Video is "blocky" after conversion

[Dougmeister]

Using VirtualDub 1.4.10 and DivX Pro 5.0.2 codec on existing AVI files. Play fine on my workstation (both before AND after conversion), but play horribly on my Audiovox Maestro.

I'm using two-pass encoding, and the only video setting that I change from the defaults is the bitrate (brought down from 750 or so to a more reasonable 200 kbps).

Am I missing something here? Some setting I should be changing but am not? Please advise. Thank you.

(Edit: also happens if I directly copy the original AVI file to the PPC. Suspect it has been encoded w/ DivX 5.0.2 Pro maybe? Is that the problem?)

[benderman]

What resolution did you use? Full 320x240? And which framerate? If the framerate is higher than 15fps 200kbps are too low. DivX isn't designed to work very well on such low bitrates. Use half the framerate of the original and you may get acceptable results with 200kbps.

[Dougmeister]

I was also decimating the framerate by 2. Sorry I forgot that part.

[benderman]

DivX works best on bitrates higher than 400kbps and it often becomes blocky at lower res. Maybe you can smooth the video a bit with the blur filter or by using the bilinear resizing-filter. That will cause less details, but the lower contrast between the pixels makes it look not so blocky.