Is there a reason you are using Xvid instead of ffmpeg's MPEG-4 coder? I thought the latter would be better, or is there significant difference anyway?
The latter _was_ better. Ther are no recent comparisons between both but Xvid is better than many other modern codecs, so Xvid has probably become better than libavc.
Doubtful. You could try a comparison (PSNR or better yet double-blind :), but it's generally accepted by mplayer developers that lavc is the encoder of choice... This is getting really educational, thanks for all the good input! The reason why I was using XViD was mainly the open source argument, while observing the commersial direction of the DivX on windofz. I've been assuming that DivX on any platform would be subject to that "closing" of
the source, ie that lavc mpeg4 would be somewhat less reliable as open source in the future compared to XViD. This is propably just ignorance on my part? Whats the licence status on lavc (mpeg4)?
Have you experimented whether -sws 2 or 9 is better (or something else?). I'm using 9, I suppose it should be better in theory?
Do you mean, 9 should be sharper? If so, then that may be bad because more bit/s are needed.
If sws 2 is faster I would choose that and vcodec=[...]vhq:precmp=2:cmp=2:subcmp=2 which produces better files than only vhq or vhq:v4mv.
Yes, agreed!
Acknowledged; I'm keeping my sws 2 and considering switching to lavc for vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:..... There is vhq for XViD in the unstable HEAD it seems, does anyone have any experience with that? HR