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Best format for a Netbook ??

d'zune

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I'll try to keep it simple. Netbook running Windows 7. Have VLC Player also.

What is the best format and setting for Clone DVD Mobile to have the best ratio of file size and video quality?

Source material will mostly be widescreen DVD's. Just want to rip and take with me.

Oh, screen size (netbook) is 1024x576.

I've tried DIVX and for widescreen movies, I'm winding up with a screen with black bars at the top, bottom, left and right (so the movie is a much smaller rectangle within the LCD with black all around).

I'm wanting the show to go fully left/right with some expected black bars at the top/bottom.

Thanks!!
 
The computer screen resolution is really not the issue. The issue is the frame resolution you encode the movie to. I use the PS3 profile because I like h264 mp4 quality and use a resolution of at least 720x480 which is the TV screen format here in the US. The screen fills out edge to edge.
 
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I don't think any computer these days would have a problem with H.264/AVC decoding at around DVD resolution... I'd try what Spanky suggested and use the PS3 profile to get H.264 encoding.

The best frame resolution to go with for widescreen DVDs is probably around 852x480, and 640x480 for fullscreen. The actual video on a DVD is 720x480 (whether fullscreen or widescreen), but it's either stretched or compressed for display on a TV when the non-square pixels are taken into account.
 
Thank you both for the information. I will try that profile and see how it goes.
 
After trying a widescreen DVD, and using the "PS3 16:9 (AVC/H264 FW>=1.60) profile, I only get the following resolution choices:

320x180 (208MB - 2GB)
640x360 (524MB - 2GB)
720x480 (NTSC) (734MB - 2GB)

If I use "Apple TV H264 AVC", I get the following resolution choices:

720x408 (826MB - 4GB)
856x480 (1GB - 4GB)
1280x720 (2.2GB - 4GB)

The file sizes are HUGE with these H264 conversions. Is that normal?

Also, at what point should I set the Video Quality slider to? 33%/50%/66%/75%? Not sure where I will start seeing video compression artifacts.

As an example, I have some 45 min episodes of House that are about 350MB each, and the video quality is great. I don't really see any pixel blocks, etc...the typical compression artifacts. They are AVI files, but I don't know what codec. How can I tell?

Thanks again.
 
Are you in the US? If so 480 width is what you want, you will likely have black bars top and bottom in any case.

In VLC select "tools" and then the "media information" tab, it will tell you the codec used.

H.264 mp4 files will be larger than a DivX avi. And Divx will fill out the screen if you want to use it, just remember at least xxxX480 if you are in the US.
 
Are you in the US? If so 480 width is what you want, you will likely have black bars top and bottom in any case.

In VLC select "tools" and then the "media information" tab, it will tell you the codec used.

H.264 mp4 files will be larger than a DivX avi. And Divx will fill out the screen if you want to use it, just remember at least xxxX480 if you are in the US.

Yes, the good ol' U S of A.

Thanks for the tips again. Is DivX a lower quality format because the file sizes are much less? If space weren't that much of an issue, would I be better off with H.264 (especially if I later wanted to use a bigger notebook screen to watch them on)??
 
I did a couple chapters of Coraline in Divx. I have a netbook, a 10 inch display. I played the avi on it and it looked fine. If disk space is an issue for you I'd stick with Divx being sure that the width is at least 720.

Sorry, I've been telling you backwards all along, you probably saw that, 720 is the frame width you want. 480 is the height. This is what happens when you get old!
 
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I did a couple chapters of Coraline in Divx. I have a netbook, a 10 inch display. I played the avi on it and it looked fine. If disk space is an issue for you I'd stick with Divx being sure that the width is at least 720.

Sorry, I've been telling you backwards all along, you probably saw that, 720 is the frame width you want. 480 is the height. This is what happens when you get old!

Funny. I'm doing the same DVD now. :)

Since the H.264 is so much bigger, does that mean it will scale to bigger displays with higher quality than DivX will?
 
Funny. I'm doing the same DVD now. :)

Since the H.264 is so much bigger, does that mean it will scale to bigger displays with higher quality than DivX will?

In my opinion yes. H.264 seems to hold up better on my big screen TV.
 
H.264 mp4 files will be larger than a DivX avi. And Divx will fill out the screen if you want to use it, just remember at least xxxX480 if you are in the US.

So, I did DivX and H.264, and the DivX seems to be squarer. I measured both, playing them side by side (H.264 and DivX), and the H.264 video is roughly 1.85:1 (measured by a ruler with close approximations), and the DivX was 1.6:1 (16:10??).

