What Do You Use to Encode to AVI?

[landru22]

For those of you who capture in mpeg and re-encode to divx/xvid, I have a question. What program or programs to you use to re-encode to avi? I am mostly looking for a freeware solution (yes, I'm poor!) but would consider purchasing a product if it was highly recommended and not too expensive. I have tried the mpeg version of virtualdub and vidomi but have not been too pleased with the results (scenes with movement not smooth, overall bad quality video). I'm not quite a newbie nor am I an expert so the program should be relatively easy to use. It's also quite possible that I'm not using the correct/best settings in virtualdub or vidomi.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

[reboot]

Virtualdubmod.
Quality (or lack of) is not in the quality itself, but in the aspect and codec you choose.
2 pass DivX gives decent results. Depending on what you're going to do with the finished avi.
If it's just for archiving and watching on the computer, then mpeg-4 low motion (at it's highest bitrate setting) will yield a very small file (at a smaller resolution, using YUV colourspace). Try reducing it to 352x240/288, cropping if needed.
For best quality, huffyuv, but you get BIG files...still about half the size of uncompressed. Slightly lower quality would be mjpeg, at about half again the size of huffyuv.
You can also drop the audio bitrate down to save a little space.

[landru22]

Thanks for the replies. I am aware of videohelp.com and all of their links to freeware tools. I was hoping that someone who regularly converts from captured mpeg to avi and is happy with their results could give me some pointers as to their settings in virtualdub or some other freeware tool. I have used virtualdub quite a bit for re-encoding avi to avi (xcard users may understand why!). Those always come out fairly decent. It is converting the captured mpeg to avi that is giving me some grief. I usually set the bitrate so that the resulting file is about 700 mb per hour of video. I have been flip-flopping between xvid and divx codecs but it doesn't seem to matter which one I use.

I capture at the high setting in gbpvr and the resulting mpegs look very good. I often just make a DVD out of these captures and they look fine as well. I would prefer to re-encode to avi's and keep them on my hard drive so that I can pick and choose what I want to watch from the gbpvr menu. I don't expect the avi's to look as good as the mpeg's or DVD's, but I know I should be able to get better results than I am presently getting.

[capone]

I let Dr. Divx do it, if I'm just trying to quick-store recorded shows. It does a good job of reading the file, auto-cropping, and letting you set the basics like a/v quality and size. You can't do much w/ them after, but again, this is a quick encode option where I know I'll get great-looking small files.

Mainly, I use for shows I grab for my son, so I can keep 10-20 episodes of his favorites on hand and on the drive.

[Networker]

Dr. DivX looks like a cool app. I don't use DivX, but it does look intersting.. Got to tuck that one away for possible future needs.

[groover km]

I started out with AutoGK, but migrated to use Dr DivX; I find it easier to set up batch encodes and a little more user friendly overall. I couldn't really tell a difference in final quality between AutoGK and Dr DivX to be honest.

I read somewhere (doom9 forums...?) that the current release of AutoGK contains spyware - don't know how true this is, but forewarned is forearmed....

[wtg]

I stumbled across a great, free little utility for converting MPEGs to DivX that I think some of you might be interested in. It's called Pocket Divx Encoder and is targetted at shrinking video for playback on portable devices, but it's much more than that.

If you are actually shrinking for playback on a portable device, you pick your device and it sets the resolution accordingly, but you can choose a PC as your playback device, and regardless of the selection you can manually specify the resolution to encode to.

What I love about this thing is how simple it is... it's got one screen from which you set everything, though it's advanced options are easily accessible and it can do batch encoding too. The interface is extremely intuitive (and just plain cool looking too) and it's fast. And to top it off, it's an extremely small executable, not even requiring installation. You just download it and run it.

I haven't used it extensively yet since I haven't yet decided whether I want to convert all my mpegs to divx as my PC is a bit underpowered. But for the few files I have tried this with, it's worked great and it's the best freeware I've come across.

Pocket DivX Encoder

If you try it, let me know what you think.

[reboot]

Nice find wtg!

[landru22]

Thanks wtg. I played around with the pocket divx encoder some last night and so far like the results.