Xvid settings...some help would be very much appreciated.

RuggieBear

i've a video tape with 110minutes of footage that i want to tranfer over to a CD (700mb). Now i've tranfered onto my hard drive in XVID but the only way i can get it in reasonably good quality is to keep it at about 1.75GB.

Are there any tips or tricks i could use to keep it decent quality but still reduce it right down.

Is it possible to reencode the avi files or should i try to reincode from the vcr again while capturing it.

Here are the setting i used:

vishal

use 2 pass mode with vhq set to 4, turn on qpel and beframes to 2.

Mutant_Fruit

turn on trellis quant aswell.

RuggieBear

Thanks a million. I'll run off and experiment.

Mutant_Fruit

also try the latest beta: http://www.koepi.org/XviD-1.1.0-Beta2-04042005.exe. Its considared "stable enough" and does have quality improvements as compared to 1.0.2.

RuggieBear

thing is, i find dvd's a piece of cake as you can use dvd shrink and lots of other mainly automated tools...

coz it's a vcr tape i'm trying to capture thru a tv card, i'm a bit thrown.

Mutant_Fruit

Your best bet is to do a nice (very) high quality rip from your VCR to MPEG2. Try for at least 6000kbps, but the more the better.

Then, reencode that in your app of choice (DVD2AVI and Gordianknot could handle that) to XviD. Theres guides on www.Doom9.net for doing that kinda thing.

RuggieBear

been a while since i used Gordianknot....believe it has spyware with it now.....

I'll try ripping very high quality and then reencoding that.....think i have a 100gigs free so that should be able to hold all that.....

hostyle

I usually find that VCR rips are very grainy or pixelly and thus need a lot more data per frame to encode than they should. Try running a few filters via virtualdub or avisynth to reduce this and make it more compressible. doom9.org is your friend.

vibe666

what resolution are you capturing at?

768 x 576 (PAL TV resolution) should give you decent enough quality as long as the input is okay.

if you're only capturing at half that (a common setting for TV capture) it will look a bit dodgy.

you can capture a high bitrate mpeg (if your TV card supports it) then great, otherwise go for a lossless codec like mjpeg or similar, then use virtualdub to re-encode to xvid and maybe think about reducing the resolution while you're there (back down to 384 x 288), and cropping any black bars at the top/bottom etc. maybe checking contrast and brightness levels etc while you're there.

also think about your audio, what format/bitrate do you have on that? 128kbps (lame) mp3 will capture the vhs quality (vhs isn't exactly great anyways) at a decent filesize. maybe even think about downmixing to mono to save space, unless you really need the stereo soundtrack.

RuggieBear

aye...i know about Doom9. Tbh, i never realised there was a bit on tv capture

RuggieBear

vibe666 wrote:

what resolution are you capturing at?

768 x 576 (PAL TV resolution) should give you decent enough quality as long as the input is okay.

if you're only capturing at half that (a common setting for TV capture) it will look a bit dodgy.

you can capture a high bitrate mpeg (if your TV card supports it) then great, otherwise go for a lossless codec like mjpeg or similar, then use virtualdub to re-encode to xvid and maybe think about reducing the resolution while you're there (back down to 384 x 288), and cropping any black bars at the top/bottom etc. maybe checking contrast and brightness levels etc while you're there.

also think about your audio, what format/bitrate do you have on that? 128kbps (lame) mp3 will capture the vhs quality (vhs isn't exactly great anyways) at a decent filesize. maybe even think about downmixing to mono to save space, unless you really need the stereo soundtrack.

Yeah i've reduced the audio down to 22k 8bit mono...which is fine. i've captured at both 768x576 and at half that and both look ok...but both are still well over a gig

Chalk

why not use mp3 audio instead?
i think thats what was making my xvid stuff so big before.

audio was saved as a wav.
use vdub to extract the wav audio,
then reencode to 128kbps mp3,
remux and your away

/.edit
ahh someone already mentione it,
but at least im trying

vibe666

generally I'd be capturing it at full res with wav audio and mjpeg video (no hardware mpeg on my capture card) to an intermediate AVI, which would be a VERY big file and then re-encode to half res. with divx/xvid with MP3 audio at a bitrate that will give you the quality and or size you need.

you need to keep your digital source as highQ as possible when you're compressing.

RuggieBear

vibe666 wrote:

generally I'd be capturing it at full res with wav audio and mjpeg video (no hardware mpeg on my capture card) to an intermediate AVI, which would be a VERY big file and then re-encode to half res. with divx/xvid with MP3 audio at a bitrate that will give you the quality and or size you need.

you need to keep your digital source as highQ as possible when you're compressing.

I've just captured the first 55mins using Huffyuv with cd quality sound following the instructions from Doom9.....it's 30GB...and that's only the first half

Mutant_Fruit

Ah, huffy. So lossless... so big. That should compress down to less than 500megs easily enough, at excellant (enough) quality.

RuggieBear

grand got the whole bloody thing (110mins) down to 703meg....alright quality as long as not fullscreened

vibe666

there ye go then.

RuggieBear

thanks a million one and all....now if you could help my other rugby brethren...Nukem and powerhousedan....

Mutant_Fruit

RuggieBear wrote:

now if you could help my other rugby brethren...

RUGBY! Thats it! I withdraw ALL my advice! I take it all back i tell you!

*scoffs* Rugby! Ptsch!

RuggieBear

emmm....i meant....naked women.... mud wrestling...yes...naked women mud wrestling... that's what i meant