Simple DiVX?

RWB

Anyone use this program? I just can't stand doing crazy things to get a DVD down a size or two so I tried finding a single program to do it all, besides using DVD Decrypter.

I can't bring my collection of DVD's with me to work to watch, plus my lappy only has a single DVD Drive, which I use for other things while trying to watch a movie. So I got a bigger HDD so I can try storing the DVD's.

Right now I am using this program to make an XViD of an anime, I basically just changed some minor settings, hopefully it comes out ok, but I dunno when it'll finish, as far as I can tell it's 1/4th done after 20 minutes or so, haven't been counting.

Curious if anyone else uses this program though... any suggestions? It's GUI based for setting it up, but has a command prompt telling me what it's doing, looks like it automatically skips a bunch of stuffand dupped frames, hopefully it's not skipping anything important :P

If no one has used it I guess I'll report back my findings of this nifty program(if it turns out to be nifty). I don't want to run 4 or 5 different programs to make my DVD's smaller lol.

Thrax

http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=267

Read page 1 through page 6. Easy.

RWB

Did 4 episodes of my Anime, the first crashed, the second just took forever. But the file is 672MB in size, not too bad for 1h 39m 13s

I think anime is easier to encode though, will give your way at try and see what kind of difference it makes.

RWB

hrm AutoGK is nice... doesn't use any processing power at all except at the beginning :P

It's kinda odd, I have it set to rip and it starts but then goes to nothing, says it is analyzing the source.

RWB

OK nm it started working :P

Thrax

It's the easiest program there is. ~3 hours for 1.5 hours of footage, and the product is nice. Choose stereo MP3 to give more quality to the video, and maybe VBR 128-192 kbps.

RWB

Well I am already in my second pass of the encoding process, I left the audio on default like what I saw in the instructions. I'll probably change some settings andsee how it comesout over night.

RWB

OK finally done... horrible sound. The video ain't too bad, but I think for the size I'll stick with SimpleDIVX... quality with that one was a bit better visually and alot better audibly. :P

Gonna have to try alot more settings though, sucks this takes so long arg.

RWB

Just noticed AutoGK resized my file to 432x320, at 23FPS and 108kbps on XVID costs me 701MB of space, SimpleDiVX kept the size at 720x480, at 23FPS, 115kbps and also XVID but the size is only 672.

As mentioned, SimpleDIVX looks and sounds much better as well...

Thatis wierd, what did I do wrong? Or maybe right? Both are 1h40m long.

Thrax

Use these settings:
Custom Size: 1300mb (For 100 minutes of footage, you need to be using 2 "CDs" worth of space or it's going to look bad -- AutoGK goes for quality first, which is why it reduced the dimensions of your movie so much)
VBR MP3: 192kbps

RWB

Will do, gonna try those settings vs. some others I am working with on Simple DiVX, gonna have encoded this disk 5 or 6 times by tomorrow :P

RWB

I am getting REALLY close to some excellent settings for Simple DiVX, but I cant remember what settings I had for the first DVD, this last one is 608MB for almost 2 hours of DVD, the contrast and colors look great, but there is a slightly noticable compression effect, but stil great, however it still looks interlaced, I dont know what the setting was that I had on the first try that allowed it to look so great. I have it set to DE-INTERLACE but it doesn't seem to do the trick.

RWB

Working on the 6th time for the same file... the 5th one has GREAT contrast and color, but somewhat more compressed than the first which looks pretty good and is 50MB smaller or so. This 6th one I am going for a file size of just under a gig, where the rest are 600 to 800MB in size. I think this one will look fantastic as it's essentially the same settings as the 5th but less compressed. I just want it to be less than a gig and look great, 1000MB+ is not worth it.

RWB

This time it came out as near exact compression quality as the first, which is nice, not near DVD as I would consider it so I was upset about the time waisted, but it's only 780MB instead of the expected 900-1000MB size. Still it's better than the first due to it having much better contrast and colors.

RWB

OK I think I have pretty much gotten it finished.... the seventh time is now at 996MB in size, I have waited to compair these to the DVD version while I have been testing settings out and I have a compairison... here is a quick overview on the last two encoded ones vs the DVD.

The sixth time the DVD came out at 780MB, the quality was fair(and remember I have pretty much forgotten how good the DVD looked by now). Quality was fair in that the comrpession looked good with few artifacts.

Tis latest and seventh is 996MB, looks great, still some compression artifacts, but that is unavoidable.

I finally opened up the DVD and played it next to the seventh. I see that I have been encoding it in a different aspect ratio, but I never noticed... other then that the compressed video was actually much more vibrant in color and had better contrast that the original dvd! I was shocked. At a size 4 to 5 times smaller than the original DVD there are slightly noticable compression artifacts than the original. But less than I had anticipated.

Overall, this was an excellent learning experience... now I think I'll move onto AutoGK and do the same to see if it does a better job. But I would definitly say SimpleDiVX is actually easier than AutoGK. The only downside is that the size I put in for the end result in file size is not vey accurate, on this last job I set it to something like 1166MB, but is always less than what you want it to be, which is good I guess. Better than being bigger

ryko

keep it up RWB, i am interested in how things work for you since i have been dealing with the same problem for some time.

i have always wanted a simple one click DVD to divx/xvid app. something that can do batch processing and that i could just "set and forget". simple DiVX looks pretty good, and i think i am going to give it a try.

Thrax's guide is great but just way too complicated to do for an entire DVD collection. It would take months to do that method for every DVD i own.

RWB

I did use one of the quantaization matrices he gave... but I am questioning whether or not SimpleDiVX even takes those settings or not. You know how you go into the XViD Encoder Config and manually change up the settings... I am not sure if it uses those. I'd imagine so, but just not sure.