DivX multipass explanation
So if any of you have been trying to use DivX encoding and been as confused by the multi-pass feature as I was? The trick is, you have to encode the vid two separate times, first using the "Multipass, 1st pass" option, then using the "Multipass, nth pass" option. You encode the same source both times, as unintuitive as that sounds -- ie, you do *not* encode the output of the first pass in the second pass, you just save that output somewhere and apparently the encoder knows how to find it. Don't ask me how that works. It just does.
And it's totally worth the hassle of figuring it out -- it produces gorgeous results. Single-pass DivX was leaving lots of pixelation in Mundian and touch me fall; when I switched to multi-pass it just went totally away -- the video looks as good to me as mpeg-2 now.
Going to muck around with the bitrate now and see how low I can get it and still have good quality -- I've been using 768 kbps so far, but that produces pretty big files.
ETA: So the verdict is in -- 768 kbps it is. 512 kbps looks okay, but it doesn't save enough space to be worth the quality hit from dropping from 768. (The longest vid I was testing, touch me fall, which has a ton of high-motion sections, weighs in at 70 MB at 768 kbps, and 63 MB at 512 kbps -- I figure anyone who's downloading at that size would rather take the extra 7MB hit and get the significant quality improvement.)
ETA2, 8/20/2006
For more detail on encoding with DivX and also getting the file size down a LOT more, see this later post.
And it's totally worth the hassle of figuring it out -- it produces gorgeous results. Single-pass DivX was leaving lots of pixelation in Mundian and touch me fall; when I switched to multi-pass it just went totally away -- the video looks as good to me as mpeg-2 now.
Going to muck around with the bitrate now and see how low I can get it and still have good quality -- I've been using 768 kbps so far, but that produces pretty big files.
ETA: So the verdict is in -- 768 kbps it is. 512 kbps looks okay, but it doesn't save enough space to be worth the quality hit from dropping from 768. (The longest vid I was testing, touch me fall, which has a ton of high-motion sections, weighs in at 70 MB at 768 kbps, and 63 MB at 512 kbps -- I figure anyone who's downloading at that size would rather take the extra 7MB hit and get the significant quality improvement.)
ETA2, 8/20/2006
For more detail on encoding with DivX and also getting the file size down a LOT more, see this later post.