DVD to Xvid Difficulties

[littlebigbeard]

Hello,

It's nice to be able to post after the five day wait!

Before I start "leeching" help from the experienced users, I want to say it's pretty remarkable that this is all for fun - y'all are not getting paid to help anyone - and it's awesome that you still care!

Yes as my subject states, I'm lost when it comes to DVD conversion. I've read doom9's guide on DVD to Xvid (using Gordian Knot). The "Gordian Knot / Virtualdub" guide for Xvid is somewhat understandable and yet it's totally complicated (what can be modified and what can't). I'd like help regarding this guide - hopefully you can answer my questions. And / or give me other useful DVD to Xvid tips :

1. In Gordian knot... "Now set your desired filesize and number of CDs:" If I set to one cd, does that change the quality - same goes for 2 cds, etc ? What are the pros and cons here?

2. It is possible to view partially converted 2nd passed xvid movies (i.e. preview them) or can they only be viewed at the end of the conversion? I haven't been able to.
a. Does a second pass avi conversion create two unique avi files? Does Godian Knot ultimately bind them together?
b. What's the benefit of using 2nd pass?
c. Does 2nd pass increase or decrease the ultimate avi size?

3. In Gordian Knot... Why can't I keep the avi resolution as it was on the DVD (i.e. 720 x 480) - Gordian wants it lower?
a. Does the resolution affect the image quality (i.e. blockiness or smoothness)?
b. If not, than what setting makes the largest impact on the quality of the avi?

4. I want a DVD quality avi file (converted from the DVD). My preference is to fit this on one cd and two at most.
a. What do I need to achieve this? Following the "Gordian Knot / Virtualdub" has not helped me get DVD quality conversions. Instead, I find myself creating blocky avi's that are at least two cd's in size.
b.Am I better off using DivX to achieve a DVD to Avi conversion with nearly DVD clone under 1.4 gigs rather than Xvid (i don't need the resolution to be the same - just the image quality)?

5. What are key frames? (i see this value in virtualdub's file information) Higher-image-quality avi's tend to have a higher value, no?

6. How does the vob to avi conversion using DVD2avi compare to using avisynth with virtualdub?

7. How can you increase the volume on the sound file (i.e. the mp3 of the converted DVD) so that the final avi has louder volume than the original DVD?

Thanks for following this far. If you can't help me with the individual questions, can you give me guidance on question 4.? It just drives me nuts not knowing how to get a nice looking DVD to avi conversion without it being a -first pass of 2000 kbs bitrate- and the ultimate file size being nearly 3 gigs (that's the only way I've found to make an Xvid look anywhere DECENT)! If you know of any other guides to help me, that would be helpful too.

Thanks so much,

Daniel

[jimmy basushi]

1 - when it comes to videos, the more you compress it the more sharpness you lose. it becomes smoothed compared to a 2 cd rip but as you can see from my title, some of us love our xvid 1 cd rips.

2 - easily done once you see how, click edit avs before you go to save and look for the '#trim(startframe,endframe)'. remove the #, and change it to what you want, like for this example i want 20 minutes of the movie. 'trim(0,30000)' for a 25 fps movie (its simply minutes x 60 x fps to know what frame you want). first pass is simply a check across the video, second pass is the atucal encode you keep.

3 - yes, resolution does affect picture quality. it depends on if you are trying for a 1 cd or 2 cd rip, with a 1 cd you have to go to a lower resolution because it needs to have less pixels compress to look good. another reason a movie is differently sized is because we crop the movie to remove the wasted parts of it that dont need to be encoded (black borders). its impossible to say what the best resolution on a movie is because of many factors like if its anamorphic, or 4:3, and that sort of thing, best thing you can do is run a compressibility test and for xvid (your using dev-api 3 right?) run the compressability percentage at around 70 - 75%

4 - 1 cd compression is highly possible, without many problems either. i do them exculsivly for myself. i use koepi rc 3 xvid tho, which is about to go final and is generally considered more upto date and better then the old 'stable' ones. 1 cd compression is simply a fact of finding a low enough resolution to make it look good with the right settings. right now im using a second program called 'ar calculator' with very promising results. i wouldnt recommend 'ar calculator' for yourself yet tho, because it is fairly beta.

5 - cant help you on that one really, all i know is keyframes are extremely important for seeking and cutting avi files.

6 - you have to use DVD2AVIdg with everything, no choice. just let robot4rip do the work for you, its under index/demux i believe. let it also do your vbr mp3 audio, saves yourself alot of trouble.

7 - use robot4rip, it will boost hte volume of the mp3 when it encodes.

by the way, you shouldnt keep a first pass, you know that right?

oh well, to finish it off ill drop a link to an excelent xvid faq (http://www.vslcatena.nl/~ronald/docs/xvidfaq.html) that should help you a fair amount if you plan to continue using xvid.

stick with it, xvid might look tricky when your starting off but once you get into the swing of it, you'll see its a beautiful piece of technology. another option, if you get sick of having to read so much, you could just use 'autoGordianKnot'. those GK guys have done another marvelous job, except this time the program is for new users who just want good looking rips without bothering about tinkering with the codec.

[littlebigbeard]

Jimmy, thanks for your follow-up. I managed to create a one-cd xvid with decent image quality. Changing the resolution helped a lot to achieve this size. I haven't installed koepi's rc3 xvid build because I hear Gordian can't handle it. The xvid build I'm using is dated 24.2.2003 1100. Not sure whose it is :confused:

>by the way, you shouldnt keep a first pass, you know that right?

Now I do ;)

Few other questions: When VirtulDubMod loads an avi with an mp3 stream and warns, "...Improper VBR audio encoding in source AVI..." should I continue using it or is it best to use NanDub?

What's a compressability test and where do you run it?

Thanks.

[jggimi]

Compressibility tests are descirbed in Doom9's many step-by-step guides featuring Gordian Knot. Start here (http://www.doom9.org/xvid-guides.htm) for XviD.

[jimmy basushi]

yeah ignore that error in vdubmod, its just a warning. personally i recommend avi-mux (http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/Video-Zeug/AVIMux%20GUI/index-eng.html) which is an excelent tool to add audio to avi's properly.

you are right, the newer xvid isnt recommened for gk yet. if it came from the gordian knot codec pack, keep using that one because its tried and tested to run well with gk.