video encoding question, also audio bitrates

[webguy330i]

Hi there! First off, just wanted to say thank you for allowing us non-euros to watch this show by providing this site. I see a lot of work going into it and appreciate it very much ... I can't tell you how sick I am of watching low-quality off-sync PAL tv rips!!

So that brings me to my main topics here:

- xvid encoding
- audio encoding/bitrates

I'm in the process of putting together a clips dvd for myself and have gone through days and days of processing to get these things together in a viable format.

So about the xvid encoding, are there any 'standards' set for the codec encoder configurations? By that I mean, whomever is encoding the episode, are they using a set of standardized codec settings to ensure consistency throughout the episode releases?

If not, wouldn't it be cool to implement something like that? As it is, I am glad xvid is being used and feel that the video streams (for the most part, sans a few hiccup'd episodes) are very good.

Now as for the audio, there seems to be a LOT of inconsistency throughout all the episodes. Some are stereo, some mono, and they range from 48-192kbps! Would it be possible to standardize this as well, staying with the MP3 codec? My suggestion would be:

48khz (make my life easier for dvd auth'ing )
192kbps (or even 224)
stereo (a must!)

This will probably provide the best quality/size ratio, and it wouldn't impact file size that much (personally, I don't even care about file size) since the audio stream is about 20% of the final video 'package' file size. Hell this may already be standardized for all I know. I have noticed the last few releases have all been pretty close in frame sizes/quality/audio encoding.

Forgive my ignorance of the overall process of how these episodes are managed to be encoded, but I thought I'd make a few suggestions since I've been neck-deep in them (all the way back to early 2003 wmv episodes, yikes!).

Cheers.

[Null]

I agree, this would be a great idea, especially if the quality of the episodes are kept consistent, although the recent Fifth Gear episodes have been superb quality

[TechZ]

I think they are using VBR instead of CBR encoding for audio.
Some of the eps were recorded when they were having some video problems, so theyre not perfect. and xvid is a bit more trickier to work with than divx.