Hi!

I've got several PAL VHS tapes which i want to transfer to low-bitrate RM files. I captured them to PicVideo Mjpeg (768x576, quality 19). But when I filtered them in VDub (getting very nice DivXes btw), and tried to compress to rm9, result was very unpleasuring. I thought that lossy mpeg4 compression was the reason and re-do them, this time to HuffYUV. But result was the same - blockfest, even at 500 kbits - i didn't tried higher, as then it will be as large as DivX.
So after several fruitless attempts including enabling of nf-high and changing of video qualtiy in RP, and usage of SmartSmoother with overkill treshold and various temporal filters in VDub i decided to ask:

What filter chains and tricks people use?

I target to 320x240/384x288 at 225(preferable)or 384 kbit.

P.S. Inspired by Doom9's review, I converted few DVD rips from DivX to RM9 - result was great. So more it's strange.