- I’ve always used XviD 4 to transcode things. So chose this from the video section and hit configure.
- Main
- Chose Two Pass – Average Bitrate and your required bitrate (1000 is good).
- Chose Interlaced (see interlacing note), Chroma Optimizer and Turbo Mode. Even if transcoding a cartoon, you should probably leave that option alone.
- Motion Estimation
- Motion Search Precision: 6 – Ultra High
- VHQ Mode: 4 – Wide Search
- Keep Chroma Motion, 4MV and HQ AC boxes ticked.
- I frame interval: min 1, max 250 for PAL or 300 for NTSC (note how they correspond to the frame rate – 25fps or 30 fps).
- Number of B-Frames: 3.
- Keep Qpel and GMC unticked (purely for compatibility, many players are incompatible with these, though if you only ever watch on PC then you may want to tick Qpel).
- Quantization
- Quantization type: H.263
- I, P and B-Frame Quantizers: min 2, max 8.
- Tick Trellis Quantization.
- Second Pass
- I-Frame Boost: 10
- I-Frames closer than … frames: 1
- …are reduced by (%): 20
- Leave the rest at default (max improve: 5, max deg: 5, high bitrate: 0, low: 0, overflow control: 5).
Now you need to configure the filters in order to perform resizing, deinterlacing and cropping.
- Click the filters button, then Add.
- Click Crop, and enter values until the green border cuts out everything you want. Whatever is underneath the green will be cropped.
- Click Add and Resize (not MPlayer Resize). Enter your desired width and height, but keep in mind these must both be divisible by 16. 624×352 for widescreen or 640×480 for 4:3 recordings are common and widely supported.
- Click Add, go to the Interlacing tab and click “Deinterlace”, not KernelDeint or any other deinterlacing filter (see interlacing note). Use the default values.
- Click Add, go to the Denoise tab (see interlacing note), chose Mplayer hqdn3d and the default values.
- It is important that the above are performed in the listed order.
Now OK out of the filters window, and alter any audio settings if you need to.
- Lame is probably the best, it creates MP3s.
- Configure to Stereo, 128 kbps, CBR.
Now File > Save > Save Video… name it and hit OK. Wait a couple hours, and you’ll have a transcoded recording just the way you want it.
Note: Use Of Deinterlacing
Note that you only need to use the interlacing options if the file you are transcoding is interlaced. All raw mythtv files in mpg format that have been recorded from an over-the-air source should be interlaced, but if you are using Avidemux to transcode other files such as thoughs already designed for pc viewing (eg. wmv files, files from the internet) are likely already to be deinterlaced and so you do not need to use the interlacing options when transcoding.
Source: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Avidemux#Optimal_Xvid_Settings