Come on people, better quality please

[Nacelle]

I spend all the time downloading a movie that is a DVD rip just to erase it because of bad quality. Bitrate is important. If you compress a movie at the original DVD dimensions you're gonna have to have a low bitrate. That is bad. I reduce my Divx rips to 384x288 but have a higher bitrate. Everyone who sees them played full screen is amazed that theya are not the Originals.

[benedict]

Well, heck, I hope they didn't charge you for it too!

[Enchanter]

Count me out as I don't have the bandwith to share my videos.

[Warlock]

hmmmm, i cant seem to find the slot to slip the quarters in?

[benedict]

Oh, come on! I wasn't trying to start a parade here! I just hope "Nacelle" has a broadband connection. I don't, and stuff like that can really put a cramp on your day in that case!

[Coma]

I reduce my Divx rips to 384x288 but have a higher bitrate. Everyone who sees them played full screen is amazed that theya are not the Originals.


My question would be is what resolution you're running your monitor at......because i am using a 19 inch monitor that will only go down to 800x600 and if i ran a 384x288 file fullscreen it would look like crap i don't care how high the bitrate was............

[Nacelle]

Save your quarters for a new computer

I use satellite and the speed is fine. But, not everyone uploads fast though. I have a 19in Monitor and I usually run at 1024x768. If you have a POS computer, It will look like crap. Most newer graphics cards will compensate for smaller movie size and smooth them out. ATI and Nvidia card do quite a nice job of it.

[Coma]

I have a brand new computer thank you very much p4 2ghz with geforce 4............................not a POS..........................

[Warlock]

OUCH!!

[Mark Madness]

Geez what is with you guys? Don't you all have your twin T3 pipelines so you can download 640 x 480 at 1500 kbps movies and share them with mister crybaby so he doesn't have to go out and pay for the hard work that film creators go through. Sheesh, get with the times man!

[Enchanter]

Don't you all have your twin T3 pipelines

I wish...

[Nacelle]

ohh boy

I guess a real discussion of Dixv comression technics isn't possible here with all the teen-agers. If you don't care about bitrate then you end up with a movie that is bocky and isn't worth the time use to make them. Read this. Here is a section from there.

Ideally we would love to encode all movies at 720 x 576 full DVD resolutions. But at this resolution the image is broken up into 1,620 macroblocks. It has an effective resolution of 45 x 36 blocks.

Lets say we have decided that to fit a movie on a single CD as DivX we needed to use a bitrate of 800 kbps. But when we look at the picture at 640 x 480 we can still see many of these macroblock artifacts. We cannot increase the bitrate or it will not fit. Many think if we make the image big (i.e. full sized) the blocks will be smaller. This is wrong! Larger images means more blocks which means less memory is given to each block. When each block has less memory allocated to it, it becomes simplier and simplier until in the end most of the blocks become nothing more than blank colours!

The only solution is to make the image smaller. Smaller images means less blocks which means more memory is allocated to each block and each block looks more like the original picture. A resolution of 480 x 384 would give us 30 x 24 macroblocks, which is 900 less macroblocks. This can make a big difference in quality!

The above methodology is nothing new to DivX, the same has always applied to all Mpeg formats since they were designed. Because of the way it is compressed the picture resolution is not the key factor in determining the image quality. Smaller pictures actually look better than larger ones at the same bitrate. The technique for making the best quality image is simple mathematics:

1. Use the highest bitrate you can.
2. If the image shows too many macroblocks shrink the resolution a little.
3. Check it again. If there are still too many macroblocks shrink it a little more until they are not noticable. Its unlikely you will get rid of all macroblocks on a single CD DivX but you can get rid of most of them.

[Enchanter]

A simple question. Why don't you post this in the forum of whatever rip groups are out there? They must have some sort of communication means, even a mIRC channel. You can't assume that the most of us here release and distribute our rips via the net. We are here to help with technical issues, not muse about which movie releases we will be working on next...

[Nacelle]

I may have clicked the wrong forum. And you may not share your movies. But don't you think that anyone wanting to make Divx movies look better will see this and learn?

[Enchanter]

Perhaps...

Bitrate may be an important aspect in video encoding. However, there are other things to consider as well, such as the application of smoothing filters, the choice of resizing filter, noise reduction, and such, all of which contribute to make the video more easily compressed and/or look better. Bitrate isn't everything. I would say that anyone partaking in the act of DivX encoding should already know how important bitrate is.

I must stress again. Not everyone shares their movie here, either because they don't want to (for legal or selfish reasons. You pick), or they just can't (try that on a 56K connection or 128K DSL line). In addition, this board prohibits the posting of links to movies. I'm content enough to help people improve their ripping techniques and quality. That is a better way of doing what you have done with this thread.