Ripping THEN reencoding in DivX

[wolverine_rulez]

Hi everyone,

I've got a question.
But first, here are the facts :

When I watch a movie (I'm french by the way), I like to watch it in the original language it was filmed with french subtitles. I know AutoGK does support subtitles and all, but it includes them IN the image instead of using the black border at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, I prefer to have them in the black border. I know also that the black border takes a huge amount of space in the final AVI file. But nevermind.
So, I usually :
1. Rip the vobs to the HDD
2. Encode them to AVI with AutoGK (to a ~3Gb file, just not to lose any quality)
3. Rip the subtitles with SubRip
4. Reencode the two with VirtualDub (to a ~700Mb file, to fit on a CD), adding the tiny black border of 50 pixels in the bottom so the subtitles aren't part of the image.

By the way, I do all of this because my standalone DVD player plays DivX and XviD fine, but doesn't support subtitles. It would be much easier then.

Anyway, here's my question :

There are so many parameters when encoding manually with DivX... and knowing the facts read before, what is the best way to configure properly the DivX codec when reecoding so I don't lose too much quality ?
I tried several times, and encoding twice the same video gives something... watchable, but quite awful.

Pleeeaaase tell me how to properly set the DivX codec ?

[manono]

Hi-

Personally I don't think it's such a good idea to re-encode the AutoGK produced .avi (for the reasons you've discovered-crap quality). One way around that is to use GKnot in the first place, keep some of the black at the bottom, or add some if necessary, so that you can get your subs down into the black.

But some movies, depending on the resolution used, are going to look bad when done for 1 CD, no matter which settings you use. If you're keeping the same high resolution as that original AutoGK encode, then that's part of the reason (maybe most of the reason) your second encoding looks bad. Maybe try and downsize it a bit.

[wolverine_rulez]

I'll certainly try GKnot, but man, this tool's quite complicated for someone who doesn't know how to use most of its third party tools.

And let me know if I got it right :
1. Ripping - ok
2. Encoding with AutoGK - ok
3. When I add the "Resize" function in VirtualDub (of course, for the black borders), I've got to change the size of the vid ? like, original (720x576) to AutoGK (704x384), and now resizing again (like 650x300 - maintaining aspect ratio) ? Plus the black border, of course...

I'll try that !
Thanks !

[celtic_druid]

Don't use VDub to resize as it means converting to RGB24. Use AVISynth, in GKNot you should be able to manually edit the script before encoding to add the black:
LanczosResize(640,352)
AddBorders(0,0,0,48)

Used 48 instead of 50 as 48 is mod16.

GKNot script should I guess already have the resizing and VSFilter included.

[wolverine_rulez]

Wow, looks like I really should take some time to figure out how GKnot works... I'll try that, but I'm not sure to succeed...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Personally speaking, I use MPEGmediator 1.5 (www.MPEGmediator.com) as I find this application makes it very easy to alter the AR of your encodes, especially 2.35:1 amamorphic encodes.

However, you will need to have an understanding of how image pixel/anamorphic frame sizes work!

Good luck