HELP: Reencoded MPEG source creates visual crap. What gives?

[dmonty]

I have tried reencoding an MPEG2 source of 'Say It Is'nt So' using both ReMPEG and TMPGEnc with the same crappy results. Here are the steps that I follow:

Use SmartRipper to create one MV2 and AC3 from the DVDs VOBs. From here I have ReMPEG set to scale the video by 20% and create a progressive 720x480 output. The rest of the settings are all defaulted. The end product is grainy with alot of visual artifacts(i.e. boxes and staircase effects) Not sure what the problem was I attempted reecoding with TMPGEnc. I used a template that has worked great for converting several 16:9 film based AVI files to MPEG2. But the same artifacts were introduced. Is there a specific way to reencode MPEG2? I don't understand why settings that work flawlessly for DIVX and Indeo codecs don't work with MPEG?

Thanks in advance for the help.

D

[banjazzer]

I use Smartripper to extract the Vobs to HD. Then I use DVD2AVI to create a d2v project file + resampled 44100 wav file. These I feed into TMPGenc using SVCD template and choose 2-pass VBR. Provided I don't try to get more than about 50 mins/CD I get close to DVD quality. OK, I don't get surround sound, but the pic is pretty damn good. 8)

[dmonty]

Got to be a better way....

Ok. After playing with the settings I declare that I am giving up on this method. I'm going back to the way things were working before. (at least for now).

Rip movie to HD with smartripper THEN covert to Divx with XMPEG using the max bitrate THEN convert back to MPEG2 with TMPGEnc using a BR of 4000-6000. <sigh> There has got to be a better way....

Anyway I would still like to know why AVI -> MPEG produces better results than MPEG -> MPEG.