In your opinion then what do you think are the best? Obviously you can watch them both and get a better idea than screenshots?

I am no video expert, I like FUW as it is easy to use, and use ot for PPC and now iPod backups. Me looking at it they both look the same, maybe DivX a tadge better? but thats being a bit picky

Hello ..

I am curious on the versions of DIVX and XVID you used? Care to post here?

Thanks

I think your right. Because the movie is computer generated I doubt that the colours used represent the depths of those in real life. Like the screen grabs though, be cool if you could do it with something else shot on film.

Having done some tests myself in the past (a lot less accurately than you - simply encoded small sections and watched them) I always found DivX (5.2.1) to look slightly better to my eyes on my setup. I guess other factors come into it as well like encoding time (some sort of quality to time ratio).

To be fair though I reckon you should probably test using DivX version 6 (I know it isn't free but it is the latest technological development and kind of like for like with the lastest XviD build)

What do you think?

Hmmm i tried divx6 ..new stuff includes insane quality and psychrovisual enhancements (masking and shaping), which is much sharper than 5.21

Perhaps you can try a short clip using ver 5.21 and 6. There is some difference

No problem, I'll give it a whirl.  While reluctant to upgrade DivX on my media server, I have no issues with trying it on my desktop.

Any thoughts on a movie?  I think I own the first two Matrix movies if that's a good one.  Any suggestions?

i would say as well download and install the latest version of xvid
http://www.koepi.org/xvid.shtml
and don't enable the "use internal xvid codec" in fairuse wizard

so it will be a fair match between the lastest versions of the codecs

and i would say, use the Matrix 1 for the battle (especially, the shoot out scene in the looby)
as it uses less cgi, and plus it is always used in the codec comparison in doom9 

and here is the fun part 
take the screenshots, and don't tell us which one is which
just put then in 2 groups like before and name them A & B, X & Y, 1 & 2, or what ever you want
and let us have a go, and tell you which group do we think looks better
and afterward reveal for us the true identity of the 2 groups 

Sorry I haven't had a chance to get to this yet.  I know it sounds like excuses, but my wife was out of town visiting a very ill young boy she used to care for in a foster home, so I was on full time Daddy duty for our 2yr old and 3yr old girls all weekend.

Hopefully I'll have some time this week.