My first question is about sound. I followed this guide: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/gordian_knot_ac3.cfm The sound is a lot quieter than expected. The movie I copied sounds normal, and the .VOB files play back at a normal sounding volume. The DivX version plays significantly quieter, requiring me to turn all my volumes to the max, which makes things like IM chimes overly loud. I used the first AC3 track, which is a 6-channel dolby digital track. My next questions are about quality. I'm wondering how high the bitrate or other options need to be to get the best quality I can from the DVD. The settings I used for my first run of this was a file size of 1,276MB, which seems really large. The audio track is 275MB and 6MB overhead, with no second audio track or files added. That allowed a resolution of 704x384. (This seems a little weird, because it's not quite 16:9). Anyway, that gave 0.250 bits/(pixel*frame) which is what it seemed I would need. The compressibility test was 53.8%. Anyway, is this roughly the quality I would want if I were to watch this video from and xbox, with component video cables and a HDTV? And about what would they need to be to just watch the video at its' best quality through S-Video cable on an SDTV? It seems if I make the resolution only 448x240, that allows for 0.233 bits/(pixel*frame) and 50.2% for the test, which is much better in the sense of stroage with the file totalling only 650MB... almost half of the other size. EDIT: I doing this in the DivX5 codec. Thanks for all help!
I read your post, and generally you seem to want to be able to convert DVD to Xvid? guardian knot is an excellent program but the tutorial you mentioned uses the advanced version where you have to do lots of things yourself. this is great for custom creation but simple direct methods exist (not the one click applications!) in the form of something called Auto GK, its the less complex version but produces very good results, personally I'd always recomend you use that with its stock settings, then as you get more understanding of the differences you can tweek it and eventually move onto GK if you have the need to produce something complex. anyway you can find a simple tutorial on where to get auto GK from ... http://www.rita.lt/guides/AutoGK_DVDtoAVI.htm Auto GK is produced by the same people as Guardian knot and is free to download. Xbox running HDTV needs good quality! depending on the size of the screen. I personally use Xvid to convert my files to store on my network so they can play from all xboxes and pc's in the house. if your wanting to use digital surround (DTS, or dolby AC3 6 chanel) then the size wants to be around 900-1.2 gb depending on the movie of course! its very difficult (which I guess is why you are confused) to determine quality since there are so many variables (like screen size, signal (rgb, component, etc)) basically, first decision is which is most important, video playback or file size, second what sound quality do you want, if you dont have surround then dont bother with 6 chanel and convert it to mpeg layer 2 audio which is much smaller and allows more bandwidth forthe movie quality. I personally run all encodes through Auto GK and run 720 min width resolution this gives me near dvd quality (because its dvd width resolution) but the height resloution is not dvd (576) unless you select 100%. Selecting 100% quality will result in full resolution (720 x 576) but will make the file big (smaller than the orriginal Vob files though usually). or in Auto GK you can set the output file size. as a thumb rule, if its a top movie I love I run it at full quality and store the bigger file (which is smaller than keeping the vobs). if its an ok movie I set the output size to 900 or 1gb with digital 6 channel sound included which gives good quality all round. if its a movie that is poor quality to begin with I set it to 700mb this is more important to me cos my screen in 60" projection so low resolution movies running HDTV show up badly if your screen is smaller and you dont have digital surround then you can make top quality lower resolution movies much smaller. my personal recomendation to you. get auto GK, create one movie with a setting of stereo mpeg layer 2 audio and fixed size of 600mb, add it to the tasks, then create the same movie with 100% quality (only including one digital sound), and add it to task then create the same movie again, set its width to minimum 720 then run a size of 1gb (including the digital sound track). start these 3 batches going and you will end up with the same movie 3 times, take a look at the file sizes (will be 600, 700 and about 2gb) and compare the quality and you will then know what settings best suit your setup. if your running a small screen you will easy be able to get away with less than 1gb by dropping the resolution and if your running non digital surround (analog) then stripping this out will give you better picture quality at the same file size or lower file size. either way your gonna progress much faster with the less confusing options in Auto GK hope this helps!
one more thing to add... encoding in DivX and Xvid the size and quality is controlled by the source movie, some movies have that grainy effect (like saving private ryan) which results in the output being bigger as the codec detects the grain as motion which requires bandwidth to encode. this is always something to consider especially when testing the encoding application and getting used to the settings, personally I'd recomend you use a clean dvd thats fairly straight forward (different rules apply to black and white and cartoon also) cheers nico
if you awnt to make a 1 cd encode of course you'll compromise video quality. try h264/x264 going lower res for hdtv will make it looks more crappy. i think 2 cd encodes are the best choice as for audio. if you don't have surrround speakers, it will sound lower. try downmix to stereo. or if its really low. normalize it when playback. gain, whatever
