Divx better than wm8? Compressing questions...

[duragezic]

I'm doing some skateboarding videos and will be doing a snowboarding one if it ever snows (damn global warming or something ) and everyone always says divx but I find wm8 to be better. It's smaller and as good as quality IMO. I don't like how it has to buffer and skipping around isn't very fun but otherwise it seems pretty good. I use the divx 3.11 alpha codec because before with divx 4, if I skipped ahead it'd play in fast forward for a couple seconds then start playing. Perhaps it was skipping ahead till it hit a keyframe, while in divx 3 you just went to that keyframe (so although its in FF, you can at least see it) but regardless, that bugged the hell outta me. Now when I tried divx 4 again a few days ago, my computer freezes within a couple minutes of playing any divx video so enough with that!

Is there any better ways or settings so I can get a smaller sized divx file? Right now I edit the video in premiere, export it to max quality fast motion divx, and then convert it to whatever bandwidth WM8 file I want. Premiere seems kinda limited in that I can't directly export to wm8 (so I'm losing quality going from compressed to divx to more compressed wm8), there is no way to export with mp3 audio (have to do that in wm8 encoder). So providing I did want to use divx, what would be the best way to do it from Premiere? Because I'd definitely want to use mp3 else it makes the file even bigger. Also, is NanDubSBC the way to go for divx encoding? I can't find any good just converting guides. EVERYTHING is dvd ripping and vcd crap!

I'm basically looking for anyway to export and/or convert good looking skate clips using divx or wm8 (whichever is better).

 

[NicColt]

>I'm basically looking for anyway to export and/or convert good looking skate clips using divx or wm8 (whichever is better).

are you telling me that Premiere can't export directly to WMV ?

I agree that WMV is better than divx at low bitrates, but with the upcoming dvd-rw's WMV or Divx at 2 or 3Mbit/s won't matter much. But since we are still in the land of the tiny we need to use a lower bitrate.

I do a fair number of encoding or rendering but I still don't understand your question, what is it exactly.

 

[CQuinn]

I think I have seen that fast forward effect on divx 3.x files as well, but that
might be becuase I'm using 4.11 to read the files. I think you are right about
it being a keyframe issue. I re-encode stuff to have a keyframe every second
(every 30 frames) and I don't see that problem skipping on those files.
(It does make the file a little bigger, but not enough to bother me)

Which version of DivX 4 were you using? you might need an uninstall and
update to 4.11?

I Don't think exporting to fast motion divx is what you want,
low motion divx is designed to retain better quality.

2. If you have HD space to spare, you can export to uncompressed or use a lossless
codec like huffyuv. It makes the temp file a lot larger, but gives you all
the quality you can get before putting it thru the WM encoder.

3. But probably the best way to do what you want is to set up Premiere as
a frame server to the app that you use to encode the WM8.
See http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/avisynth-premiere.html
for a plug-in and instructions to help with that.

Nandub is considered one of the best for encoding, but the version I just
got does not seem to support DivX 4.11 as of yet, only DivX 3.x.

 

[duragezic]

When I tried 4.11 I uninstalled 3.11 and then installed 4.11 and it froze. Tried reinstalling it again, didn't work so theres two strikes for divx 4 and I've had enough!

NicColt: Well I didn't exactly have one question but CQuinn pretty much summed up and answered what I wanted to know.

I exported to fast motion because it was skateboarding and that's always moving but even then I would be better off with low motion?

I'll try the huffyuv thing but I only have 3gb free and no money for a new 60 gigger.

Yes NicColt, AFAIK, Premiere won't export to WMV directly, but I'll try that frame server thing soon.

Actually now that I think of it, I was capturing footage at 4.20mbps bit rate mpeg1 in MMC, editing it, exporting the video from premiere to max quality fast motion, THEN converting it to wm8 and to mp3/wm8 audio. Bet I lost a good amount of quality with all that hehe.

 

[duragezic]

Oh hah I went to test the avisynth thing and I notice a export to WMV plugin there in Premiere. Damn dunno why I didn't notice it before.