7. Divx 5.2.X settings

This section describes which settings that generally should be used when encoding divx 5.2.0 and how to set up multiple passes with the job list in virtual dub so you won't have to be there to start them all. If you have lots of free harddrive space (at least 7GB required for a 25 min ep) see the huffyuv section on how to improve the encoding speed.
Hint: Only encode a small portion of the movie first to see how it'll look after it's compressed. Make sure that it's representative of the movie or it'll just be a waste of time. Use the mark in/out buttons in the center bottom of virtual dub for this.

  1. Open the avs file (ctrl+o)
  2. Use the slidebar to check the video, if it doesn't look good enough try some other filters or settings.
  3. Go to video and select fast recompress.
  4. Go to video again and select compression (or press ctrl+c)

-Select Divx Pro 5.2.X Codec and click on configure.
  1. Click on the "Select Divx Certified Profile" button.
  2. Uncheck "Divx Certified".
  3. Click next.
  1. Uncheck everything (best results for anime).
  2. Set "Bidirectional encoding" to "Adaptive Single Consecutive" which currectly seems to be the best tradeoff.
  3. Click finish.
  1. Go to the "Video" tab.
  2. Uncheck "psychovisual Enhancements" since this seems to always make anime look worse.
  3. Verify that all other settings are exactly like in the screenshot. Note that the max keyframe interval and scene change threshold won't have any effect when encoding at the slow setting. All other settings refer to filtering operations that are better to do in avisynth or virtual dub.
  4. Return to the "General" tab.
  1. Set "Encode performance" to slow.
  2. Select 1-pass quality-based.
  3. Set quality to 3 or 2 if the source is really clean.
  4. Check 'Write log file'.
  5. Press OK.
  1. Go to File\Save as avi (or press F7).
  2. Enable the option Add operation to job list and save the file.
  3. Go back to the Divx 5.2.0 codec properties.
  1. Select Multipass, nth pass.
  2. Enter the bitrate you got from the bitrate calc.
  3. Set bitrate modulation to 0.1 since this generally seems to improve the perceived quality of the encode.
  4. Check 'Update log file'.
  5. Press Ok.
  1. Go to File\Save as avi (or press F7).
  2. Check "Don't run this job now..." and then save the file.
  3. Repeat step 1 and 2 in this box for every additional pass you want. It has to be done at least once. For a 5 pass encode you would have to do this 4 times.
Note: You have to do at least one 'nth pass' to make an avi. If you're doing videos that are low quality or use a low bitrate it's recommended to do at least 4 passes. Doing more than 2 passes can be very time consuming with many filters and first encoding to huffyuv is recommended if you've got the diskspace.
  1. Press F4. This will take you to the joblist.
  2. Press Start to make VirtualDub encode your video.

Hint#1: Set the priority of VirtualDub to idle so you can use your computer while encoding and continue with the subtitles. (Click on Dub in progress and select show status windows, set processing thread priority to idle)

Hint#2: 4 passes are only recommended as a general value since then the bitrate will usually be very evenly distributed by then. To view the quantizer distribution create the empty file 'C:\framelevelcontrol.txt' where it'll be written after every pass at the end. The file takes about 40MB/h and doesn't contain any other interesting information. You can tell that additional passes won't help much when the distribution changes become small (the file is useless after the first pass).

Hint#3: Bitrate modulation can be used to increase the perceived quality, a modulation of 0.1 can sometimes make an encode look considerably better. It is recommended to at least do 2 nth passes after changing the modulation. Divx 5.0.0-5.0.2 is said to have had a biasing in the 0.1-0.2 range.
-While encoding you can continue with the next step.