Convert DVD to DivX with Handbrake, or other ?

[Rikishi42]

Hi,
I started using handbrake a few days ago, and I kinda like it. The ouput if
fast, the quality good.

Unfortunately, my living room DVD player doesn't like any of handbrake's
available formats.


Previously, I used mencoder to convert DVD to DivX AVI files. Those played
perfectly. But Handbrake does some nice auto cropping and I like to job
queue, too.


Is there any way to add DivX support in handbrake ?

Or can anyone suggest an allternative ?




--
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by Rikishi42

Or can anyone suggest an allternative ?

User microchip who frequents our forum has a product that will backup a dvd to divx. It is called divxenc:
divxenc - the interactive shell script ripper

He has a repository you can add which is here for openSUSE-11.1:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/microchip8/openSUSE_11.1/

[microchip8]

For hardware players you need specific options when encoding to DivX in order for them to accept the input or not choke on it and begin to stutter. This means no QPEL, no GMC, No OpenDML AVIs and some even don't allow B-Frames, though most do.

As for HB, since it uses libavcodec and MEncoder also uses it, it should be able to output to something the players will accept, but I don't know if it does anything special - you may need to create a specific preset for this, disabling or enabling some options

Also, in addition to what Lee said above, both my xvidenc and divxenc have presets for hardware players *and* are very easy to use, including supporting for auto-cropping and much more. If you feel like, give them a try and I'm sure you'll be accustomed to their options as they use MEncoder like you have done so in the past

[Rikishi42]

On 2009-10-17, oldcpu <oldcpu@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Rikishi42;2052017 Wrote:
>> Or can anyone suggest an allternative ?
>> User microchip who frequents our forum has a product that will backup a
> dvd to divx. It is called divxenc:
> 'divxenc - the interactive shell script ripper'
> (http://divxenc.sourceforge.net/)
>
> He has a repository you can add which is here for openSUSE-11.1:
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> http://download.opensuse.org/reposit...openSUSE_11.1/
> --------------------

Just isntalled it, and I like it allready.


Thanks !



--
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.

[Rikishi42]

On 2009-10-17, microchip8 <microchip8@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> For hardware players you need specific options when encoding to DivX in
> order for them to accept the input or not choke on it and begin to
> stutter. This means no QPEL, no GMC, No OpenDML AVIs and some even don't
> allow B-Frames, though most do.
>
> As for HB, since it uses libavcodec and MEncoder also uses it, it
> should be able to output to something the players will accept, but I
> don't know if it does anything special - you may need to create a
> specific preset for this, disabling or enabling some options
>
> Also, in addition to what Lee said above, both my xvidenc and divxenc
> have presets for hardware players *and* are very easy to use, including
> supporting for auto-cropping and much more. If you feel like, give them
> a try and I'm sure you'll be accustomed to their options as they use
> MEncoder like you have done so in the past

Thanks for the post, I'll give the script a full run tomorrow.


One suggestion allready; a small one.
I know the help contains the following tip:
TIP: if you don't want to use an option, instead of always answering
with 'n', just press Enter.

Why not use (Y/n) and (y/N) to indicate defaults? That'd allow you to have a
Y as default. :-)


Sorry, just HAD to write something, the rest looks exactly like what I was
looking for. :-)




--
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.

[microchip8]

Yeah, maybe I'll change it to a y/N in next release. I've been thinking about this but didn't really have much time and am also mostly concentrating and doing work on h264enc. I no longer use DivX/Xvid for encoding but I do keep these scripts up to date, they're just in maintenance mode

[Rikishi42]

On 2009-10-19, microchip8 <microchip8@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Yeah, maybe I'll change it to a y/N in next release. I've been thinking
> about this but didn't really have much time and am also mostly
> concentrating and doing work on h264enc. I no longer use DivX/Xvid for
> encoding but I do keep these scripts up to date, they're just in
> maintenance mode

Two questions, if you will:

1. If I specify an output size (say 700 MB), doesn't that in some cases
override the presets quality? Is there much point in going above a certain
quality, for a film of 'normal' length ?

2. I think I saw Handbrake use both CPU's. At least, that's what I conclude
from the the fps's readout. Is there a way to do that with mencoder? I like
your use of 'nice' in your call of mencoder. But in some cases, I might want
to choose maximum speed.


--
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.

[microchip8]

1) presets are only about encoding options while file size is about the bitrate (bigger one = more bitrate). There's a correlation between bitrate, size, and quality. You can have high bitrate with low-quality encoding options and there's a good chance that a lower bitrate encode but with higher quality options will beat it. So, if you give 700MB but one time encode with low-quality preset and one time with high-quality preset, the latter will look much better than the first encode as it uses better compression & quality options and will squeeze more out of the given bitrate. For the "much point going above certain quality", not really, unless you have processing power constrains.

2) MEncoder is single-threaded still, it has a 'threads' option but it doesn't do much and IIRC only spawns threads for the motion estimation only . There is experimental MPlayer with threading support but there's lots of breakage still

for nice, you can edit the config file in /home/username/.divxenc/config
or directly through the terminal with divxenc -e (needs nano by default)

[Rikishi42]

On 2009-10-19, microchip8 <microchip8@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

> 2) MEncoder is single-threaded still, it has a 'threads' option but it
> doesn't do much and IIRC only spawns threads for the motion estimation
> only . There is experimental MPlayer with threading support but there's
> lots of breakage still

Mmm. Maybe they don't use MEncoder (but that's unlikely). But I did get
90+fps on the same machine that never exceeds 50-60 fps with your (or my)
scripts, using Mencoder.

Well, no matter. I like your script, it produces perfect file for my needs.

So, thanks again !


--
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by Rikishi42

On 2009-10-19, microchip8 <microchip8@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

> 2) MEncoder is single-threaded still, it has a 'threads' option but it
> doesn't do much and IIRC only spawns threads for the motion estimation
> only . There is experimental MPlayer with threading support but there's
> lots of breakage still

Mmm. Maybe they don't use MEncoder (but that's unlikely). But I did get
90+fps on the same machine that never exceeds 50-60 fps with your (or my)
scripts, using Mencoder.

Well, no matter. I like your script, it produces perfect file for my needs.

So, thanks again !


--
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.

Handbrake is an encoder in its own right and does not depend on or uses mencoder. However, just like mencoder, it uses libavcodec which comes from ffmpeg. Since I don't know which settings you used in Handbrake so I can compare them to the preset you used in divxenc, I can't really comment on why Handbrake is faster than mencoder. If you used some "lighter" settings with Handbrake but much "heavier" preset in divxenc, then it's possible that Handbrake in this case will give you greater speed than mencoder. If you know how to get the command line settings of Handbrake and then give me the preset used in divxenc, I can probably tell you what's going on.