What exactly is it with DivX?

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Tue Feb 18, 2003 8:34 pm

just a question. I know DivX 5 sucks, at least for use in Premiere, but it creates watchable-quality vids. Can someone tell me the exact reason that DivX is so undesirable? (in english too, im still interpreting the guides....feels like my eyeballs are gonna roll back in my head...ahhh...)

Jebadia · Post by **Jebadia** » Tue Feb 18, 2003 9:45 pm

It's really a matter of quality I guess. From a DVD or lossless source, re encoding to Divx isn't so bad...but any further 'generations' of divx encodes from the first (Divx/Xvid) encode degrades the quality, sometimes alot depending on the quality of first Divx/Xvid encode. Bunches of quality and color information and such blather that makes your video look so nice is lost in the compression. Unless the encode was at quantisizer 1, which I haven't tried, but I heard keeps the quality quite well, any further encoding from a Divx source will never be as good as the origional, though you can use cleaners to "clean" up some of the mess.
(I'm not entirely sure if I'm right about all of this, someone like AD or Ed could give a better explaination)

That and editing in premiere with Divx is a bitch, crashes, the clip doesn't cut at the right points (some keyframe issue divx has) and other problems that occure, though you might have not had any, I sure did, and is why I now editing from DVD, plus I wanted my MPEG2 master copies to look nice.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Tue Feb 18, 2003 11:01 pm

DivX isnt 'undesirable', AD reccomends using Xvid since its opensource and a big loser company like divxnetworks isn't controlling it, and the quality is really more or less the same if not better.
As source for editing, it's no good for the reasons you already know; unless you filter the crap out of it, it's probably going to recompress like shit. Unless you set every frame to a key frame, it's going to be hard to edit with. It compresses well as a final backup or distribution copy, but it's no good for anything else really. All of the mid to low bitrate codecs are really only good for distro or backup (divx family, rm, wm).
Xvid has a quantizer mode in which you can set the codec to compress each frame at the same quantizer, meaning if the frame is more complex it will be larger in size, and less complex it will be smaller. Quant 2 or 100% quality (theyre both essentially the same thing) is whats known as 'saturated', the codec won't assign any more bits to those frames than it already is. If you set the cbr bitrate to 100000 kbps, the encode would come out the same size as quality 100, because it dosent go passed that limit. Quant 1 is beyond that limit, it encodes everything with the extremely low quantizer of 1 (lowest is like 30), making it pretty much visually lossless (although a decent amount of data is still actually lost)
I'd recommend quant 1 for a master copy, but not as source material.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Tue Feb 18, 2003 11:02 pm

*highest quant is like 30, which will turn your image into complete crap
try it, its fun

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Tue Feb 18, 2003 11:29 pm

well, me and a friend experimented with huffyuv, and were caught between rapture and disappointment. It made beautiful files, but with less than beautiful sizes. Im currently ripping the Evangelion box set so i can edit with it (yes, i finally bought a DVD-ROM...huzzah!!) and im encoding with DivX 5.02 Pro, at 500kbps and the audio is MPEG Layer 3 at highest qual. It works out at about 500 or so meg for for episodes (ill split them later)

What are any better options. o, btw those settings produce excellent quality vids (IMO)

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Wed Feb 19, 2003 12:46 am

500 mb for 4 episodes is DEFINELY not anywhere CLOSE enough if you want even halfway decent quality in your final video. 500kbps just looks like... crap...

FurryCurry · Post by **FurryCurry** » Wed Feb 19, 2003 1:08 am

Have you read the part of the guides where it discusses using avisynth+DVD2AVI to edit directly from the VOBs?

That's really the best way, and it's not exactly a sin to edit interlaced, and deinterlace your completed master.

Eva is too screwed up to IVTC properly anyway, so you really have nothing to lose by going straight from the source. avisynth is pretty fast when not IVTCing, too.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Wed Feb 19, 2003 3:10 pm

Its still a good idea to at least try and ivtc it, if for nothing but the size decrease going from 30fps to 24 :\ it should be possible to get a bit better motion with the right settings though.
Yes, 500 mbps is a HORRIBLE bitrate to use. Assuming you're not encoding 320x240 files, but even if you are, theyre going to look like dirt. You can only really get away with 500kbps and under with realmedia.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Wed Feb 19, 2003 3:15 pm

RadicalEd0 wrote: Yes, 500 mbps is a HORRIBLE bitrate to use. Assuming you're not encoding 320x240 files, but even if you are, theyre going to look like dirt.

I dunno, 500 mbps wouldn't look too bad. Whatever or not you want, much less need, to allocate 500 megabits per second for video is an entirely different matter, though.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Wed Feb 19, 2003 3:33 pm

:\ you have a point there

500kbps on the other hand :\
now that sucks