Alternatives to divx


DuderJace

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I recently got the Xvid codec and was wondering if anyone had tried to make a moviepark compatible file with it. It has changable Four cc codes and such, and better settings than divx 4.1.2, so it might make better quality clips, but I don't know what would make it work with the gp. Might be worth a try if anyone ahs the time.
Jace
 
I have been working on a tutorial for this. It does work.There may be a few incompatibilities between Divx 4.12 and Xvid that will cause problems with some movies.I've only tried 3 films so far, but they have worked ok.

One of the most interesting features of Xvid in 2-pass mode, is that it allows you to set the final file size for the video portion of your avi.
 
I just had a hunt around on Joygp and found the tutorial.
Right clicking is disabled so I can't link directly, but if you go to the Joygp home page and click on the 'Util & MoviePark' link at the top of the page, then click on 'FAQ Board'and open the post called 'Encoding Movies through Virtual Dub' it's there.

I think they messed up the setting for 'FourCC used'.They have it set to XVID, but I think it'll only work if you set it to DIVX.
 
Yeah, I really prefer XviD instead of divx. Better quality, and it's open source too.
 
WOW! Good job guys!
I look away for a few hours and a whole thing starts going off.
It's a bit like that time I set fire to the bottom of my trousers, and within like, 20 minutes, my entire legs were going up. Then the lighter in my pocket started... Ah, those were the days... Anyway, Once again the hive mind of Xtreme has come up trumps! I thought there had to be some way to get it to work. Cheers me dears!
Jace

Any idea what settings I can get away with, it resets the gp everytime. I've tried a few different ones, but it's one of those things you either guess right or you don't.
 
I just got army of darkness to work. I tried a 1-pass constant bitrate of 128. I used vdub 1.4c. It compressed it a _bit_ too well. The final file was 45Mb and looked like my ass. I'll try some other versions/bitrates etc. When I tried a 2 pass it just reset the gp, but that means i must be overlooking something. Jace
 
It works but be more generous with the quantizers. XviD will compress better and look -extremely- blurry and poor if you use the same settings as DivX. However they're both good for diffrerent things; XviD is more like JPEG to DivX's PNG format...
 
I just posted "The Second Renaissance Part 1" on GP32 Theatre

I followed Jim diGriz's XVID how to exactly. And I must say, it looks incredible! So good, in fact, that the low audio quality and frames-per-second becomes annoyingly noticeable. It's THAT freakin crisp!

Thanks, Jim diGriz. Now I have to encode the movies ALL OVER AGAIN!

...bastard...
 
I'm glad your pleased with the results from using the XviD 2-pass guide.
It takes a while to encode using this method, but the end quality makes it worth it.

I guess I should formally announce the guide.I had just added the URL to my sig up till now and had forgotten to mention it in a post.

I like the idea behind your GP32 Theatre site.Keep up the good work.
 
Very nice guide Jim diGriz. However i would suggest not using any VirtualDub filters cause they're kinda slow. Use Avisynth instead it's faster and has more filters and other options. Most importantly, you don't get around 8fps when you decimate a 23-25fps movie with 3, you just change the fps to exactly 10.

Example Avisynth script (remove those comments if you want to use it)

AviSource("c:\movies\yourmovie.avi") \\ selects your source file
ChangeFPS(10) \\ changes fps to 10 by adding or removing frames
BicubicResize(320,138,0,0.5) \\ resizes to a resolution usable by moviepark
Levels(0,1.75,255,0,255) \\ makes colors brighter

I read on your site you had problems with koepi's xvid builds. The build of 14th of may (XviD-14052003-1.exe) works just fine. For those encoding with koepi's development builds, you could try these settings:

global tab:
set motion seach precision to 6 - ultra high
set quantization type to h.263 (quantizer matrix that generates a smoother image)
set fourcc code to divx
set vhq mode to 1 - mode decision
use chomamotion and lumimasking

quantization tab:
set all MIN values to 2 and MAX values to 31

two pass tab:
select discard first pass
only use the other options if you know what you're doing.

alt curve tab:
don't use alt curve.

credits tab:
don't use any of these options, just remove the credits at the end of your movie. they just waste valuable bits.

debug tab:
only one usefull option here, the chromaoptimizer. try experimenting with it.

For more info and downloads check www.doom9.net :blink:
 
Thanks.Glad you like the guide.

If your using the XviD guide you can use current builds of Vdub and so set fps to exactly 10 rather than decimating by 3.

Your quite right, Avisynth is faster and it has a greater choice of filters etc.
I wanted to try and keep things simple and not introduce any apps other than Vdub.If you have the time people, its worth checking out Avisynth.
Mek, if you want to write about the plethora of filters available in Avisynth, let me know and I'll put it up on the site.It may encourage more use of Avisynth.

Avisynth.org

Yes the levels filter is great when used correctly and can add a lot to decent visibilty in dark scenes when viewing in MoviePark.

I'm glad that particular build of Koepi's works fine.The build I tested had some severe colour bleeding problems in several films.

The settings you suggest under the global tab match what I show in the picture in the guide and are what I use.You can enable lumi masking to save space, but the results on quality are variable in my experience.However I need to test lumi more.

The quantizer settings you list are the defaults and they work ok.I just found that using the ones I suggest in the guide gave better quality-but this as ever is a matter of opinion.

Your right about not using Alt curve.I suggest in the guide you should not enable it.

Doom9 is the best place to learn about video encoding.When I get around to putting up a link page, it will have pride of place.

doom9
 
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