I got a copy of "OCEAN 11" movie on the cd from a friend in .avi
format. The quality is superb, 711Mb movie fits on the cd and it's
just like dvd quality, you wont tell the difference on PC. I would
like to know how to do this, I tried using many programs with many
codecs and never got near the quality. Also, are there DVD players
that will play .avi file? I have CURTIS dvd player which plays .mpg
files which is great for my music video collection, but this player
wont play .avi. So two questions in one.

You can find many great tools on the following sites:
http://www.doom9.org/software.htm
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/index.html


I have found that Gordian Knot is an excellent package for converting
DVDs to much smaller AVIs suitable for CDs:
http://gknot.doom9.org/Software/GordianKnot.RipPack.0.27.Setup.exe

A guide to using the software to create DivX 5.02 .avi files (the
highest quality compression currently available) can be found here:
http://www.doom9.org/gknot-main3.htm

However, this will not be playable in your current machine.
Additionally, you may need to download "codecs" for DivX 5.02:
http://www.divx.com/divx/



But, you may choose not to rip to the DivX format at all; you can
instead convert to MPG files, which is what you want, or to the
VCD/SVCD format (SVCD = Super VCD = Super Video CD). Almost all
players support the VCD/SVCD format, so it is a good choice if you
want to play your movies at a variety of locations without carting
around your DVDs to places where they might get scratched, because of
course you should own all content that you make copies of for personal
use only. Or else. (S/VCD is based on the MPG format, and your player
should be able to handle S/VCD if it can handle MPGs.)

This page, from the same site, presents a list of different programs
for creating S/VCDs from the format; do not bother with the first, as
it uses commercial programs that you need to pay to use. I have not
used any of the programs myself, as I rip exclusively to DivX, but I
would think DVDx is the best for you.
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/svcd-guides.htm
DVDx-only guide direct link here:
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvdx-main.htm

Note that you can get much much better quality with DivX as compared
to S/VCD, because they are basically a higher version of the same
format. However, this means they require a lot of processing power,
and so there is no commercial product to play them (that I know of,
anyway); you can upgrade to a GeForce4 Ti4200 or better and directly
output movies to your TV screen, while still being able to use your
computer; or you can try the solution listed here:
http://www.divx.com/support/guides/guide.php?gid=16

If you don't want or can't have your computer near your home theatre
system, video game systems are also looking to soon have DivX player
capabilities, and will probably be fully capable of playing them
before companies invest into mass-marketing players to support them;
companies that sell commercial video players can't in good conscience
market such things without drawing a lot of attention from the RIAA
and the like. But people can develop software for video game systems,
and so there is the X-Box media player:
http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de

The soon to be released Playstation 2 DivX player:
http://www.tuuk.demon.co.uk/

And the DreamCast DivX Player (released, but doesn't work so well due
to hardware constraints):
http://www.moosegate.com/betaboy/dcdivx/

Good luck with your conversion quest!

bookface-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by tomek-ga on 10 Jan 2003 11:05 PST

I tried many options based on this research. I received much better
quality using these tools and guides, however, I am still away from
the quality on the disk provided by my friend. Same 715Mb file, his is
still much better quality .avi, please clarify what setting i must set
to achieve what I originally asked for.

---

Clarification of Answer by bookface-ga on 13 Jan 2003 13:47 PST

Sorry about the delay in clarification response time.

I've been compressing movies since DivX 3.11 first came out, and my
best results have been using the Gordian Knot software with the DivX
5.02 codec, although some people prefer the Xvid codec.

To get better quality video, try reducing the audio bitrate to 128 or
112. Also, I recommend cutting down the resolution to 512x288 (or
whatever the appropriate aspect ratio is). If you're using DivX 5 Pro,
I also recommend turning the "Pyschovisual Enhancements" option to
either normal or strong; and make sure you mark off the credits in the
preview window before encoding so they can encode at a lower bitrate
and give more space to the movie.

Beyond that, it's hard to say what exactly is making the quality of
the file you have so distinguishable; I have a 700 mb rip of Ocean's
11 which to me is excellent quality. You could also try making a 2-cd
rip, which will provide image quality that is virtually
indistinguishable from DVD, even zoomed in or stretched out (in which
case AC3 audio is generally recommended.)

Hello, welcome to the amazing div'x world. Yes you can convert a DVD
film in a DIVx film ocuping only one cd. The process is very hard,
requires one processor with a lot of Mhz, memory and much patience.
First, you use smartripper software or something like that, with this
software you can extract the DVD content to a hard disk ( .VOB files )
. Second, extract audio with software like dvd2avi or similar, you
have to manipulte this audio to transform it on a mp3 file ( AC3
format to WAV format to MP3 variable bitrate). Third, using and
editing tool ( FlaskmPeg, tmpegencoder, etc... ) you transform the avi
( this file is a result to extract audio and video from DVD2AVI ) , on
an mpeg file, there are very tips to reduce the size of the file,
cropping ( delete encryptation of black bands ) , filtering credits (
minimize the quality with the scenes that not required much more like,
credits, etc...) , etc... To get an optimun result you have to
investigate more, the divx is a great world.

the answer is: noise filters ;)