question Sven codec DIVX 5.01 pro

[jan lameer]

Hi Sven
At the moment (well, last ten days, hm, hm) I am putting together a 2 and a half minute aurora movie with sound. Encoding through DIVX 5.01 pro (add ware). The encoding goes great, a 500+ MB DV avi (PAL 720 x 576) shrinks to a mere 8 MB (OK, on only 240 x 192). Picture quality is still the same or even better (as on my human eyes).
My question is: what encoding should I use for my audio?

I use Adobe Premiere 6.0, my source audio is 48 K mono but 10K 8 bit mono in any compression still sounds OK to me (tried it, worked).
Any suggestions?
Or is there also a DIVX sound solution that I haven't found yet?
thanks, JanL

[Sven Lüke]

Hi Jan!

I recommend to encode the music in the MP3 format. Using Ulead Video Studio 6, I can use up to 128kbps at 48K for a MP3-Musictrack, I think Adobe Premiere has included likely the same bitrates. More quality (higher bitrates) means that the company had more to pay to the Fraunhoffer Institut, therefor some procducts are using lower bitrates (e.g. 64 kbits).

Older Versions of DivX (3.11) had had their own audio codec (DivX Audio), but this option is not used any more, as many film and movieclips use MP3-Tracks.

A little video hint: PAL-clips have a ratio of 5:4 but a TV has 4:3. The reason is quite simple: A TV-Pixel ist not a square (like a computer pixel), it is a little bit more wide than high. Playing a PAL-Clip on PC shows you a "squished" video, playing it on TV it is correct because of the wider pixels.

If you are generating the clip for a computer screen, you should use rations with 4:3 (like 320x240). Using the wrong aspect ration (5:4 instead of 4:3) unkown persons will likely not see this thing. But when you show a circle (e.g. a tyre of a bicycle), you will see a squished bicycle tyre on the PC monitor. I hope, my english was good enough so that you could understand it.

Greetings, Sven

> Hi Sven
> At the moment (well, last ten days, hm, hm) I am putting
> together a 2 and a half minute aurora movie with sound. Encoding
> through DIVX 5.01 pro (add ware). The encoding goes great, a
> 500+ MB DV avi (PAL 720 x 576) shrinks to a mere 8 MB (OK, on
> only 240 x 192). Picture quality is still the same or even
> better (as on my human eyes).
> My question is: what encoding should I use for my audio?

> I use Adobe Premiere 6.0, my source audio is 48 K mono but 10K 8
> bit mono in any compression still sounds OK to me (tried it,
> worked).
> Any suggestions?
> Or is there also a DIVX sound solution that I haven't found yet?
> thanks, JanL

[jan lameer]

> Hi Sven!
This helps.
I thought Pal is originally 625 x 720 but the upper 49 lines are used for teletext etcetera, therefor PAL is effectivily only 576 x 720.
Your remarks on square versus elongated pixels is very good, haven't thought of it yet. Thanks, I will study it.
Greetings, Jan