what GKnot can offer, there is no difference between using XviD and DivX.

[DragonZeal]

OK DivX it will be.
Fortunatly I already used Gknot for DivX movies.
But I left the AC3 of the DVD wich results to 2 CD's.
On the other hand I could use Lame MP3 with the best settings that I already use for Exact Audio Copy.
If I use AC3 I will be forced to let it on my HD or on 2 cd's.
But if someday my HD crashes I will loose all my movies.
There are 2 solutions for this:
RAID 0+1
or
Use of MP3 sound.
Which soundformat is better MP3 or MP2?
But I could also use AC3 2ch.
Anyway thx.
I'll test te difference between MP3 2ch and AC3 2ch tomorrow.
The only way I can hear the difference is to put on my Philips Headphone.