I assume Coraline is 1.85:1, and therefore the H.264 is more accurate. Can DivX do 1.85:1 or by your remark, is it a 16:10 standard.

Sorry for so many questions, but I've got some spare time this morning, and wanted to get this all ironed out! :D

EDIT: I forgot to mention...side by side, the DivX movie has better colors (more saturated) than the H.264. Is that adjustable at all?
 
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Looking at the choices in version 1.2.0.1 I can get to 1:78. Coraline is 1:85 says so on the package. I don't know about the color, that’s one reason I like H.264, looks less animated to me and more color accurate.
 
I did a couple chapters of Coraline in Divx. I have a netbook, a 10 inch display. I played the avi on it and it looked fine. If disk space is an issue for you I'd stick with Divx being sure that the width is at least 720.

Sorry, I've been telling you backwards all along, you probably saw that, 720 is the frame width you want. 480 is the height. This is what happens when you get old!

It's not so much a specific width or length that's important, but the actual ratio of both. The video on a DVD might be 720x480, but that's only a 1.5:1 aspect ratio... but when actually played on a DVD player or through software on a computer, that ratio is corrected to the actual 16x9 (or 1.78:1) of all widescreen DVD content... being around 852 or 854x480. If the movie was originally wider than that (say 1.85, 2.35:1), then there'll be some black letterboxing bars encoded as part of the video.

When converted for playback on a computer, though, it's best to correct for the non-square pixels of DVD-video content during the conversion... so creating 720x480 material isn't really the best way to go (not all players will even correct for the pixels, when it isn't played through a DVD).
 
It's not so much a specific width or length that's important, but the actual ratio of both. The video on a DVD might be 720x480, but that's only a 1.5:1 aspect ratio... but when actually played on a DVD player or through software on a computer, that ratio is corrected to the actual 16x9 (or 1.78:1) of all widescreen DVD content... being around 852 or 854x480. If the movie was originally wider than that (say 1.85, 2.35:1), then there'll be some black letterboxing bars encoded as part of the video.

When converted for playback on a computer, though, it's best to correct for the non-square pixels of DVD-video content during the conversion... so creating 720x480 material isn't really the best way to go (not all players will even correct for the pixels, when it isn't played through a DVD).

Thanks for your info, but it now raises more questions!

First--so the NTSC standard is 720x480 (1.5:1), and all widescreen DVD's are 16:9, so then does CDVDM do the conversion of 1.5 --> 16:9?

Second--The previously recommended Sony PS3 16:9 profile in CDVDM only gives 1.5:1 resolution choices, but the Apple TV H264 profiles are all 16:9 (1.78:1) output resolutions (such as 856x480). What is the preferred choice here for widescreen source content, since I've used the Sony PS3 profile, and it looks widescreen? What is the difference between the two?

Like I stated above in a post above (I think?), that I did a DivX and a H264 rip of Coraline and the DivX looked squarer. Is that the 1.5:1 vs. 16:9 thing you are talking about? So DivX would not be the choice for viewing on a netbook screen (which is 1024x576, or 16:9)?

Thanks.
 
For my Netbook I use Xvid or Divx it looks ine on the 10" screen, takes less time to encode, and uses less power in decoding.
 
Thanks for your info, but it now raises more questions!

First--so the NTSC standard is 720x480 (1.5:1), and all widescreen DVD's are 16:9, so then does CDVDM do the conversion of 1.5 --> 16:9?

A lot of converting software automatically detects the type of video on your DVD, and gives you appropriate frame resolution options based on that. I doubt most of the formats (other than straight pass-through, maybe) CloneDVD mobile can create will become anything other than square-pixel videos (the pixels on a widescreen DVD are longer than they are tall, and those on a fullscreen DVD are the other way around), so as long as you give the program a proper frame resolution setting you should be fine. As I've said, to create videos for playback on a computer, you really only have a few choices (there's no point in making it bigger than "???" x 480). So 852-856x480 for 16x9 content, and 640x480 for fullscreen.

Conversion for iPods is a bit different, as they can contain (at the largest) a 640x480 video... so 16x9 videos become 640x360, instead.

Second--The previously recommended Sony PS3 16:9 profile in CDVDM only gives 1.5:1 resolution choices, but the Apple TV H264 profiles are all 16:9 (1.78:1) output resolutions (such as 856x480). What is the preferred choice here for widescreen source content, since I've used the Sony PS3 profile, and it looks widescreen? What is the difference between the two?

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure about what the PS3 takes... although I imagine it would prefer its videos as square-pixel (aside from playing back a regular DVD). However, if you are creating 720x480 videos with CloneDVD mobile and they look normal on the PS3, I suppose it's safe to assume that it is detecting and correcting for the non-square pixels.

