Help the new guy with PC video conversion stuff

[ChiSoxFan]

I always see these H.264, AVIVO, DIVX, and PureVideo terms being bandied about but am really in the dark as to what this stuff all really does and how it compares to other video technologies. Here's my goal...

1. Buy a DVD
2. Encode DVD using my PC to a good quality, good size media file (500MB-2GB each?)
3. Save files on my NAS device
4. Be able to play files on my laptops while travelling, and through my PC to either my 32" or 52" HDTV's.

What's the best/easiest way to get started doing this sort of a project? What would PureVideo and h.264 do for me with this and how would it compare to just using the bundle from divx.com? Am I completely off base? Set me straight here. Thanks.

 

[gsellis]

PureVideo gives you hardware acceleration of decompression. ATI has it too. H.264 is a compression format that is geared for High-Definition video. WMV-HD and DivX also can support it. But DVD, is just standard definition. The MPEG2 format is bigger and does not keep as much information at the same bitrates. So, if you took a DVD and converted to DivX, the result would be a similar quality file that is smaller.

 

[pctwo]

for your lappy, look into h264. I know of Nero, but I'm suree there are many choices.

for your PC, one option is to just buy lots of disks and use DVD decrypter to rip the whole DVD to disk. This is especially good if you have a HDTV b/c you lose no quality that way.

 

[ChiSoxFan]

Originally posted by: gsellis
PureVideo gives you hardware acceleration of decompression. ATI has it too. H.264 is a compression format that is geared for High-Definition video. WMV-HD and DivX also can support it. But DVD, is just standard definition. The MPEG2 format is bigger and does not keep as much information at the same bitrates. So, if you took a DVD and converted to DivX, the result would be a similar quality file that is smaller.

So what do you get when you purchase PureVideo from Nvidia as opposed to the chargeable DIVX bundle? Do they do the same thing? Any reason to buy PureVideo?

 

[IceBreakerG]

Purevideo would be for playback only, so it would not help you if your goal is to compress the files. DivX is a good way to go but you don't need to buy it to use the codec for compression. Just download the standard DivX codec and you're good to go (I use VirtualDub-MPEG for encoding purposes). As far as h.264, i'm really unsure here myself. I'm looking for more information on it too, I just know that it has better compression/quality than DivX does.

 

[b0mbrman]

Originally posted by: pctwo
for your lappy, look into h264. I know of Nero, but I'm suree there are many choices.

Wait, which Nero?

(sorry for the newbie question)