I am in the process of getting xbmc setup (softmod on xbox). I am very new to encoding to Divx and/or Xvid. I have read all the guides, etc. I have a small NAS setup in my basement that is working today and streaming content to an old standard TV set (4:3). I do not have my new Widescreen plasma or LCD picked out yet. All the movies I have purchased are in the widescreen format. I have autogk. I intend to keep the file size to approx 1.5MB. I really do not have a good grasp of the aspect ration versus the resolution size (W x L) concept and what would be the best settings for a my future widescreen setup. Essentially I want to compress the DVD to the 1.5MB but have the size that is displayed on the screen be the same as if I were viewing it from the DVD. I want to encode once and not have to go back to all my files and re-encode them. I know that I will stick with the WS format. So....what size in terms Width would be best to use (640, 720, higher???). The length is computed automatically and is a function of the Aspect Ratio. I get this part. I just want to use the best options for my future WS setup, and encode and go! I cannot seem to find a straight answer on this anywhere on the web. I will also enventually change to a different media player other than XBMC as improvement for HD streaming occur. Thanks for any help.

Future plasma/LCD will be a 42 - 50"..... File size s/b 1.5GB not 1.5MB.....

Using autogk. If you are going to view the movies on a SD set with XBMC and want to keep the size around 1500MB use 704 for 2:35 aspect movies and 720 for 1:85 aspect ratios. Personally I think you should not limit the final size. If you are using divx just put the compression to about 50% and let the movie dictate how large the file should be. Generally you will get a file between 800MB and 2GB depending on the movie. But by using a steady compression the movie will look the same all the way through. If you have a NAS it shouldn't really matter. BTW the final version on a SD set should be just about indistinguishable from the original DVD.

If you want to try an encode them a little higher for an HD set. I would go with 1056 for 2:35 movies and 1073 for 1:85 movies. Use Xvid with the compression at 75-80%, as divx seems to have problems at the higher sizes. Any higher resolution and the XBMC has problems playing the file as it's not really meant to play HD. But the movies look pretty good on HD at that higher res.

HTH

Using autogk. If you are going to view the movies on a SD set with XBMC and want to keep the size around 1500MB use 704 for 2:35 aspect movies and 720 for 1:85 aspect ratios.

When I get my 42" Plasma, will these look OK since I am using XBMC at the moment? I really do not want to encode again.

Thanks for the help. This is new to me.

They will look ok. They will not look as good as when you viewed them in SD because XBMC doesn't scale as well to 720p, but if you want to scale them to the higher res that I posted they will look much better in HD, and XBMC can play them fine.