Producing video for a DivX DVD player

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:22 am

Hi all

I recently bought a Panasonic GS400 and am delighted with the video quality that it produces when burnt to a DVD with Videostudio 9.

As my DVD player (Omni DX-4300) can also play DivX avi files, I was wondering whether I could produce an avi file that would be better (or at least as good) quality as a DVD.

My LCD TV has a resolution of 1366x768 and I tried producing a DivX Pro avi at 1280x720 but this wasn't displayed on the TV although the DVD elapsed time counter indicated that the movie was playing.

I then produced a file that had 720x576 (same as PAL DVD) resolution, but that only displayed as about 2/3 screen size whereas a DVD fills the screen.

Strangely, movie clips from the web at lower resolution than 720x576 *do* fill the screen horizontally or vertically!

My questions are:

1. Can I produce something higher definition than a DVD and display it on my DVD player as say a DivX avi?

2. If not, can I produce something of similar to DVD quality?

3. How do I make an avi file fill the TV screen? What rendering options do I need?

Post by **Ron P.** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:27 am

Hi Dw9, welcome to the forums..

In order to produce DivX avi files you need the DivX Pro Create codec. You can get it here: http://www.divx.com/

Ron P.

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:31 am

Thanks for the stunning speed of your reply!
Yup, that's the codec I am using

Post by **Ron P.** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:44 am

Ok, I wasn't sure if you had it. You also must have the free HD plug-in for VS9 correct? If not you will need to get it. Then you should be able to capture HD from your camera, edit it however, to my knowledge there is no media available yet to burn an HD to DVD. DVD is considered SD, and the new Blue Ray will be able to handle HD.

However I have no experience with HD, so I'm just going on what I've read. So unless you are editing then recording it back to your camera, I don't know how you are putting a true HD on a SD (DVD) disc to view on your TV...

Ron P.

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:57 am

If you want to do HD video check this out:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=10132

If you just want Divx check this :
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=9928

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:04 am

The list of certified HD DivX DVD players is a short one:

http://www.divx.com/products/hw/browse.php?c=7

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:10 am

Yup, I *did* search the forums

I tried the first link, and thats how I produced the 1280x720 movie, but that wouldn't display on my DVD player.

The second link describes the method I used to produce the 720x576 movie, which only displays in about 2/3 of my TV screen

Incidentally, the DVD player does show other DivX and Xvid movies..

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:17 am

DW,
I had a GS400 and loved it! But I was always annoyed that the 720x480 (NTSC) frame size couldn't begin to approach the display capacity of my Pioneer HDTV.

So, three months ago, I went over to the dark side and bought a Sony HDR-HC1 high definition camcorder. I have been transcoding the edited Mpeg2 HDV to Divx HD @ 1920x1080p (deinterlaced) @ 8Mbps and burning that on standard DVD disks as a data file. This plays back thru an IOData AVLP2 to the HDTV in *stunning* full HD resolution.

That said, I have also "up-rezed" some of my standard definition GS400 footage using the same Divx 6.1.1 codec, but, in all honesty, it doesn't look any better than it did at 720x480. The exceptions are the 2048x16xx jpeg still shots that I integrated into the projects, which render at the full 1920x1080 and look great. The Divx video files are significantly smaller than the corresponding Mpeg2 video files should play on some of the Divx certified DVD players.

Bottom line, if you have the high definition bug, you probably should be thinking about trading in the GS400 for the new Sony HC3 camcorder that is just now becoming available.

Edit: Download the Media Player Classic video player from http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video ... lassic.cfm and at least you will be able to playback HD on your PC monitor.

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:26 am

I was very interested in your useful feedback re uprezzing jchunter, particularly abot the benefits for stills. That was something at the back of my mind (and possibly a later question!)

I deliberately chose the GS400 over a HC1 because I didn't want to upgrade my PC, burner or DVD player at present. The HC-3 was announced about 2 days after I bought the Pana

The thrust of my questions in the original post is really about how to make the most of what I have got now

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:54 am

DW,
Have you tried a Divx Custom Resize to 1366x768 using the Unconstrained Profile? This would match the native resolution of your HDTV and be a reasonable compromise. However, I don't know if your DVD player could handle it...

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:07 am

I will try that John, but I thnk that the DVD player is likely to be the problem as you pointed out. It certainly didn't play the 1280x720 file as I mentioned in my OP.

It seems the crux of the matter is what is the highest res that the DVD player will accept in DivX mode.

I had also posted much the same post as this in a forum specialising in DivX players, but they seemed to be a bit baffled about the videostudio angle

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:58 pm

Sorry about the double post, but I have found the answer to one of my problems and thought I'd share it.

The reason why a video encoded at 720x576 in mpeg2 (DVD) fills the screen whereas DivX does not do so at the same resolution is that the Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) is different for the two codecs.

It has also been suggested that Xvid may be capable of better quality than DivX.

All I need to find out now is - how do I determine what resolution I need to render at in order to fill the screen!

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:48 pm

DW,
Time for mission-creep!

If the DVD player is the problem, think about spending $250 on the IOdata AVLP2 DVD/Hard Disk player. I honestly think that these players with fast CPU chips are going to rapidly fill the void that has been left by the Blu-Ray squabblers and get very very cheap very fast.

These things are made of VERY inexpensive components:
(1) A CPU chip,
(2) Some ordinary memory chips (PROM & RAM).
(3) A very ordinary DVD mechanism,
(4) Some I/O chips and
(5) Firmware that can execute video and audio codecs internally.

I expect to see these selling in Walmart sooner than BluRay burners...

Ordinary DVD burners can write feature length HD films in Divx, Xvid, Mpeg4. H.264 on ordinary DVD disks...

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:50 pm

mmmm, *drool*
sounds great, but may be a while before its available and affordable in Oz
there still seem to be some firmware issues reported atm

dw9 · Post by **dw9** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 1:55 am

With help from here and another forum, I have managed to answer the questions I originally posed.

For the benefit of anyone else following this thread.. here's what I found:

After sorting some conflicts between DivX and Xvid and XP, I encoded the same DV clip at 6 different resolutions using Xvid default settings: 720x400 (which was the best and showed FULL screen), 720x576 (black borders), 624x336 (full screen), 800x448, 992x544 and 1248x672 (none of which were visible).

I might add that the best Xvid quality wasn't as good as a DVD on the default settings.

So, for a videomaker simplying following the 1.8:1 and divisible by 16 rules is the easy answer, with 720x400 being the best res achievable on a standard PAL DVD player. I cant see any point playing with the PAR for me.

And presumably the player will attempt to upscale DivX/Xvid video in order to fill the screen.

Thanks everyone, some very useful lessons for me