My DivX Encodings verses the Professionals (Interesting points inside)

[Diversion]

Alright so i've been encoding divx movies from DVDs for some time now.. and I still cannot compete as far quality goes with some dvd to divx rips i've seen..

I use Flask to encode using Divx codec 4.11 at all the highest quality settings and yet my dvds don't come out as crisp as the pros... Why are my divx files coming out grainy in full screen mode and the pros files aren't..

Another thing that pisses me off is that the pros can encode the audio at 160kbps in stereo while having PHENOMENAL divx video playback while I have to encode my audio at 64kbit MONO at 775kbit video to keep a 2 hour movie to fit onto 1 cd..

The pros can fit 2 hour movies onto one 80 minute cd with 160kbit stereo audio and the video looks super clean and not grainy..

The settings I use on the Divx codec are as follows for a 2 hour movie to fit onto One 80 minute CD:

Does 2-pass even work with Flask? I do it everytime, and I don't notice any difference from the 1-pass.. Yes, I do the 2-pass, 1st pass first then change to the 2-pass, 2nd pass for the final encoding process.. but I still have yet to see a difference...

Anyways, I use the 2-pass encoding... doing the "Slowest" option also..

I use around 775kbits of video to keep the video within the 80min cd bracket..

and I use 64kbit mono audio so I can use more bandwidth towards the video portion..

And the video comes out mediocre compared to the professional rips..

Another thing.. these professional rips mostly show that they are using 16bit color.. well hell I don't see an option to convert the dvd's 24bit color down to 16bit for the divx.. I would imagine being able to use 16bit color in the divx would free up a good amount of bandwidth for the video/audio portion of the movie.

So question is, how do I encode the color to 16bit in the divx so I can bump up the bandwidth on audio and video in FlaskMpeg?

Thanks for any info provided, you guys are great. =)

Jay

[setarip]

You can convert your .AVI files to 16 bit depth easily, by loading the file into VirtualDub and selecting "Color Depth" from the "Video" dropdown menu.

Let us know of your success ;>}

[benderman]

With 775kbps DivX wouldn't even reach the 16bit for a pixel. DivX automaticly reduces the colordepth to get a better comprssion. Maybe with a very high bitrate the reduction to 16bit would have an effect but with lower bitrates quality and size should stay the same.