DVD to WMV 9 with WMA 10 5.1 Surround Sound - Deinterlace or Not???

[JBredensteiner]

I have a bunch of DVDs and mpeg2 files I want to convert to WMV 9 / WMA 10 files with 5.1 surround sound, and I have been doing this for a couple of days now with TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress. I have found this tool to work very good at making WMV files from either DVDs or mpeg2 files I extracted from DVDs using VOB2MPG; plus, it allows me to have 5.1 surround sound WMV files, which is a must.

The problem is, I do not understand all of the options the tool offers, and I want to make sure that the files I produce are in the best possible condition they can be, as I want to get rid of my DVDs, and I don't want to find out six months from now that I could have done it better by changing this or that setting. I will be streaming all of these files from my PC to my XBOX 360.

1) Does anyone know of a detailed user guide for TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress
2) Should I deinterlace the mpeg2 files, making them progressive
...a) and if so, what settings do I need to change to de-interlace them
...b) what would be the added benefit of deinterlacing the movies, and what would be the downside to doing this
3) Am I doing this the best way

Thank you all in advance for you help, Jon

[guns1inger]

I want to get rid of my DVDs, and I don't want to find out six months from now that I could have done it better

Then don't get rid of your DVDs, because I can guarantee you that within 6 months you will find out you could have done it a lot better.

[jman98]

I want to get rid of my DVDs, and I don't want to find out six months from now that I could have done it better

Then don't get rid of your DVDs, because I can guarantee you that within 6 months you will find out you could have done it a lot better.

I could not agree more with this. You will definitely find out better ways to do this after you gain some experience and you will possibly want to re-do your earliest efforts.

The forums at http://www.doom9.net have a section called "New and alternative video codecs" that does include discussions about WMV encoding and links to various tools and perhaps even guides. I think you would find it a valuable resource. Do note that if you encode your audio to WMA that you may have playback problems on anything but a PC. It's very difficult to find DVD players that support WMV files. There are a very few that do so, but I have no idea if they support WMA surround sound or not.

TMPGenc is a fine program, but I would have to think that Microsoft's free WM encoder would be a superior option for what you want to do. If you have film source (this does not normally include TV shows, but just movies) it can make sense to deinterlace. This allows you to use your precious encoding bits on fewer frames (24 fps vs. 29.97) and it can improve the quality at lower bit rates as you can use a higher bit rate to encode 24 fps as opposed to encoding a 29.97 fps clip and wind up with the same size output (roughly speaking) for the 2 jobs.

[Baldrick]

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