Standard Resolution

[joecross98]

I am ripping DVD's to HD with Smart Ripper and then encoding to DivX using Flask.

I wonder if there is a "standard" resolution for these types of DVD movies. For example, in the MP3 world, 128Kb/s is fairly standard. Using Morpheus, I've seen movies of all different resolutions. Realizing that the goal is to make these things small enough to broadband around the net (or we'd all buy a DVD-R or buy the original movie?!?), what is the first thing to give up in order to make them 650MB? Do I lower the resolution, the bitrate or what?

Joe

P.S. I am currently watching these DivX movies on my PC and the quality is poor when I try to watch them at "Full Screen" mode. Do they look better on TV (via SVCD)? Would a different software player make a difference (I'm using DVD Express)?

[benderman]

For widescreen (16:9 or 2,35:1) I use a width of 640, for fullscreen-movies (4:3) I use 512x384. For slower PC's or old graphic-adapters this resolutions can easily be displayed on the standard-resolutions of 640x480, 1024x768 or 1280x960.

Higher resolutions than 640x480 will bring no better quality, lower than 400x300 will not show enough details mfor near-dvd-quality.

The video-bitrate depends on the length of the movie. Use a bitrate-calculator to encode a film with (a multiple of) 650 or 700 MB.

[joecross98]

So let's say I was only interested in copying DVDs for my home collection. Would it make sense to split them between multiple CD-Rs and retain a higher resolution and bitrate (highest quality possible)? In other words, would I only shrink a movie to 650MB if I wanted to fit it to one CD-R or make it broadbandable?

Joe

[benderman]

More than 2 CD-Rs is only sensfull for very long movies (3 hours or more). For movies up to 90min I use 1 700MB-cd-r except for movies with very much action-scenes. More than 10MB per minute (about 1200kbps video) gives not very much extra quality.
If you don't use two-pass-encodding you should always use a higher bitrate.

[Kaiser-Soze]

When I started ripping I used 1 CD for DivX movies but now I regret that because CD's are really cheap now and u can spend that cheap Euro for that extra quality in audio and Video. There is much difference in quality between 1CD and 2CD conversion. It's just how much quality matters to u

[Kaiser-Soze]

About the P.S. u have there:
I watch my DivX's through my TV-out at my T.V and they do look better so does the VCD's, not because they are better quality ,quite the opposite really, but because the T.V. makes the bad quality no so seeable

[joecross98]

Thanks everyone! Kaiser - Thanks for the info, it's great!

I think I'll stick to 2 CD burns for now. I want the extra quality, so if I want to trade them, people will just have to download two files!! I'm trying different approaches (e.g. GordianKnot, Xmpeg, TPMG, DVD2svcd) to see which one is best for the quality/effort/time it results in.

One other question - what type of video out port do you use? My laptop has an SVideo out, but I'm not sure if it carries audio, as well, or if I'm going to have to use my audio out port in addition to the SVideo out. Do you know if SVideo carries audio?

Thanks,
Joe

[Kaiser-Soze]

I use SVideo as well, and I use the Digital-out of my soundcard to carry the sound to an external Dolby Digital Amplifier.
U have to connect the SVideo out with the T.V but also the output from your soundcard to a Hi-Fi, amplifier, Audio-in e.t.c because the Svideo does not carry sound to the T.V
Connect them and have fun