Hi all, A bit of a muse this post, input appreciated by those in the know or anyone with any opinion they think is worth adding..! I've just got sorted with Divx following the guide, for 1CD (700mb) size films and was pleased to download the same film as my 1st attempt film and find the difference to be ~nothing. This is cool, however in the action parts the compression techniques dont cope as well and in my opinion u do suddenly become aware u are not watching a near-perfect dvd copy and that kinda spoils the illusion... So.. i suddenly started thinking, is it almsot about time to look to invest in a DVD writer, which, if i'm not mistaken, can burn dvd media which is 4.7gb currently for standard (single layer?) DVD-R disc.. Over here in the UK, u can I believe get your hands on a suitable drive for around £190, and the media, if bought in spindles of 25, currently costs around 85p a disc. Thus, for backing up movies i own, taking copies from friends, I am starting to consider whether it is a better idea to start encoding videos to either 1.55gb (3 per DVD-R) or even 2 per DVD-R, as eventually all computers will come with DVD readers, the quality will be brilliant, and the media will get cheaper and cheaper. With 1CDR movies, you have the benefit of finding them online, being able to make snazzy covers courtesy of cdcovers.cc or similar, and the media is very cheap. You do have to put up with the 'least' possible quality. If you move to 2CDR, this improves the quality, but requires a disc change half way unless you have 2 draws... With the DVD idea, u could get 3 in 1, great quality, but have to create custom labels, and if u don't currently have a dvd writer, then you would need to have a lot of free hard disk storage space to store the encoded movies temporarily.. a solution to this might be to use winrar or such an archive them over 3CDRs until that time. I would like to build up my collection of backups, loans from friends, and movies i rent and (being honest) may never watch again (certainly would never pay to) in just one format, and looking to the future, which one should I chose!?! Over to you! Many thanks, Jon.
You willnotice a big difference between Mpeg4 and DVD Media in terms of quality and sound. Mpeg4 doesnt tend to come with a 6ch sound system or with around 4GB of picture quality. By all means, invest in a DVD Writer, you can get a cracker Pioneer DVR105 for £99 from http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/ Media, be careful with the cheap stuff, it aint to hot sometimes. For the future of DVD, click here: http://www.chrismccann.co.uk/blue_laser.htm It may not be the future, it is one of two main ideas based on a blue laser system. There is also a microsoft backed red laser system being looked at (HD DVD). Chris
No Probs for what?? lol The way I see this is, MPEG-4 can handle higher quality than MPEG-2 but unfortunately DVD's have MPEG-2. However, from all the SVCD encoding I do believe it would be very easy for a person to fit 3 films onto 1 dvd-r whilst keeping some high quality. Divx/xvid with ac3 sound, 2 or 3cd's is perfect!! So re-encoding that to normal SVCD (however changing the frame size to 352x240/288 to be DVD compliant!) would give you nice quality if you use the best programs. Like for example, CCE SP! Oh and btw, dvd-5 (dvd-r) is not 4.7gb, it is 4.38gb. The 4.7gb is "Japanese Gigabytes".
