Particular ffmpegX settings for TV series DVDs to DivX

[broaddd]

I was interested in people's approaches with ffmpegX to converting tv series DVDs to DivX while maintaining 'similar' quality.

I've started with my PAL Star Trek Voyager discs. They're full-screen (720x576), 5.1 AC3 (384kbps). I've been using ffmpegX to take them to 640x480 with AC3 5.1 passthrough with reasonable results.

Can/should I compress the audio stream more? I know I should know this - but I should I deinterlace if I'm going to be playing back on TV? And I could do them at 768x576 I suppose, but I guess with 640x480 I'm at least getting the vertical resolution NTSC-people live with everyday

I know this task is nothing new, but look forward to any comments people feel like leaving, like what scaler/ME/etc settings they prefer.

B

[dr9553]

I have also been experimenting with taking some Episodic DVD's and making avi's out of each episode. My main question is that when i download a new episode of the show they clame it is an HDTV rip and is at 512 x 384 in a compact 350MB size and looks good, but when i try to encode the DVD's to the same aspect ratio and file size i get nothing that looks that good. Any suggestions?