What codec should I use?

[drfsupercenter]

I just encoded the Star Wars Gangsta Rap to an AVI, using Ulead. It is uncompressed - about 3GB. In VirtualDub, I used MS-MP4 and it was HORRIBLE quality. XviD leaves really grainy video and that awful DivX logo. What codec should I use to get the video less than 20 MB? (Audio isn't a problem, I can always do MP3 audio, not that big.)

[anonymez]

i think somebody's told you at least once, there is no logo on the actual video-- its just there because divx decodes the video & you've left the option to display it enabled. turn it of in start-->program files-->divx-->decoder configuration-->toolbar-->"show watermark", the logo won't show up anymore. or better yet, just install ffdshow

encode to xvid, get latest stable build (1.1) from http://www.koepi.org

use the settings outlined in this post http://forum.digital-digest.com/show...702#post343702

use the built-in bitrate calculator to get it to 20mb, and make sure the resolution is decent for the bitrate

[drfsupercenter]

Thanks, and no I was not told that before. I will try that out and see what happens. As far as FFDSHOW, I didn't install it because I had all the codecs necessary to play the files on my hard drive, and I do not encode much, this is one of the few times that I am. (Normally I use WMV and Ulead takes care of that)

[drfsupercenter]

Error: Statsfile not found
That's what I get

[anonymez]

make sure that in the first & second pass the directory to the stats file is the same. eg c:\pass.stats

click the 'more' button next to 'encoding type' to pick the directory.

[drfsupercenter]

Hmmm... I will try it later.

[celtic_druid]

Default is to save to the root of the drive. Sounds like maybe you are trying to run the 2nd pass without running the 1st first.

[drfsupercenter]

Yes. I said 2-pass (pass 2). Why, do I need to do 1 pass than do it again?

[anonymez]

i assumed you knew what 2-pass encoding is

single-pass encoding is where the video is encoded immediately, at a constant bitrate. the quality sucks, unless your bitrate is very high

2-pass encoding (vbr) is much better. the first pass just analyzes the video, much like dvdshrink's deep analysis. vdub will not output any video, just a STATS file which will be used in the second pass. the second pass reads the stats file, and tells vdub/xvid where to apply higher bitrate. the second pass outputs the video.

do the first pass, then second pass. do not change any xvid codec settings between passes.

[celtic_druid]

You want to know why 2 pass requires 2 passes?

Actually 1 pass using a fixed quant will give you perfect quality given a suitably low quant. No filesize prediction though. When targeting a certain size though, 2 pass is the way to go.

There are some settings you can change, like VHQ = 1 for the 1st pass and VHQ = 4 for the second.

[drfsupercenter]

way too complicated, is there a wizard for this?

[anonymez]

see the dvd-->xvid guides at http://www.divx-digest.com . http://www.doom9.org also has an xvid setup guide i believe

[drfsupercenter]

If only there were a one-click app like Auto Gordian Knot for VDub

[celtic_druid]

Pretty sure that AutoGK uses VirtualDubMod for encoding. So AutoGK is a one-click app like AutoGK for VDub.

[drfsupercenter]

Does it work?

Would it be as good as if I did it manually?