Divx/Xvid VS MPG

[szkoda]

i have all of my videos at the moment stored as divx/xvid files. is there any loss in quality or increase/decrease in file size if i were to transcode them all over to mpg?

and also is there any chance of GBPVR supporting dix/xvid in the future?

thanks in advance

[sub]

i have all of my videos at the moment stored as divx/xvid files. is there any loss in quality or increase/decrease in file size if i were to transcode them all over to mpg?

Yes, you'll loose quality every time you transcode the video to another format. The file sizes will increase when the same video is converted to MPEG, which isnt as efficient as divx/xvid.

and also is there any chance of GBPVR supporting dix/xvid in the future?

GB-PVR supports divx/xvid, but the Hauppauge MediaMVP hardware doesnt. This hardware is only capable of playing MPEG1/MPEG2 video files, and the software cant do anything about that.

[szkoda]

thanks for the reply, much appreciated

do you reckon Hauppage will ever release a dix/xvid compatible MVP?

[sub]

do you reckon Hauppage will ever release a dix/xvid compatible MVP?

Yeah, maybe one day. It'll be totally different hardware to the current one though.

[Deusxmachina]

GB-PVR supports divx/xvid, but the Hauppauge MediaMVP hardware doesnt. This hardware is only capable of playing MPEG1/MPEG2 video files, and the software cant do anything about that.

I just saw this and am not understanding it. I've read that the MVP can come with some kind of on-the-fly avi conversion software or something, but mine didn't. I'm borrowing one to play around with, never installed any extra software or patches for it, and the only thing I changed in GBPVR is on the config MVP page make the 0 a 1 for how many MVP server processes I have.

It plays recorded 1080 HD .264/mpeg2, but it also plays divx/xvid. I bring this up because while it may be using my HTPC for processing on-the-fly transcoding from avi to mpeg, is that supposed to be a big deal that requires large amounts of CPU? If the MVP can play x.264 1080 HD, (albeit not at HD resolution), watching an SD xvid/divx must be a lot easier, and I'm surprised anyone would have much of a problem with it.

Have you ever tried playing those xvid/divx files, szkoda? Because my MVP plays them fine.

[zehd]

I just saw this and am not understanding it. I've read that the MVP can come with some kind of on-the-fly avi conversion software or something, but mine didn't. I'm borrowing one to play around with, never installed any extra software or patches for it, and the only thing I changed in GBPVR is on the config MVP page make the 0 a 1 for how many MVP server processes I have.

It plays recorded 1080 HD .264/mpeg2, but it also plays divx/xvid. I bring this up because while it may be using my HTPC for processing on-the-fly transcoding from avi to mpeg, is that supposed to be a big deal that requires large amounts of CPU? If the MVP can play x.264 1080 HD, (albeit not at HD resolution), watching an SD xvid/divx must be a lot easier, and I'm surprised anyone would have much of a problem with it.

Have you ever tried playing those xvid/divx files, szkoda? Because my MVP plays them fine.

It's totaly misleading how they say on the box that it can do divx. It can't. It can only do MPG. That means all non MPG must be converted to mpg. To watch while transcoding is called on-the-fly.

If you use the Hauppauge Media Server, it will come with an on-the-fly transcoder. Some would say that the newest one is the best as it allows seeking in the file, so that means you can start and avi, auto start transcoding, and still shuttlke into the future. (currently a limitation to the process in GB-PVR)

With GB-PVR, by default it will do the same thing: offer you the avi in the list to watch, but when you select it to play it will call ffmpeg to transcode the file. It will then start displaying the transcoded file while in progress (or on-th-fly)

ZProcess can be used to intercept this process and maintain aspect ratios, use different transcoding software, adjust colour and brightness, etc, but the mimitation mentioned earlier still exists - you can't shuttle ahead into an area of the video which hasn't been transcoded yet...

Either transcoding solution usually requires a large amount of CPU 'grunt' and so therefore many people are dissatisfied with this approach.

As sub said any time you transcode you lose something. So many people are unhappy with the idea of recording in MPG, transcoding at night to divx, and then watching on thye MVP, reguiring a transcode. It is for that reason that sub and others, recommend that if the file is in mpg, and you want to watch on the MVP, leave it in MPG.

I recommend using ZProcess for all your other on-the-fly transcoding needs. (New release (soon!) will be even more stable)

[mvallevand]

Zehd, I agree with everything you've said except the part about lost quality. I think that universally the xvid downloads of shows are superior in both video and audio to anything I personally have been able to record with a PVR 150 or HVR 1600 even after transcoding to mpeg on the fly.

Martin.

[zehd]

Yup that's true. I was talking about original content in MPG. The great torrents available are usually HD or DVD rips anyway. Kinda apples and oranges comparing a 150 analog recording to the torrents...

[Deusxmachina]

With GB-PVR, by default it will do the same thing: offer you the avi in the list to watch, but when you select it to play it will call ffmpeg to transcode the file. It will then start displaying the transcoded file while in progress (or on-th-fly)
but the mimitation mentioned earlier still exists - you can't shuttle ahead into an area of the video which hasn't been transcoded yet...

Maybe that's what the big deal is then. I kept seeing posts about how the MVP can't play an avi (or HD files) without some kind of seemingly dreaded transcoding extra steps that no one wants to do, but yet I knew the MVP can do it on-the-fly so didn't understand why people were saying it won't work.

I kept seeing "it can't play them without transcoding them first," which is true, but it does it on-the-fly without the person having to do any extra steps, so those posts looked to be steering people away and thinking that an MVP can't play those files AT ALL without manually transcoding them the night before.

I mean, when I read:

"GB-PVR supports divx/xvid, but the Hauppauge MediaMVP hardware doesnt. This hardware is only capable of playing MPEG1/MPEG2 video files, and the software cant do anything about that."
and
"do you reckon Hauppage will ever release a dix/xvid compatible MVP?"

it makes me think trying to play an avi on the MVP won't even get me a picture. When I first hooked mine up, I borrowed it for playing some avi files, but after receiving it but before hooking it up is when I started reading about how it can't play divx/xvid, and that made me almost not bother hooking it up to even try.

The mention of HD rips is amusing since a main recording day for me is Thursday and that's when my EPG flaked out this week so I had to grab the shows from elsewhere. Yeah, even low resolution looks really good when the source is HD. They don't have the detail, but they're clean.

[martint123]

The main factor when people say "the MVP can't play divx" is the on-the-fly-transcode.

With mpg, I can happily have three MVPs playing stuff. If they had to be transcoded, the server just wouldn't have enough steam to do it. If your gbpvr server is your normal PC, you will notice performance loss when it's transcoding and you're doing something else.