Xvid settings for animated movies?

[carlosesteban]

Hi, i've heard Xvid is way better than DivX when it comes to animated movies. I want to try it out, but i'm totally new to Xvid... What settings do you recommend me to encode animated movies with Xvid?

[carlosesteban]

Oh, i forgot, i heard Xvid takes better care of the high contrast edges in animated movies. DivX seems to create a lot of noise in those regions. That's the main reason why i want to find out how to set the Xvid codec particularly for animation.
Thanks

[shiny#3]

Hi,

you are right about your statment with xvid.

here is a little page that might be of some help for your xvid settings.

good luck!

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/xvid.html

[Mosthated]

Does this mean that XviD sharpens up the edges. Because for converting Southpark that would really be nice.

[carlosesteban]

Thank you shiny I'll try it out.

[shiny#3]

to mosthated:

I just don´t know if xvid codec is the best choice of mpeg 4 based
codecs for the use with anime movies. I just stepped
over it about 8 months ago when I was looking for an alternative
to DIVX since I met a lot of unwanted results when messing with the DIVX codec settings. (maybe I was to dumb to grab the whole
settings-->result issues back then.)

to sum it up... I found the Xvid setting gui somehow easier to
deal with.

the site I have mentioned above does mostly represent (not in every point) the experiences I have gathered when dealing with
Clerks the animated series, that have very sharp edges.

I have also to admit that I am not really up to date with Divx
pro 5.05 . just using it to decode my movies that I "brought from
my vacation". Maybe Divx 5.05 has improved a lot!!

but since I bought the Denver DVD-176 , which swallows almost all
kind of crap that somehow has something to do with an Mpeg 2
format no matter if burned on cdr DVD-r as video cd svideo cd or reauthored dvd or even as iso -data cd , dvd, I focused on the CCE.

it surley is the fact that I have missed the newest developments on DIVX PRO.

just ask UNCAS if you want to use this. he surley has more expertise with that.

good luck!

[Mosthated]

Thnx for your reply!

My situation is just a bit different. I have a crappy JVC DVD player which doensn't 'eat' as much as yours does. that's why I encode using TMPGenc. It's too bad that TMPGenc (at least the things I know) does not encode XviD. Still, I'm interested in XviD because I heard about this advantages. Yet I don't know if it's really better than XviD. Thnx for your reply!! Greetz. Mosthated

[carlosesteban]

One Question:

I tried enconding a movie with 2 passes of Xvid, like that guide you recommended me explained... Is it normal that the first pass produces a HUGE file, something like 1,4GB or so?

Thanx

[carlosesteban]

BTW: the final product, that means after the second pass, was normal, the 600MB i wanted... but the middle file was more than twice that size!

[shiny#3]

the first pass is that big because it is encoded in high bitrate
to ensure that "fast moving scenes" are provided with a bitrate
high enough to be displayed properly. the second pass selectivly applies
bitratevalues according to the requirements of the scenes.

that means slow moving scenes --> low bitrate ;
fast moving scenes --> high bitrate;

the first pass is no longer needed when the jobis done!!

have you been content with the result???

to mosthated:
have you tried to install the ffdshow filter for decoding xvid,
to serve Tmpeg??

you could also try the CCE basic to encode to mpeg!!!

[carlosesteban]

Xvid did work better But i think it still needs a little filtering to look its best.

Thank you

[SpikeSpiegel]

I agree with what u said about the forming of noise in hi contrast pictures using divx.
But I also agree with “Maybe Divx 5.05 has improved a lot!!”
The noise was a great problem of DivX4LowMotion, then, with the “dual pass” of 5.0x versions, this annoying effect decreased and with 5.05 it almost disappeared.
I did some tests converting anime videos with Xvid (Koepi’s 24062003-1 alpha release) and DivX5.05Pro using DVX with Lanczos resize method and without filters.
After the encoding I extracted some frames and these are the results:
1)noise: even using medium-hi bitrate (1000k and then 1350k with res=515*384, in other words 0.21-0.28 bitrate/pixel per frame) there’s a little noise in each file, that’s because there’s a lot of motion.
The difference between divx&xvid encoded files isn’t noticeable.
2)macroblock: using xvid, all hi motion scenes are full of macroblocks, using divx I noticed macrobloks only in the 1000k file and only in a few (the most “critical”) scenes.

[SpikeSpiegel]

I think that the real difference between the two codecs is that the dual pass of DivX is more precise in the motion search and in the allocation of data, so u can use it even with low bitrates.
Maybe, using VERY high bitrate values, Xvid is closer than DivX to the real perfection.

P.s. if u wanna do some tests make sure that, in the divX configuration, those options are NOT enabled:
Resize-crop&deinterlace via codec, Psychovisual Enc., Postprocessing Source, Quarter Pixel (increases the noise) and GMC.
If u’re gonna use high bitrate, disable even “Choose your profile”.