I'm gettin a loss of quality from D2V to MPG....what's up?

[Calimalim]

So yeah, I get finished with the D2V project made by "DVD2AVI" and I opened up TMPEGNC to convert the uncompressed wav file and the D2V project file into one big *.mpg file, but for some strange reason I lost quality. And I even tried messing with the quality settings in Tmepgnc and put it on Highest Quality (Very Slow) but it was hardly any different from Lowest Quality. What can I do to maintain the quality? Is that just something to expect or what?

[Epi]

I am guessing that you are DVD Ripping and encoding to MPEG 1 right? Any way get used to it. VCD is great, but it has its visual limitations. I have plenty of original VCD's, and my DVD rips usually look better . You can try messing around with the "Quantize Matrix" tab, that would be your best bet.

-Epi
http://www.epi-cam.com

[Calimalim]

Yeah you're right, that's what I'm doing, but I changed things around a little bit. Instead of taking all the extracted *.vob files and making them into mpeg-1 format, I go ahead and make them AVI by using DVD2AVI.

And then I combine the wav and the avi using Virtual Dub 4.9 and compress the audio using mpeg layer 3 at 192kbs and video compression with DivX 4 low motion (should I used DivX 5.0.1 instead???) and save it again as AVI.

Quality is much better, but no enough. I still get a lost, in fact for some reason I get errors now when I try to play it with DivX player from www.divx.com but I can play it with Windows Media Player no problem.

So I'm assuming that the audio has something to do with it, because the Divx Player could play the AVI created earlier by DVD2AVI but without audio. How should I compress this audio? Is that causing the problem? Also, is it best to just leave it as mpeg-1 format straight from DVD? Because what's the point of DivX? It comes out a little smaller but hardly any difference. ahhhh help me !! :)

[bilbogod]

he he..... well DivX versus VCD/SVCD.......Popular bone of contention.
Make your decision based on what you intend to watch your movies on, be it a p.c or a standalone dvd. Obviously if it is the latter, or if you intend to buy a dvd compatible player, this should dictate your choice. Bear in mind that Divx standalone players are not currently available....correct me if I'm wrong someone.....
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, although I'd far rather sit on a comfy sofa watching on my telly using a vcd than staring at a computer monitor.
I assume that in your intial attempts at encoding you were NOT selecting "save as avi" within dvd2avi. This will make the resultant file (excuse my parlance) look like shit when it subsequently fed into TMPGenc.
Use the audio stream that you retrieved from dvd2avi, and pass it through an mp3 encoder of your choice. Then download a tool called Vob2audio and use the mp3wave utility inside the program to add a wav header to your mp3 soundtrack. This will then make it acceptable to virtualdub when you open the wav file that it requests.
If your just after a reasonably good looking movie, then follow Sefy's newbie guide to a "T" on making vcds.
If you want to give Divx a bash, try a prog called Fairuse which is easy to use although for some people it crashes.....Its an all in one program, with your only input being to select a filesize (try 650 - 680Mb) and a screen resolution (take your pick, but don't go insanely high).
Good luck, mists of confusion will clear with time