Are Xvid/Divx files like Mp3s in that once the files has been encoded some quality is lost forever. I ask because I downloaded the Simpsons Season 10 and they were encoded in Divx3 Low Motion and the quality is bad. I wonder if I could do anything to make them better. Thanks.
My opinion is that the quality can never increase, it can only decrease. If someone is able to suggest us sume trick, he's welcome.
Think currently the DVD release for the simpsons is only upto season 9, so you would probably be looking at 10 year old TV caps. So you have the quality drop from re-encoding, plus the fact that the source probably wasn't the best quality to begin with. But yes, like mp3 DivX/Xvid are lossy compressors.
Lossy-ie-part of the originial data is lost in converting to new format, xvid/divx, h.264, etc. So the file can never be converted back to the originial quality-but then you already knew that-didn't you? But for what it's worth I've experimented with a lot of different conversion programs and the one that I like the best is ConvertXtoDVD.