Grazie -- DivX ??
I'm appalled.
You don't always get what you deserve, but you always deserve what you get.
That's my personal definition of karma, with a decidedly western bent.

That kind of shocked me too.

Just to be clear though I have to ask is this only happening during the AVI to DivX transcode?

What if half the clip has orange 'bars' and half has black?

Bob.

I have a new hand held DVD player. Love it. And it takes DVDs, USB and SD Card. So I am experimenting with these alternative storage formats along with these delivery formats. DivX is nice and small and to date has served up rather productive outcomes.

Why are you guys "appalled" with reference to DivX? Have I made some professional faux pas? If so, be explicit. I really don't appreciate being left in this kind of limbo. Should I move onto something else? If so - then say so! I don't like nor appreciate being scoffed at.

Bob, to your other point, I don't understand what you mean?

MPM, of course I could try VirtDub and now that you have offered your recipe and WHEN I have a window, I'll try it.

. . and BTW, thanks to all your feedback.

Grazie

"I don't like nor appreciate being scoffed at."

Well I can't speak for the rest but I was just trying to get a rise out of you :)

"Bob, to your other point, I don't understand what you mean?"

I'm trying to understand this bit of your original post:

"Render to WS AVI > Render in DIvX I get 4x3 stretched to 16x9 . . "

Did you render to WS AVI and from that file render to DivX?
Was the WS AVI correct and the problem arose going from that to DivX?

Bob.

"Well . . . . trying to get a rise out of you :) " Well, you achieved that! - But seriously? Should I NOT be using DivX? And for what reason? It is easy ("Grazie-Proof") and produces, normally small and good material?

"Did you render to WS AVI and from that file render to DivX?" - Yes.

"Was the WS AVI correct and the problem arose going from that to DivX?" - Yes. I checked by playing in WMP too. And the ONLY way, so far to "correct" this, was to physically place some GenMed Orange under the needed material Track. This way I can SEE the bars on the side and have the 4x3 correctly viewable.

Grazie

Grazie, nothing wrong with DivX, especially if it's for personal use (i.e. You're not worried about compatibility for web playback etc.).

Some might say you should be using H.264 for the optimum size:quality ratio, but DivX is right up there, and doesn't exhibit some of the problems that H.264 can in certain circumstances (e.g. a loss of contrast in some desktop players).

Come to think of it, the latest DivX actually is H.264 isn't it? Which version are you using?

. . not the latest - I'm sure!

And thanks Nick, for the vote of "Right-On!"

But this type of nonsense I can really do without.

I am now waving a White-Flag on this and going the MPEG<>DVD route. I'll be Back!

Grazie

Grazie,
Actually, Nick is right on the mark, and I applaud him for straightening out the nonsense that I started.

Actually, my first post was intended as good-natured ribbing. That it was taken as scoffing I take responsibility for, and hope you accept my apology.

The thing that got a rise out of me is the stigmatic history of DivX. It was considered the illegitimate stepchild of video for years, and no one outside the bootleg/download community wanted much to do with it. There were even attempts to outlaw it in the early days. I mean, just think of it. Small files, high compression, acceptable quality? Ha!

Last couple of years notwithstanding, the DivX name has still been slower at achieving legitimacy among serious A/V types than for example, MP3, which had equally shadowy roots back in the day. Everyone just assumed if you were using it you were bootlegging albums or concerts or doing something else illegal. Likewise, there was a time when the very mention of DivX raised the specter of underground movie downloads. I defer; that perception is no longer the case, and it is used legitimately for many other things. However, I would dare guess most torrent movie downloads are still in DivX format.

If I was lucky enough to have a new portable video player with those capabilities, I'd probably parallel one of Nick's suggestions and do h.264 in a .mp4/.m4v wrapper, but that's just because I like playing with it, and I love the chapter naming capability of .m4v. And besides, as anyone knows, MP4 is cool. At my age, any type of personal image enhancement is worth it. OTOH, my nephew thinks DivX is cool. Go figure.

Another thing that sticks in my craw is that a much older install of DivX crashed my Win98SE drive so bad that I had to reformat and reinstall the OS from scratch. I lost so much work that I never downloaded it again.

