Undersize problem - desperate - need help

[crOOk]

Hey everyone!
I've been using XviD since day one and have never experienced any problems regarding over-/undersizing. But after I had installed "ni hao!" over the old RC2 build my movies got massively undersized although I hit the load default settings button right before the first encode.
I uninstalled the build and then installed the old RC2 build again. Same problem... I've double, triple and quadruple - checked my settings and everything seemed to be allright.
Let me just tell you all my settings:

Profile unrestricted
MPEG matrix
checked Adaptive Quantization
everything else unchecked
B-Frames 2-1.5-1.0-Closed GOV
I-frame boost 10 (1-20)
Overflow 10-60-60
CC 0-0
I specified 2 Zones, one @q1 and another one @q18.
MSP 6
VHQ 4
I used chroma motion detection
Frame Drop Ratio is 0
and minimum I-Frame interval is 300
Trellis quantization is used and quantizers are capped:
I 2-4
P 2-6
B 2-31

I tried to reach a file size of 526000 kbytes, but the file turns out to be 333714 kbytes. The same thing happens with different sources at about the same ratio. Seriously, I am desperate. I'm getting one dvd after another, but don't have enough disk space, so I'm in deep shit. :)

I hope someone on this forum has experienced similar problems with one of the new builds...

Thx in advance, guys!

[Teegedeck]

Don't forget to give us your first-pass' size, too.

[crOOk]

Oh right, I forgot. The first pass size is 954776 kbytes.
Thx for the quick reply!

[crusty]

Try the AS@Level5 and setting your overflow settings to default. Maybe that will help. Capping quantizer shouldn't give you undersized files, but maybe they will if the overflow settings are so high...I don't know. Try and see. You can also try just the defaults.
HTH

[sysKin]

Originally posted by crOOk
I specified 2 Zones, one @q1 and another one @q18.And that's it? In that case, you just used two fixed-quality encodings. There isn't a single frame which can be made bigger or smaller, as they are all fixed. Desired filesize does nothing, and you should have used one pass for that (doesn't even matter if quantizer-mode or cbr).

Perhaps I misunderstood you...

[crOOk]

Of course I meant one zone with a weight of 1 and another one with q18.
Sorry about that.
Thanks for the advice crusty, I'm gonna try that right now. It's just that I don't think it will do any good, since these are the settings I have always used...

crOOk

[crOOk]

I think I know what might have caused the massive undersizing. I specified two zones as I said before. One of them had a weight of 1 and the other one I told you had a quantizer of 18. What I did was assign a weight of 18 to the second zone...
Still, should this have such a massive impact on the final size?
I'm doing an encode right now and will report back to you as soon as possible.

crOOk