Personally, I'd go with the Apple TV profile. H.264/AVC is the most commonly used, and popular format today for most things. That format is what the majority of Blu-Ray releases use, and it's capable of preserving nearly all of the original quality of the DVD at a significantly lower bitrate.

DivX is similar to H.264, only more primitive... it all falls under the MPEG-4 standard, though. DivX videos are typically MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP (which stands for Advanced Simple Profile), while H.264 is MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC (aka Advanced Video Coding). Although I do believe the newest version of DivX includes H.264 encoding, I doubt CloneDVD mobile is implementing anything other than ASP DivX files.

Like I stated above in a post above (I think?), that I did a DivX and a H264 rip of Coraline and the DivX looked squarer. Is that the 1.5:1 vs. 16:9 thing you are talking about? So DivX would not be the choice for viewing on a netbook screen (which is 1024x576, or 16:9)?

DivX is a fairly popular format (though DivX are hardly the only ones to market some variant of the ASP profile), so I doubt it's not suitable for playback on a netbook. However as I've said, H.264 is a considerable improvement on the technology that DivX uses for its content; so there's really no reason not to go with that, instead.
 
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A lot of converting software automatically detects the type of video on your DVD, and gives you appropriate frame resolution options based on that. I doubt most of the formats (other than straight pass-through, maybe) CloneDVD mobile can create will become anything other than square-pixel videos (the pixels on a widescreen DVD are longer than they are tall, and those on a fullscreen DVD are the other way around), so as long as you give the program a proper frame resolution setting you should be fine. As I've said, to create videos for playback on a computer, you really only have a few choices (there's no point in making it bigger than "???" x 480). So 852-856x480 for 16x9 content, and 640x480 for fullscreen.

Conversion for iPods is a bit different, as they can contain (at the largest) a 640x480 video... so 16x9 videos become 640x360, instead.



Unfortunately, I'm not really sure about what the PS3 takes... although I imagine it would prefer its videos as square-pixel (aside from playing back a regular DVD). However, if you are creating 720x480 videos with CloneDVD mobile and they look normal on the PS3, I suppose it's safe to assume that it is detecting and correcting for the non-square pixels.

Personally, I'd go with the Apple TV profile. H.264/AVC is the most commonly used, and popular format today for most things. That format is what the majority of Blu-Ray releases use, and it's capable of preserving nearly all of the original quality of the DVD at a significantly lower bitrate.

DivX is similar to H.264, only more primitive... it all falls under the MPEG-4 standard, though. DivX videos are typically MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP (which stands for Advanced Simple Profile), while H.264 is MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC (aka Advanced Video Coding). Although I do believe the newest version of DivX includes H.264 encoding, I doubt CloneDVD mobile is implementing anything other than ASP DivX files.



DivX is a fairly popular format (though DivX are hardly the only ones to market some variant of the ASP profile), so I doubt it's not suitable for playback on a netbook. However as I've said, H.264 is a considerable improvement on the technology that DivX uses for its content; so there's really no reason not to go with that, instead.

Well, after trying to digest everything you said, it sounds like both DivX and H.264 are OK, just that the latter is better quality.

I'm still not sure why the DivX rip of Coraline produced a squarer picture...

In any case, I tried CDVDM on Coraline with AppleTV H2.64 at the 856x480, and my computer was maxed out! It's a Dell XPS 730X with a Core i7-920 running at 3.8Ghz with 6GB RAM, and all 8 "cpus" were at 90-98%!!! I thought my system would breeze through that rip! Not sure what took so much power to do...I also use Tunebite to transcode audio and can do 28 simultaneous songs at 2x speed each, during which my PC is breezing along at 30%...

Anyways, I appreciate the time you've taken to help explain things. I just need to experiment more. I was probably hoping for a magic answer, but it sounds like it really depends on what you want out it.

Thanks again.
 
H.264 is very compute intensive not only to encode but to decode as well.
 
H.264 is very compute intensive not only to encode but to decode as well.

I understand, but my PC is what one might consider "extreme performance" with the overclocked Core i7 CPU. If my 8 CPU's were all maxed out, how does one with a "normal" PC encode? (rhetorical question) :confused:
 
I understand, but my PC is what one might consider "extreme performance" with the overclocked Core i7 CPU. If my 8 CPU's were all maxed out, how does one with a "normal" PC encode? (rhetorical question) :confused:

The best answer I can come up with is "The best they can". Faster the processor, and the more cores, the faster the encode.
 
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