In any event, I'd like to see some quality vs. rendering time tests between DivX and x264. Might just be tempted to try it again, but this time I'll have my backup drive image ready.

MusicVid - you is a Real Gent!

Thanks for the "potted-history" demystifying DivX for me!

No need to apologise. I'd been up chasing my tail early and sometimes . . just sometimes I don't need much to push me over.

I got this cutsie DVD player that SAYS it takes MP4 but to date I can't get an MP4 render from Vegas to be read by the darn thing.

Anyways, looks like I'm in the running for the work I punted for this morning .. We'll see ..

Grazie

Now that we've got the parrot and eye patch out of the way is the 4:3 / 16:9 thing sorted?

Bob.

. .I went with a DVD. So no, and the only way I CAN do this is using the background colour solution. No BG, I get stretch. Pop in a BG colour, no stretch and but with coloured bars each side.

Bob, you around?

Grazie

In any event, I'd like to see some quality vs. rendering time tests between DivX and x264. Might just be tempted to try it again, but this time I'll have my backup drive image ready.
musicvid, I don't know if you saw this first time around but I did some comparisons a year or two ago that include Xvid and x264. Of course Divx is not Xvid but it's pretty similar.

Great work Nick! I remember it well.

My issue still remains though. I just repeated the process again.

I have a 4x3 media rendered into a 16x9 background - it has black bars on each side.

I can prove this by placing chequered GenMed UNDER the track and the chequers do NOT show. If I reduce the video with pan crop, I CAN see the Chequers. So the black bars are in fact opaque. I get the same result in Windows Media player too - black bars on either side. And yes, when I stream to my external monitor it is terrific -4x3 within a 16x9 output. But when I render this same file thru' DivX I get the 4x3 filling the whole screen. It is as if DivX is ignoring the Black bars completely?

What's going on and HOW do I rectify? I'm not wanting to keep rendering to MPG to create DVDs - that's daft in the 21st century - yeah?

Grazie

Might want to try Handbrake. Its x264 encoder is 25% faster than MainConcept AVC in my tests, and if you name the files .m4v you can have chapters too! Render at 2000 Kbs and you will have some nice quality at only 1GB/hr.

"But when I render this same file thru' DivX I get the 4x3 filling the whole screen. It is as if DivX is ignoring the Black bars completely?"


Edit: Spent just a few minutes checking this out, & you'll laugh at how simple the solution is -- check the box for don't letterbox on the render as dialog!

I'll go on to a 2nd post with specifics...

All right, whether you're using Vegas, or PremPro or whatever, pixel aspect ratios [PAR] are a royal PITA, because the software treats them so poorly. Vegas especially want to *help you out*, assuming it knows how you want whatever. This example is a simple glitch in the code's logic, making assumptions that the coder IMHO has no business making. Mini-rant over, here's what I found.

Opening a new proj at 853 x 480 I imported a short 720 x 480 clip -- everything set to square pixel. Note that it *Might* be possible to use Vegas' PAR handling, but last time I tried something like this years ago it was extremely unpredictable, so used square pixels -- 853 is NTSC W/S as shown.

The timeline rendered fine into picvid mjpg @ 853 x 480 project settings, pillar boxing as expected. DivX of course won't render 853 because it likes mod 4 dimensions. Rendering to DivX, setting the PAR in DivX configure dialogs to 720 anamorphic works fine in V/Dub, playing 720 in wmplayer & 853 in the DivX player as expected, pillar boxing intact. Trying this is Vegas, going directly to anamorphic 720 with DivX compression the pillar boxing disappeared. Obviously not a DivX problem (just did it in V/Dub), checked the box for no letter boxing, on the off-hand chance it really meant put everything in frame, & got anamorphic pillar boxed in DivX out of Vegas.

Note that in real life adding pillar boxing for TV display is generally not needed -- the display itself, & player if/when involved, handle the pillar or letter boxing nastiness. IOW just output the DivX itself, 4:3 or 16:9 or whatever, most players will sort it out.

MPM, I have a 16x9 video. In the middle is a section of 4x3. On each sde of this 4x3 section are two vertical areas that are black. When I put THIS into DivX Convertor and play the output the BARS either side are removed. If I make the same Black Bars Orange, DivX does NOT ignore them.

Grazie