If I'm experiencing saturation can I solve it.

[Wam7]

I've been having great results with Xvid but recently upon reading that resizing my TV captures of 24 from 756x424 to say 640x360 might increase the quality.

I tried this and found that my encodes no longer approximate to 352meg/1050kbps which is exactly what I want but were all around 280meg/800kbps. Here are the details:

Capture. Digital TV source, Vdub sync 768x576 YUY2 25fps using VBLE (sometimes Morgan 3.009)

Avisynth 2.5

AVISource("ep18.avi")
Crop(4,76,-8,-76)
Trim(579,62368)
TomsMoComp(1,5,1)
LumaFilter()
Convolution3d(preset="movieHQ")
UnFilter(-5,-5)
UnDot()
LanczosResize(640,360)

Xvid setting... http://www.wam777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Xvid.png . Used with HVS-Good-Picure matrix. Using the lastest Koepi & Umaniac builds (c. 24th June I think). All other Xvid settings at default (expect Payback with Bias).

2nd pass is set to 313000 which normally gives me 352meg but no matter how high I set it I still get around 280meg when I resize with Lanczos in Avisynth.

My first pass file is normally around 50meg and still is. I won't bite the head of anybody who tells me search or read the faq but I already have. Any advice (even about how to get more women) is welcome.

[Teegedeck]

I'm not quite sure that I get you correctly here. There's a lot of things you can do if you saturated the codec. Kick out the noise-filter, would be one of them, though preferably you should switch to the standard MPEG-matrix before trying that. But the first thing that comes to my mind: If you want higher quality and the codec saturated, why don't you go back to your initial, higher resolution? XviD can compress very nicely to 1/2 of the first pass' filesize and way below, too. We are not trying to encode everything at quant=2, like in the days of Nandub.

Make some tests with higher resolutions, change your matrix, and if you feel that this improved things, try kicking out some of your filters. Bring them back in if perceived quality got worse.

My first pass file is normally around 50meg
You mean '500', right? With your initial resolution, right? Otherwise I must have misunderstood something.

[Wam7]

I think the main query is why I can't maintain the higher bit rate/size at the lower res. If I can't solve this then I'll just use the higher res as frankly it looked good but as ever you always want more. I did do some testing with an Enterprise episode I captured but that was in 4:3 instead of 16:9 and the resize worked OK. I compared it with the higher resolution and tended to think that the resized encode was slightly better (less noise, with tiny loss in detail)

You mean '500', right? With your initial resolution, right? Otherwise I must have misunderstood something. No, I mean 50meg! Why have you uncovered something amiss with my procedures!? :scared:

I think trying the default mpeg matrix was on my list so I'll go with that first, Thanks.

[Teegedeck]

Are you talking about your stats-file? Or motion-vector hints (don't use those)? I'd thought you meant the size of your first-pass (kept if you deactivate the 'discard first pass' option in XviD).

[Wam7]

Hmm, I never uncheck 'Discard first pass' option, it's the file that is produced during the first pass or what would be classed as 'Job 1' in the Job control panel.

[Teegedeck]

You mean the bogus avi?:) Sorry, its size means nothing. Actually the whole file means nothing.

[Wam7]

OK! Glad that's cleared up, I was starting to get worried for a second. In trying to give as much detail as possible I may have over done it! :)

So basically I should be able to get the higher bitrate no problem at that given resolution, I just need to play around a bit. I'll do an encode and report back in couple hours.

[Acaila]

Maybe this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24584) thread might be of use to you as well. At least for the question why you can't reach your target filesize, As Teegedeck has already given the solutions.

[Wam7]

Thanks for the link. Excellent reading, I should have searched all forums instead of just Xvid!

I've turned off B-frames (and HVS-good matrix) and the file size/bit rate is bang on now.

Thank you kindly gentlemen.

edit: It was just the B-Frames that was causing me problems.