Whats better MP4 or AVI?

liamcrane · 13 Jul 2011 at 21:06

Evening all

Im in the process of backing up some of my dvd collection but i cant decide what the best format out of avi and mp4 is. I know either will stream to my xbox fine, im using dvdfab to rip to avi format then handbrake to convert to mp4. Its just i cant notice a real difference between the to, im not using any advanced setting in handbrake just the standard ones so i dont know if i am missing anything there.

Would setting a bigger output file for my backup (im only backing up the main movie not extra's menu's etc) give me a better quality backup?

Hope you can help

Many thanks

Liam

Alexrose1uk · 13 Jul 2011 at 21:13

AVI is just a container; the main trick is what the codec is used on the contained video, be it h264, divx etc.

You should be able to produce an MP4 with comparable picture quality, but a smaller file size than the likes of a DIVX AVI file.

liamcrane · 13 Jul 2011 at 21:24

O right cool cheers for that mate, im just using the standard h264 codec in handbrake. Quality seems ok the output video size is 599mb

AbsenceJam · 14 Jul 2011 at 03:09

500Mb x264 is going to be pretty horrific quality for a movie.

BigBoy · 14 Jul 2011 at 08:48

Dear god! even with the Image size at around 2Gb I can still see the difference 500Mb would be horrible!

liamcrane · 14 Jul 2011 at 09:12

how do you change the output file size using handbrake? what would be a good size ouput maybe around 1 gig?

Reality|Bites · 14 Jul 2011 at 14:07

most films are 700MB to 1.4GB

zom247 · 14 Jul 2011 at 14:46

liamcrane said:
how do you change the output file size using handbrake? what would be a good size ouput maybe around 1 gig?

I use the high quality profile on the right hand side and just use the default settings. The slider is usually on 20 which produces good enough quality for me. I think the file sizes end up between 1.5 - 2 gigs.