DivX / compression tutorial

[pretzelb]

Anyone seen a good review or article on DivX and/or video compression (either the technology or specific products)? With all the talk of the DivX recompression going to plug-in support for BeyondTV I'm developing more of an interest. I'm also running low on disk space and not so hard core about my videos being full size anymore.

What'd I'd really like is something that is simple enough that total non-techincal person could understand. I get enough to know that I don't want to delve too deep into it. Seems like most articles, websites, and even products assume you're a audio/video pro already.

[ticklemeozmo]

ATTENTION CAYARS:

If you could post your settings here, we would all be grateful and sing you praiseS..

[Cayars]

You do realize I'm not doing DivX compression at the moment from inside of BTV? I'm doing this externally using Dr. DivX on multiple computers. If this is of interest, I can re-post (already here somewhere) the info.

Carlo

[pretzelb]

If the information can be applied to better my general understanding I'd be interested.

I just tried to play with the settings for SS in BTV and immediately hit a wall. I think the bit rate is a text box where you just enter a number. I went back and forth looking at the other settings but I really had no idea what number to put in. I guess I'm just a caveman and I need a slider where I can visually see the min and max settings. I also bumped my head against the compression formations like WM7, WM8, WM9, MPG4. I wasn't sure which to pick and why. The only thing I am starting to learn is that I wanted 720x480 because my DVD authoring program says that 720x480 is one of the required formats. Like I said, I'm a caveman when it comes to this stuff.

[marc.aronson]

I recompress to WMV and am very happy with the results. I created a custom quality with the following settings:

Type is Windows Media

Audio

Compression format: WMA 9
Parameters: 64KBS, 44khz, stereo CBR

Video

Compression format: Windows Media Video V7
Frames per second: 29.970
Dimenson (pixels): Custom, 720 x 480
Video Bitrate 1300000
Enable resize on showsqueeze: Not checked
Two pass encoding: Disabled

Advanced mode

Deinterlace: Enabled
Inverse Telecine: Disabled

My only other commnet is that best results happen if the dimensions match those of your original recording. So if you're original record is 640x480, specify 640x480 in the dimensions field. Results look great and they will play over an 802.11b wireless network.

[wayner]

Originally posted by pretzelb
If the information can be applied to better my general understanding I'd be interested.

I just tried to play with the settings for SS in BTV and immediately hit a wall. I think the bit rate is a text box where you just enter a number. I went back and forth looking at the other settings but I really had no idea what number to put in. I guess I'm just a caveman and I need a slider where I can visually see the min and max settings. I also bumped my head against the compression formations like WM7, WM8, WM9, MPG4. I wasn't sure which to pick and why. The only thing I am starting to learn is that I wanted 720x480 because my DVD authoring program says that 720x480 is one of the required formats. Like I said, I'm a caveman when it comes to this stuff.

If you want to eventually burn to DVD then you will usually want to keep the files in MPG format. If you are just burning to DVD to archive and you don't want to play these files in a stand-alone DVD player (i.e. not a computer) then you can convert to one of the MPEG4 variants (this includes WMV, DixV,XviD, QT) that results in the same quality but much smaller file sizes.

There are also some DVD players coming out that play DivX files and there is talk that WMV9 will be added to the DVD standard so in the future there will be less need to keep files in MPEG-2.