How to make high quality movies and still be able to burn them

[Iceman[NIU]]

Ok i am pretty new at this, but i have read just aboiut every article on the subject. I have an 124min movie that i have ripped, and for the life of me i can get it to 700mb or even 715mb i have used falskmpeg, but i crahes on me after use., i have used xmpeg but it seems to be tha same, now i have been using virtualdub, and getting same results. What i want to do is to find out how to get a good quality movie and be able to burn it. I have downloaded movie off of kazza that look incredible and are able to burn. SO PLEASE HELP!!!!!! I am going to rip my hair out.

[UncasMS]

so your problem is (???) that the transcodings process crashes with any tool and setting you tried so far?

have you re-ripped the data to your hdd or tried any other dvd?

[Iceman[NIU]]

My problem is that i get bad quality, and big files the only way to get good qualtiy is to push the KPS up 900 or so and the only way to get it down to cd size is to put the KPS at 670 or so . I can use and have used all the flask, xmpeg, and virtualdub, but no matter how hard i try i can't get it right. Is there some secret that i am missing? PLease help

thanks

[UncasMS]

1 or 2 pass routines?

[Iceman[NIU]]

1 pass routines

[Iceman[NIU]]

I have used all the codecs, Please let me know the best one to use, and the best encoder Falsk,xmpeg, virtualdub etc...
also please let me know what one you yourself use. I am VERY computer literate so please be specific. I apperciate any help you can give. Also any site with directions on the best settings. I have seen awsome quality at very low sizes i don't care what it takes please help me!

Thanks, anyone who can help

[khp]

You should definetly try doing some two-pass encoding, you can do this in flask with divx4 or 5. But if you are aiming for a one cd rip you might want to do some filtering which is impossible with flask

You should try GordianKnot, with divx3.11(nandub sbc) or divx4/5. A divx5 guide for GordianKnot can be found at www.doom9.org.

[Iceman[NIU]]

Thank you for that sugestion i am currently trying that, and i seem to be doing ok. I like the fact that i has all the software that you need in one package, it makes it a lot easier. Any way if there is something i should know about it, like a good setting or a secret of the trade please let me know thank you.

[khp]

Originally posted by Iceman[NIU]
Any way if there is something i should know about it, like a good setting or a secret of the trade please let me know thank you.

I don't keep any secrets, but I do know a few neat tricks.

Chopping: Make sure you cut away the black border around the picture, a sharp contrast between the picture and the black border, will wreak havoc with the DCT compression algorithm. The easiest way to chop in Gordianknot is to click 'auto chop' and then click 'smart chop all'. Which will chop off the black borders, and then chop off a bit more to achive a perfect aspect ratio.

Subtitles: IMHO the best way to do subs is to use directvobsub as per this guide from doom9. You could also do subtitles that are 'burned' into the movie, but that introduces lots of sharp edges, which don't compress very well. A singlel language subtitle stream takes up about 3-5 MB, but if you used 'burned' subtitles you would need approx 20-50 MB more to achive the same picture quality.

End credits: End credits are expensive, if you encode them with the same settings as the movie, they can use as much as 50-80 MB, GordianKnot can help you cut off the endcredits or encode them at a very low quality level (unfortunatly this feature doesn't work with divx5 because GKnot doesn't yet support divx5 internally).

Filtering: If you are aming for one CD rips, you might also you try using 'Little noise' in the 'Noise filter' section in GordianKnot, this will make the movie more compressable and hopefully give you better overall quality. But ofcause I almost never do 1 CD rips so I usually don't use any noise filter.

[Mac Sidewinder]

124min rip is tough to get on one 700mb disc with quality. I would shoot for 2 discs and keep the ac3 quality soundtrack. Just my prefs.

Mac

[GicoS]

Im a newbie too. I'had same crashing problem. To solve it, i had to use dvix 3.11 and not 5.0.1.

I think that 2 700Mb size will always means good quality!

[Iceman[NIU]]

Ok guys i appreciate these sugestions, but i download movies from Kazza or morpheus that are 716mb and below that look incredible all i want to know is how they do it i saw a 3hr movie look great. So if anyone knows how they do that please let me know thanks.

Everyone,

[Iceman[NIU]]

Look i need help i have made 3 or 4 tries at this and i can't get the size below 715mb and when i finally did it had no sound and looked like crap. So please help!

[khp]

Originally posted by Iceman[NIU]
Look i need help i have made 3 or 4 tries at this and i can't get the size below 715mb and when i finally did it had no sound and looked like crap. So please help!

Find yourself a bitrate calculator and figure out how high a bitrate you can afford, that way there is no way you can get oversized, except if you messed up the max/min quantizers. Then select a resolution that keep the bits per pixel value over 0.2.

An example: for a 100 minute movie, your bitrate should be 848 (assuming 128kbs audio). If we select a resulution like 576*320, we get 848000/(576*320*25) = 0.18 bits per pixel, so you might have to go to an even lower resolution.