I tried 5 different converting programs to find out which is the best one. I notice that they all drop video Bitrate for some reason. Like if the original clip is 35kb bitrate then after converting it to avi it becomes less like 29kb. is this typical of converting any format to avi ? It happens on both "avi basic" and "avi divx" and "avi xdiv". Yes I am using cheap software but why should they all drop bitrates. VirtualdUB Womble media editor Blaze media pro Alive video Converter and others Also I notice sometimes if there is a slight scratch or line running through the clip, then after the conversion this scratch is more prominent, is this tipical of converting any format to avi ?
Dropping bitrates does not means lower the quality. Low bitrate implies lower file size, but if the codec is better than the original, the quality will not lower. In general, the 'common wisdom' is this one: if you convert a DVD5 (4389 MB) movie into DivX file(s) whose size is comparable to 2*CD-R (1400 MB), the final quality of the two movies will be comparable. This is due to the fact that DivX is a much better codec than MPEG-2, not an error of the DivX encoder.
