Anything for better Xvid encoding from DVD

[bmurf]

Hey guys,

I have to first say "thanks" to the Handbrake folks who put this free utility in our hands - I have made tremendous use of it for ipod encoding and basic video compressions.

My issue lies in the Xvid encoding though as I am trying to convert all of my DVDs into slightly smaller single files for my media player to pull from off of a server. The thing is, no matter how high I crank up the bit rate, I still get blocks in dark areas, especially on anamorphic movies. I am encoding to a final file size of about 3GB and the "median" effect still manages to show, for example, on scenes with darkly lit walls where there are subtle shades of darkness. I use denoise to the strongest setting along with deblock but it only goes so far. My media player does not play H.264 so I have to stick with xvid at the moment.

I have seen some amazing compressions under 1 GB of movies to the XVID codec - I am ready to PAY for software that will bring me the same stunning results. Anyone know of something for the Mac that doesn't count on me being a rocket scientist to get an amazing and reliable compression with a high bit rate? I just can't get it the way I want with Handbrake - I basically want it to look like the DVD, minus some subtle softening due to filtering (I realize there is some give and take).

Thanks for any and all input!
Cheers,
Brian
G5 Quad, PPC

[jbrjake]

Xvid doesn't really get any attention from HandBrake because none of the developers really use it. If you don't use something, you're not likely to know or care about the settings behind it. Like, I was able to set up the advanced stuff for x264 because I use it myself. I wouldn't encode without b-frames, so I added b-frames. I knew which options I considered important from researching them on doom9's forum, which helped in building the advanced x264 options tab for the MacGui and choosing settings for a lot of the presets. No one involved with the project, afaik, has a similar interest in XviD.

Another issue is that a lot of our x264 support stems from a decision the x264 team made, to include an easy way for people to submit parameters. You can pass the library a string and it'll parse it into configuration settings. I don't believe libxvidcore has anything similar. This means adding configurable options would require much more work.

I think you're not going to have much luck finding excellent XviD encoders in OS X, although VisualHub will probably let you pass through parameters to ffmpeg's convoluted interface. There are a lot still for Windows, though. And never forget about the command line utilities. ffmpeg and mencoder are always there.

[eddyg]

If you do find out a good set of Xvid encoder options that we can use on libxvidcore do share them with us, and we should be able to add them to HB some how.

But as jbrjake was saying, we don't really want to add a generalised parser for xvid options, or to learn which options do what, or which ones are good.

But are willing to take a set of known "good" options and hard code those in as a single selectable setting, as long as those options are indeed better, and we'll have to take your word on that since we don't use it ourselves

Cheers, Ed.

[rhester]

Superior results with DivX/XviD in the encoding 'scene' are 90% a result of the use of unbelievably complex AVISynth filtering scripts and plugins, not the codec. Tools like Gordian Knot (among several others) were created for this purpose, and full documentation on their use would fill an encyclopedia.

Short version: You aren't going to get results like that from MPEG-4 with HandBrake or any other "one-shot" tool. It is an art, not a science, and those videos are hand-encoded.

Rodney

[bmurf]

Thanks all - and thanks Rodney, for the enlightening information!

It would make sense that good results are due to the right tools and a lot of knowledge.

OK, a follow up question...should I be converting to H.264? Is this where the future is headed? I want to convert over 300 DVDs to digital files but do not want to choose the wrong format.

Your thoughts?

Thanks again for the input!
Brian

[dynaflash]

OK, a follow up question...should I be converting to H.264? Is this where the future is headed? I want to convert over 300 DVDs to digital files but do not want to choose the wrong format.

Almost impossible for us to answer for you. As has been said here, generally h.264 is the video codec weapon of choice for HB dev's (as well, it appears for most HB users). Future Proof ? There is no such thing in video encoding. With HB I submit you will get your best results and most flexibility from the x264 encoder as jbrjake has said. Is it right for your needs ? Ultimately only you can answer that question.

[rhester]

Seems I'm even behind the times on this, for the curious:

http://ivtc.org/

Rodney

[jbrjake]

YATTA's reputed to be the only way to properly encode Neon Genesis Evangelion.

[blizzard1260]

Hanbrake with ffmeg setting looks good on upscaling dvd with 700 mb filesize for 45 min. series, mpegstreamclip with 350 mb for that with h.263 quantization and wide HQ search. This is on a mac side.

[adamschoales]

Sorry to bump this topic but I too have a similar issue and was just wondering if anyone has found a good solution for making Xvid on the Mac...

Personally I have no real qualms about the x264 codec (the filesizes are a bit bigger, but the quality is great) but Xvid is a lot easier for most of my friends and I have a client who wants a Divx/Xvid version of their video to host on his server.