div-x vs dvd

[woel]

Hi!

Read an article over at Tom's hardware about div-x. He claims that the picture quality is almost as good as the one you get from a dvd movie.
Now, I haven't seen any div-x movie that's even near dvd quality, at least not when you put it out on the tv. maybe when you look att the quality in a window on your computer it can be a little bit hard to tell any difference...

Anyway, are the div-x movies I looked at worse quality than the average or is it any adjustments I have to make to get better picture?

Leo

[bastioned]

IMHO I think it´s the opposite: actually you´ll get better image watching a video through a TV than in a window in your monitor.The reason is that the TV shows the image in a way where it is "softened", and artifacts are reduced. In a monitor every detail is noticed to it´s extend, so the usual crisp.

[dZeus]

try to watch your movie at the screen resolution as close to the divx resolution as possible (because scaling degrades image quality). Also make sure you have a movie that uses overlay (the multiple of 32 story), and the last thing you should keep in mind is to set the quality slider in the divx directshow-filter properties as high as your cpu can fluently display.

If you do all this, then divx should look quite goood n your monitor (better than on tv imho).

DVD quality will not be reached whatever you do with the DivX ;-). DivX ;-) suffer a lot more from artifacting than Mpeg-2. Mpeg-2 just is the best you can get (between DivX ;-) and MPEG-2).

[Grigory]

Claimed good quality of DIVx movies at low bitrates (800-900 kbit/sec) is not as good as reported:
1. I downloaded examples and see a lot of artefacts and strong mosaic effect in high motion areas.
2. These examples are made from commercial DVD with film content. 24 FPS and already prefiltered (while making mpeg2 video on professional equipment) source help a lot in making divx movie looking good from some distance, at which you cannot see most of artefacts. Still frames are really looking bad.

3. If you try to get good quality from your own interlaced video, mpeg2 wins. It has internal support for field-based encoding and that helps to produce better video than divx.
The noise on original video is always higher than on digitized film. You also cannot implement sofisticated pre-filtering, so the quality of home-made compressed movie is always worse at high compression ratios than for the film-based dvd titles.
In other words, many "advantages" of divx are simply originated from the fact that this codec is used to copy DVD to CD: that way the codec uses the source that was already prepared for future compression.

Home video looks better with mpeg1 or 2 than with divx if the datarate is 3 mbps or higher. I am using divx or mpeg4 v2 codec only for very low datarates, and even in the range of 300-400 kbps mpeg1-2 might look better.
Grigory

[wkulecz]

I don't know about divX, but I was extreamly impressed with the eminem "infomercial" parody asf that was on http://windowsmedia.com/mediaguide (click the broadband tab) a few days ago. It doesn't seem to be there now, unfortunately

I couldn't figure out a way to save a copy of the asf file on my local disk to show around. Anyone know how? All I could get from save-as was a 186 byte asx "link".

Anyway, the quality of the 300k sample blew me away (especially played back full screen) and streamed smoothly over my DSL connection. It was 320x240 "MPEG4". There were no high motion scenes, so perhaps this was the trick.

--wally.

[Sciascia]

Try this, I haven't tried it myself, I assume it is for streaming content. The website was in french. http://jungfrun.haninge.kth.se/outpu...SFRecorder.zip

[wkulecz]

Sciascia,

Thanks. From the readme.txt file:

<< Now content providers will have to seriously reconsider their policy to
provide high-quality, legacy content using non-encrypted, non-authenticated
and generally unsafe data channels.

I am talking about content providers offering music videos, recordings of
concerts and TV broadcasts in "high bandwidth" (300kbit/s) video. Same
applies to streaming audio. There is virtually no difference to offering
copyrighted MP3 files for public download on a freely accessible server.

Is this Microsoft's definition of SDMI compliance ?

HELLO CONTENT PROVIDERS!
YOUR CONTENT CAN BE AS EASILY COPIED AS IT CAN NOW BEEN DOWNLOADED FROM YOUR
SERVERS! WOULD YOU MIND COPY-PROTECTING THIS CONTENT, PLEASE?

HELLO MUSIC INDUSTRY AND ARTISTS!
THE CONTENT PROVIDERS ARE CURRENTLY GIVING AWAY YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
IN AN UNSAFE, NON COPY-PROTECTED DATA FORMAT. JUST LIKE MP3! THESE ASF
FILES CAN BE DOWNLOADED AND COPIED WITHOUT ANY PHYSICAL RESTRICTION. >>

Looks like the anon author of this utility has some encyrption to peddle to the "entertainment industry".

I fail to see how "saving files streamed from the internet" is in any way differnet than recording a song to tape, CD, or MP3 from the FM radio or recording a movie or MTV video to VHS tape, other than the internet video is not as good as VHS SP tape!

These guys are trying to eliminate our "fair-use" provisions of existing copyright law!

Just my opinion.
I recomment people ignore this program because of the author's dubious motives!
After reading this, I simply deleted it untried.

--wally.

[Hulk]

"set the quality slider in the divx directshow-filter properties as high as your cpu can fluently display."

[Hulk]

"set the quality slider in the divx directshow-filter properties as high as your cpu can fluently display."

[Hulk]

"... set the quality slider in the divx directshow-filter properties as high as your cpu can fluently display."

Where can I find the quality slider for direct show?

[Hulk]

Holy triplepost!!!

That's the first time I've ever done that!!

[dZeus]

"... set the quality slider in the divx directshow-filter properties as high as your cpu can fluently display."
Where can I find the quality slider for direct show?

When you play a DivX ;-) movie, go to file -> properties -> some tab -> DivX codec -> properties and set the quality slider to the highest your pc can handle.

If you've deleted the divx directshow filter (the file called divx_c32.ax or something), then you have to re-intall DivX again.

[Hulk]

Thanks.

[Sciascia]

Wally,
Like I said I haven't even looked at it, I just remembered coming across the link on one of my quests for SVCD info. I personally don't have the bandwidth for streaming video and more importantly, don't have the money for it, since internet access in Germany is charged by the minute. Just trying to be helpful...

[wkulecz]

Sciascia,

You were very helpful. I was mearly posting what I found when I did look at it so people have an idea of what they are getting into before following the link.

I'd like a copy of that eminem video to show around, its by far the best 300k streaming ASF I've seen yet. Could be careful choice of subject matter or could be MPEG4 is really making rapid progress in the hands of Microsoft. Only more examples will tell.

I just hope people won't jump on this without considering this guy's position and how it pertains to our hard won "fair-use" rights under existing US copyright laws.

300k ASF would let you Email ~30 sec clips.
This would be very useful to me if the quality I saw in the eminem "infomercial parody" video was typical and not result of a careful choice of subject matter.

--wally.