VirtualDubMod Quality issue with Xvid

[Brittanysama]

Okay I am using virtualDubMod version 1.5.10.2 and when ever I put a vid with very good quality through the compression of Xvid it comes out so bad that the text is unreadable.

I am using these filters.
brightness and contrast
deinterlace
temporal smoother(4)

This happens for every vid I put through Virtaldub. Should I try something other then Xvid? I want to compress the file a bit since it's BIG.

[AaronAMV]

Go to configure in the XviD window, and make sure that the bar is set to 1, as that's the best settings.

[SenTrix]

Go to configure in the XviD window, and make sure that the bar is set to 1, as that's the best settings.

Don't listen to Aaron.

Should I try something other then Xvid?

Use an .mp4 container using Zarxgui.

[post-it]

the settings in Xvid are Mpeg-2 setting; use higher bit rates when encoding!

[Scintilla]

Oh god. I just hope somebody out there is deriving some amusement from this thread.

First, @post-it:

1) "CBR" stands for "Chaotic Bad Raptor" "Constant Bit Rate". Get it right.

2) If the bitrate is too low with ANY lossy codec, it'll look like garbage. This is hardly specific to XviD.

3) I'd love to know how constant bit rate works "better" than constant quantizer or 2-pass VBR. Especially for videos that contain both really low-motion scenes and really high-motion ones.


@Brittanysama: if you really want as close to "what you see is what you get" as is possible with XviD, do a "Twopass - 1st pass" run with "Full quality first pass" checked, "Discard first pass" unchecked, and all minimum quantizers set to 2. (You could even do 1, but all reports are that that makes much bigger files without looking noticeably different.)
Actually, come to think of it, single pass with "Target quantizer" set to 1 (which is what I think AaronAMV was suggesting, but he just wasn't very clear about it) might also work, but I've never tried it.

Also, it never hurts to so that we can tell you if you have a problem there.

@Sentrix: using an .MP4 container doesn't preclude using XviD; it would have been more accurate to say "use x264 using Zarxgui". (Though using Zarxrax's GUI might, seeing as how it's got "x264" in the name, but I've never seen it, so I don't know.)

[post-it]

I have no objections to MP4, I use it myself however -- the settings are the KEY to any codec.

when it comes to encoding .. the video cleaning is most important prep work ( next to editing. )
therefore follow the FAQ's and focus on Cleaning your AMV's before you make them into AVI, MP4
VOB and/or whatever container you end-up using; otherwise your AMV "will-be too big to upload!"

As for VBR Video, a more useless function has never been developed in the history of mankind!

[LivingFlame]

As for VBR Video, a more useless function has never been developed in the history of mankind!

Because God forbid that a low-motion sequence have a lower bitrate than a high-motion sequence, therefore lowering the file size.

[post-it]

As for VBR Video, a more useless function has never been developed in the history of mankind!

Because God forbid that a low-motion sequence have a lower bitrate than a high-motion sequence, therefore lowering the file size.

Mpeg standards do allow for such things = true