Is DivX 5.03 stable?

[BluDChyLD]

Hi,
I haven't done much testing with 5.03, but reading through the forums it seems like there's a lot of problems. It seems like there's very little quality improvement over 5.02 even with the n-pass feature, and the b-frames option causes artifacts. Can anyone verify any of this? I'd rather stick with 5.02 if im likely to get problems.

[OvERaCiD23]

stick to 5.0.2. b-frames in 5.0.3 introduce lots of artifacts (very noticeable). i saw no visual improvement from N-th pass encodes, but my bitrates are rather high usually (1000+).

[N_F]

Some people seem to have some problems with it. Myself I haven't seen any extreme quality improvments (though it is there, just not very big IMO), but I haven't seen any strange artifacts or anything either.

For my own use I consider it stable, but if you don't have time to test things and it's vital everything comes out 100% correct I guess it might be a good idea to stay with 5.02 for a while.

[jonny]

Me too.
No problem so far with the 5.0.3.

[dTb]

I'm the same, haven't had any probs with 5.0.3 and I don't have any reason to go back to 5.0.2. I haven't noticed any probs with b-frames either and 5.0.3 sure does use a lot of them.
It's hard to say but I think there is a small quality improvement.
From what I've seen so far I might start encoding with the bitrate modulation a little towards high motion, the constant setting for me has the tendency have a little bit of macroblocking on some high motion scenes. I'm pretty sure however that only relatively experienced users like myself would notice.

[chris25frfr]

do you thiNk that we must move the slideR to hight motioN iF the movie is sPeed oR stay at coNstaNt bitRate .

thiNks

[temporance]

AFAIK, Slider to right gives more bits to lo-motion scenes. Slider to left gives more bits to hi-motion scenes (where they are wasted IMHO).

I would say just slightly right of center is optimum for all movies.