What does give the best quality ?

[fizzer]

Hi,

I'm willing to encode some DVD's to AVI, I want the to be Xvid and fit on 1 CD (700MB)

My question is :

What gets you the best encoding quality ?

- Keep the AR as close to the source (resolution=720 x 576 , SAR=5:4 , Par= 1.422 , DAR= 16:9) as possible ? What resolutions would be preferred to encode to ?

- encode in a resolution as high as possible ?

- trying to get the bitrate as high as possible ? (I found out this certainly doesn't give a nice quality if using higher resolutions)

- Anything else ? Please tell us .... our newbie community is always growing...

- What automation tools would be prefered ? I'm too much a newbie to start coding an avisynth file and doing everything using Virtualdub...

Please, please, can anyone enlighten me ?

Thanks a lot !

[MilesAhead]

You might give StaxRip a try. It has a semi-automatic "quality" mode that's supposed to produce an .avi at 80% quality from a DVD in one pass. The only thing weird about it was I could never get it to process the audio unless I selected MP3 from the Misc submenu in the audio settings. Even so, it produced some pretty good looking .avi files. You have to get accustomed to the UI too. If you can go a bit bigger on file size there's a selection for 1/3 DVD size. That seems to produce very good results if the DVD looked good to start with. I don't have the patience for 2 pass mode so I'm not sure how much better that looks than one pass.

[paglamon]

I would prefer AutoGK. It will automatically detect the best settings given the target filesize. However,a standard DVD into 1 CD will not be of good quality(unless it is some animation/cartoon). Why do you want it in a CD ? Better to go for 3 DVD-Videos into 1 DVD(as XviD avi).

[tigerman8u]

Fair Use Wizard has worked good for me.

[fizzer]

I would prefer AutoGK. It will automatically detect the best settings given the target filesize. However,a standard DVD into 1 CD will not be of good quality(unless it is some animation/cartoon). Why do you want it in a CD ? Better to go for 3 DVD-Videos into 1 DVD(as XviD avi).

I have been converting over and over again, with different products, for comparison, and found out, nomatter what options I choose in AutoGK, that it cuts/eats away movie contents to the left and right, so I don't plan to ever use it again.

I have been trying out FairUseWizard 2.6 to compress to 700MB Xvid 2pass mode, whatever option I chose the encoded AVI looked horrible.

I have been trying avi.NET, and allthough the configuration options are close to non-existent, the output is the best of all of them.

Right now testing StaxRip...

EDIT : First try at using StaxRip, WOOOOW !!! Fantastic tool !

[MilesAhead]

fizzer, was that a good Wow or a bad Wow??

[fizzer]

fizzer, was that a good Wow or a bad Wow??

That was definatelly a GOOD one !

[gonwk]

Hey Miles,

You were not "Kidding" about difficulty of User Interface for STAXRIP ... I have never been able to use the darn thing ... so ...

I just tried it again ... now I remember why I "DISLIKE" this program ... I basically do NOT like any program that takes CONTROL of your computer and wants to download Crap on your system ... why can't it be self-contained program that I personally can update the "Components" that uses ...

The darn program does not even have a "STOP" or "Exit" button ... you have to go thru Windows Task Manger to stop it ...


G!

[NightTran]

I am trying the starip now will see in a few hours

[MilesAhead]

gonwk, the download thing doesn't bother me so much since he seems to need to hard code to particular versions of the helper software. But I go so long between uses it's hard to remember when to do the functions on the right hand side. It's not intuitive. If I used it a lot then that's something else. I'd probably adapt to it.

It would be nice if there was a preset for good quality, no bvops or bframes or whatever they are, but with an adjustable quality setting. Like just slide it up from 80% to 90% or whatever. Seems like that would be simpler. The thing I like is it produces good 16x9 output from widescreen input (when I happen to get everything right that is.)

[gonwk]

Hi NT & Miles,

@ Miles ... it might produce a better Quality ... but it is H.264 conversion ... which to me means I can not PLAY the AVI thru my Philips DivX player since H.264 codec is not supported ... so, basically useless to me.

BTW, Happy Vet's Day to all the VETS!

G!

[MilesAhead]

Hi NT & Miles,

@ Miles ... it might produce a better Quality ... but it is H.264 conversion ... which to me means I can not PLAY the AVI thru my Philips DivX player since H.264 codec is not supported ... so, basically useless to me.

BTW, Happy Vet's Day to all the VETS!

G!

I don't know what setting you are using but I do all my stuff xvid.
It plays on my stand-alone dvd player or I wouldn't do it.

Right now I'm trying out HandBrake. The user interface is much simpler. I'll let you know how it goes.

[gonwk]

With Fizzer's Permission

Hi Miles, as usual you are right ... after reading your post I looked at the set-up and I guess I can do XviD also ... that is my Favorite way.

BTW, "HandBrake" ... isn't that for MAC base only? Or would it work with Windows also?

G!

[MilesAhead]

You can use it on both XP and Vista. I'm running it now. Too soon to tell. I ran it on a split DVD. The first part came out fine. The second one didn't come out so good. Maybe I'll try converting the Vobs to Mpg titles in case the menu stuff is messing it up or something. So far my impression is it's kinda' slow. If it's works dependably that's ok
but on my Vista machine it's only using 50% of the available CPU.. running less than 50 fps. I'll try a few conversions before I decide to chuck it or keep it.

[MilesAhead]

hmmmmmm just crapped out 1/2 way through telling me it can't read the DVD and it's a file on the HD. Uninstalled!!