Some links and guides:

[Duvie]

DVD Backups:

Sites:

www.doom9.net

www.dvdr-digest.com

www.dvdhelp.com

Guides:

http://www.dvdr-digest.com/articles/articles.php?article_id=9&page=2 : How to fit a Dual Layered DVD onto 2 DVD's

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=109346 : How to copy DVD to 1 DVD-r...follow enemywithins post about 4 down. Make sure this is for films below 4.38gb of content. Rule of thunb is about 1hr 40min or less....

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/141024.php#dvd9dvdshrink : several programs used DVD2One, INstant Copy, DVDshrink, etc. Nero works with most of the programs if you write to HDD first in a folder then use Nero...

http://www.mrbass.org/dvdshrink/ : very nice guide and very simple....

Divx encodings:

Sites:

www.doom9.net

Guides:


DVD Authoring

Sites:

www.doom9.net

www.dvdhelp.com

Guides:

http://www.doom9.hu/mpg/dvdauthoring.htm : several different programs used

[Mikki]

Nice thread Duvie!

[ThugsRook]

for all you would be DivX encoders out there ~ there is alot of info right there on the DivX website that can help explain quite a bit about DivX encoding options and their effects.

http://www.divx.com/support/guides/index.php

[pastorjay]

Duvie... Thanks for all the links... I am pretty much a noob at all this Divx stuff, so I have alot of reading to do, and you just provided me with what I need!

Thanks again man!

PJ

[Duvie]

No problem......If others have some more links I will check them out and then add them if I think they have more to offer then the above guides....

Most of the above guides I have personally followed sao I can vouch for their effectiveness....

[ThugsRook]

anyone know of any guides for TMPGenc? (DivX to vcd and dvd to vcd)

i mean besides the ones already listed...

TIA

[oldfart]

I've always used the ones on vcdhelp.com. I'll tell you one thing right off the bat. VCD quality sux. Use SVCD with 2 pass VBR for much better quality.

DivX to SVCD

[ThugsRook]

TMPEGenc has turned out to be a sweetheart of a program :-)
very simple to use and doesnt take long compared to divx.

its nice to finally watch all of my DivX stuff on my TV

[oldfart]

I like it a lot. I made ~ 25 SVCDs from 8mm home movies. Now that I have a DVD-R and a DV camcorder, I record to DVD which is pretty sweet.

What setup did you wind up using? VCD or SVCD? Did you use VBR or CBR? CQ or 2 pass? etc??

[ThugsRook]

hehe ~ i dont think you understand just how much DivX i have
ill be converting to VCD for the next 2 months!

so far ive been doing all my "TV shows"....
they arent SVCD resolution so ive been making them into simple CBR VCDs.

[oldfart]

VCD is A LOT faster and simpler to do than SVCD. I'm totally clueless on DivX and have no idea what the res and bitrate are. Could a DivX source clip benefit from the higher bitrate of SVCD?

VCD = 352 x 240
1150 Kb/s MPEG1 CBR

SVCD = 480 x 480
2500 KB/sec MPEG2 CBR or VBR

I find that the lower res of VCD gives you that "soft focus" look, but the big difference is the higher bitrate of the SVCD. It makes it look much better. You dont have the compression artifacts that VCD has.

There is also CVD which is in between. It uses the lower 352 x 240 res of VCD with the higher 2500 bitrate MPEG2 of SVCD. I've never tried it, but from what I read, you get great results with this method.

What is the resolution, and bitrate of the DivX video?

[ThugsRook]

DivX could easily be just as good as a DVD but in a slightly smaller res.
there arent really any standard limitations on DivX.

DivX resolutions are whatever you want them to be.
i used 640x 272 or 344 depending on the movies original ratio.

DivX bitrate is also whatever you want it to be ~ in CBR or VBR with mpass formats.
i used roughly a 2000-3000kbps 2-pass with all the bells a whistles on for best quality.


but besides movies i also have a ton of captured TV divx stuff too.
that stuff was originally encoded for easy vcd conversions and was already in the smaller res. no point in SVCDing that stuff.

my bigger res stuff will get SVCDed, but not if its gonna take 3 cds to get there.

the quality isnt really THAT much of an issue for me~
on computer it WAS an issue, but now on TV it looks much better anyways :-)

my priorities have changed.

the neat thing i never realized about s/vcds is that they can overburn a cd ~ hehe.

[oldfart]

Cool stuff eh? I spent A LOT OF TIME learning the ins and outs of (S)VCD when I made all those disks. Lots of trial and error before I found the ideal setup. My PC was crunching SVCDs pretty much 24 x 7 for a month.

Yeah its cool that you can actually get ~ 800 Meg on a 700 Meg disk because of the mode 2 format.

I was able to squeeze 1 Hr of very good quality SVCD video on a disc with my settings. To do that, I used a 96K audio bitrate to increase the video bitrate. The source audio from the 8mm camcorder was not great anyway, so nothing was lost. To get more than 1 Hr of SVCD video on a disc, you have to give up quite a bit of quality.

I have to say, now with the DVD-R, it's so easy. 1 hr of 720 x 480 video at max (8000)! bitrate fits on a disk. No more crunching/VBR to try and squeeze it onto a CDR disk.

[ThugsRook]

im sure my DivX experience will serve me well with SVCDs

me and Duvie spent a good 2 months trying to squeeze ever last bit of quality out of DivX ~ and im pretty sure we succeeded :-)

DivX can be DVD quality IF youre willing to use 3 cds.
limiting myself to 2 cds was the challenge
with dvd-r you are literally DivX unlimited for perfect DVD quality, but it can only be viewed on a computer

im just glad to get all this stuff off my comp and on my TV! :-)
(of course i could always view the s/vcd in my comp too if i wanted)

[oldfart]

I never had any interest in watching video on my PC. I guess thats why I never got into the whole DivX thing.

Kind of the same idea though. I spent a lot of time finding the best tweaks to get the best possible quality 1 Hr of video on an SVCD. It was worth it in the end. Once I had the setup figured out, it was easy to convert the 8mm movies to SVCD.

Another thing I ran into is burn speed made a big difference. If I burned at a higher speed, the SVCD would stutter in my home DVD player. If I burned @ 4X (my minimum burn speed), the problem went away.