Best File Compression Format

[sterlicious]

Which file format has the best qualityize ratio? I don't necessarily need the smallest file size if the quality is going to completely suck. Right now I am using the xvid conversion and the quality leaves something to be desired. The file size is great! But I don't want to have a nearly unlimited storage space at the expense of feeling like I am watching a show that looks to be at 300x200 resolution.

Thanks in advance.

[Deusxmachina]

h.264 in either an mkv or mp4 container with AAC audio is the "best." There's little reason to use anything besides xvid or h.264 unless it's for a specific player like a DVD or Zune. If you have a lower-end PC, you may not like the encoding times or playback of h.264. It takes a bit of juice. Xvid encodes probably three times faster for me.

The built-in xvid conversion is great at being fast but quality suffers for that speed. You can go into the Config.xml file and change the line for it. I can't think of the specifics offhand, but a quick search should bring up threads. Just need to change it from doing fixed bitrate to Constant (fixed) Quality. Fixed bitrate is only good if someone wants speed and/or has lots of room.

To me, CQ of 6 looks great and is a solid size, while 7 introduces a few more artifacts but still looks great even on a football game and is noticeably smaller, like 350mb instead of 400mb for a 30-minute show. Just take a short sample clip and play around with the quality settings to see what you like.

Also, changing the mp3 audio in that line to, say, 160 is a good compromise. 192 is CD quality to most people, while 128 is a good size but can sound a little hollow sometimes. I think few people would say 128 mp3 sounds bad, it's just not great.

This is the easiest way to do conversions without installing Stattik's Mencoder script. Then again, if you spend time setting that up, you won't have to manually touch much afterwords. Stattik's will do h.264. ...just not on my machine because it's haunted.

Skiptool might also work with the built-in transcoder and that gives you an easy way to do batch converts, or it may only work with Stattik's script. I forget.

And then there are plenty of tools to do things outside of GBPVR. These are just the internal ways.

edit: actually, the easiest way to do conversions is to change that config line for the quality and then click the box in gbpvr to have it convert ALL recordings every night. But the possible drawback to that is, um, that it converts ALL recordings.

[Bathman]

I have always used Auto Gordon Knot for Xvid. However I am thinking of making the switch to h.264 and AAC auido.

I would also like the finished product to take advantage of my ATI 2400 on board hardware decoding. Could anyone recommend a simple click and forget application that I could use?

[rbelisle]

Just to clarify, you can't use xVid with the MVP can you? I think I need to keep my stuff in MPG format for it to work... Is that right?

[jksmurf]

Just to clarify, you can't use xVid with the MVP can you? I think I need to keep my stuff in MPG format for it to work... Is that right?

Well, yes and no. Not "natively", but if you have GRUNTY PC, you can use a plugin to transcode back to mpg "on-the-fly". Some people can do it. My specs can't.

k.

[bogyver]

I have always used Auto Gordon Knot for Xvid. However I am thinking of making the switch to h.264 and AAC auido.

I would also like the finished product to take advantage of my ATI 2400 on board hardware decoding. Could anyone recommend a simple click and forget application that I could use?

I use hand break to create my h.264 files, they have a gui and a cli, the cli is really easy to use and could be called with the appropriate option in the post processing file. Also you could creat a smiple scrip that has the options you want and then drop the files on it.

[Deusxmachina]

AutoMKV is probably the Gordian Knot of h.264. It can do most everything, really, from xvid to wmv and aac. I generally use it for serious archive stuff since it has plenty of options including multiple deinterlacers and filters and things like that yet still is easy to navigate. Use the HQ3d filter for light noise and watch your filesizes drop. Anyone new to it just needs to stick to the main page to avoid getting into trouble.

If someone wants one-button, I'd consider setting up Stattik's Mencoder script to then do drag-and-drop. It's then there to build on if you want more out of it like to automate encoding certain shows or folders. Like GBPVR itself, it's easy to setup the basic stuff and only takes more effort if you want more out of it.

rbelisle, my computer can stream HD h.264 to the MVP, but it's fairly fast. To see if your computer can do .avi on-the-fly, just give 'er a shot and see what happens. I didn't install any special software or anything.