Reencoding from VCD Mpeg to DVD Mpeg2 w/o losing quality...

[Tr0LL]

I want to reencode all my Smallville and Friends episodes (standard VCD mpegs) to DVD mpeg2 so that I can burn them onto DVD and watch them on my Playstation 2. I have tried the DVD-VCD thing (converting sound to 48khz and burning the mpeg1 with the newly converted audio on DVD media, but my playstation 2 won't play that.

So, my question is... Since VCD mpeg is CBR 1150kbps... can I just reencode it to CBR 1150kbps DVD mpeg2? Will I lose any quality doing that? I actually have some room left on each dvd to even do CBR 1900kbps. If the first way loses some quality, will reencoding it to CBR 1900kbps help keep the quality? I KNOW u can't make it look better, I just don't want to lose any quality from the conversion. Or should I do it VBR with a higher average bitrate to keep the quality? I rather do CBR since it's a lot faster and I have to encode a LOT of episodes.

Queston 2... Should I use any filters? I plan on using TMPGenc because it'll resize everything for me, convert the audio, everything in one easy step. I actually have CCE SP 2.50. I know it's a LOT faster, but for CBR is it a lot faster also?

Question 3... CCE - If I do it through CCE, will I notice better quality like usual? I mean the bitrate is so low already and I heard TMPG is better with handling mpeg1. Also what filters would I have to use for this? I would need a resize filter. Is that all?

Other info - All the Friends episodes are PAL VCD mpeg1. All the Smallville episodes were TV captures are are in NTSC. Optimally, I just want to convert the VCD mpeg1 to DVD mpeg2 so it looks EXACTLY like the source. I know I can add spatial and temperal filters to help smooth out the blocks and stuff, but I rather have it look EXACTLY like the sources.

ANY info would be much appreciated.

[Martok]

Not necessary to re-encode as DVD also supports MPEG-1

[RealaT]

Read the original post Martok, he said he'd already tried that!

Actually i'm having similar problems myself because Ulead DVD MovieFactory doesn't support MPEG-1, so any ideas would be great.

[bugster]

According to this, under technical info:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvd.htm

you should be able to encode to mpeg-2 at VCD resolution and still be within DVD specs, in which case no change in data rate should be required. If your PS2 will still not play this, then you will have to-rencode to 720*480 (or 576 for Pal) in which case the data rate will need to be increased to compensate for the increase in screen data. A 4 times increase is required to maintain the quality with a subsequent increase in file size. You could encode using VBR to compensate for this.