transcoding question (xvid)

[zehd]

Since when is 7 above 8? It was a bit confusing but I got it at last.

hahah... I'm not the one who wrote ffmpeg...

[pBS]

yea, qscale works great if you care about quality and squeezing the most you can out without bad looking results...always gives consistent results, whereas constant bitrate encoding [-b xxxx] can lead to horrible recordings if there's a lot of snow or noise in it..[snow can't really be compressed much at all] [you can use floating point numbers also,like 4.2]

use bitrate mode only if you need a certain file size..otherwise it wastes bits where doesn't need to, and high action suffers...

the qscale numbers go from 2-31..with 31 looking worst but having smallest file sizes..
i usually use mpeg output so why my encode is lower numbers..for mpeg:
with a discerning eye, 4 looks same as original really..i use 4.5 or 5 as anything above this i can tell..but not all tv's show the detail like mine..but i wouldn't recommend going past 7 or 8...
with mpeg4 [xvid or divx] you're results are probably more appropriate..[5-9]

and decode codec does make a difference when comparing quality,as it can clean up the display with postprocessing upon playback... [xvid has more features for post proc. than divx or generic mpeg4]

yes, ildct option does encode it with interlacing, a mpeg necessity... if you record from tv card, it's all interlaced...no such thing as a progressive tv signal yet...[with possible exception of atsc/dvb] [all our tv's are interlaced,not all do both]
but for avi output, you should deinterlace encode or use a decoder capable of deinterlacing..[to deal with varied framerates of film/video fps,avi can't do more than 1 type of fps in file, mpeg can adjust on fly]

the cgop option means closed gop, also a mpeg thing..[for dvd compatibility]
unneeded for avi out...

a good bitrate option for about same quality would be around 2000-1800k for avi/xvid and around 2200-2500k for mpeg out...[-b 2200k instead of -qscale]

and yes, don't use both -b and -qscale....only the last one on line gets used...eg: " -b 2000k -qscale" would use qscale..