Which Video Compression Codec?

I am just starting to process some videos for my Creative Zen 32Gb player. It has a 320x240 screen size.

The manual says it supports "MJPEG, WMV9, WMV8, MPEG4, AVI 1.0 (not 2.0), XviD, DivX 4.x and DivX 5.x.
(XviD encoded files are playable if they are encoded as standard MPEG-4 Simple (SP) or Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) without GMC and QPEL support)."

I would be grateful for advice on which format (non-MS) provides the best "quality per bit", and which video bit-rate will give the best quality/file size compromise for general purpose use.

Any other tips and information would also be welcome, since I am fairly new to this!

Thanks in advance

at such a small resolution you won't see a big difference between Xvid and lavc's DivX codecs. As for the bitrate, it's hard to give you one since the bitrate to use depends on the video content... fast action content will require higher bitrate than low action content.

I suggest you try out my xvidenc and divxenc scripts and use the hardware compatible presets and make up your own mind about which looks the best to you

at such a small resolution you won't see a big difference between Xvid and lavc's DivX codecs. As for the bitrate, it's hard to give you one since the bitrate to use depends on the video content... fast action content will require higher bitrate than low action content.

I suggest you try out my xvidenc and divxenc scripts and use the hardware compatible presets and make up your own mind about which looks the best to you
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Thanks, Microchip. I'll give them a try.

So far, I've ripped a DVD successfully with K3B (using Xvid & MP3), and installed it on the player. The video quality is fine, but it looses audio/video sync after a while. If I play the file on my PC, everything stays together. Any ideas?

In the meantime, I'll experiment with your scripts.

Thanks again

Thanks, Microchip. I'll give them a try.

So far, I've ripped a DVD successfully with K3B (using Xvid & MP3), and installed it on the player. The video quality is fine, but it looses audio/video sync after a while. If I play the file on my PC, everything stays together. Any ideas?

In the meantime, I'll experiment with your scripts.

Thanks again
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A/V sync can be caused by many things. An encoder which isn't designed to handle A/V sync that well, frame duplication can also cause A/V sync problems. It's really hard to tell why you get those unless you can provide a sample for testing

Thanks for your help, Microchip.

I have successfully encoded the problem file with Xvidenc (what a great utility!) to see if that will help. I can't try it on the player until the weekend, since "she-who-must-be-obeyed" has taken it with her on a business trip! I'll post the results next week.

I also tried encoding a .flv file from Youtube using Xvidenc. I lost audio sync completely, but by pre-processing it into a .avi file according to Oldcpu's Pinned Post (ffmpeg -i input-video.flv -s 320x240 output-video.avi), it was fine. Is there a more elegant approach?

Finally, the options available in Xvidenc look fascinating. Can you point me to a good source so that I can learn more about them?

not sure I can do much about the A/V desync issue, unless you provide a sample of the flv file so i can test myself

as for the options, read the Xvid part of the mplayer man page. Also have a look at http://xvidenc.sourceforge.net/faq.html for a FAQ on xvidenc itself.

Don't worry about the A/V desync issue; I've got a workaround that seems to do the trick. You've already given me so much of your time, for which I am really grateful.

If you would like to look at the file for your own interest, however, I'd be glad to send it. Let me know.

In the meantime, I'll start reading!....