Why, oh why, are MPGs blocky?

[nionlights]

So I've got these avi movies, which run perfectly smooth and crisp in Quicktime. Of course, in order to burn them to a CD, i have to convert everything to an mpeg format, right? Which is lovely, fine by me. EXCEPT that after conversion, the movie ends up looking much more blocky, "pixelly," and overall much less smooth. Is there anything I can do about this?

[SCB]

In order to burn your .avi, you don't have to convert it to .mpg. All you have to do is burn it to a CD with Apple's Disc Burner or Toast (or whatever other program you may have). However, if you want to watch your movie on a standalone DVD player, then yes, you will have to convert your movie to a VCD. The reason why your movie is blockier and more pixellated is because your compressing a movie which is already in a highly compressed format. Although, if you watch it on a DVD player as opposed to your computer, you'll probably find that the quality is adequate. Also, you'll most likely end up with a higher quality movie if you use ffmpegX to convert your movie rather than converting it to a Toast VCD in Quicktime.

[Anonymous65]

The best video you can put on a CD-R and stay within the VCD or SVCD standard is to make a SVCD. Few software and hardware encoders do a great job with VCD encoding. For SVCD, use full bit rate and CBR mode. For a great looking VCD you need an uncompressed 720x480 source and TMPGEnc.

[tgpo]

and TMPGEnc.

This of course being the PC answer.

[bilestyle]

of COURSE another PC answer... it doesnt seem like anyone who has a PC pays attention that this forum is for MAC answers only. As much as i love the forums here i hope a lot of the people migrate to squeeds new forum to avoid the possabilities of having any PC related answers. IF you just have the avi to convert from you can probably use ffmpegx or mediapipe to encode to another format.. if its a really small avi file dont expect the quality to increase when encoding to a larger (vcd/svcd) format divx isnt the greates format to begin with (imho) so anything converted to divx first and then a superior format like SVCD isnt going to look THAT spectacular.

[nionlights]

Okay, thanks for the tip about getting ffmgpegX. But my initial problem still stands-the movie file(s) that i have in .avi format work beautifully, even at full screen on my comp. The converted mpg movie comes nowhere close to the quality of the avi. There has to be a way ON THE MAC to retain that original .avi quality when I go to a VCD, right? In other words, when playing the VCD on say, a tv screen, the quality is similar to the original divx movie.

[SCB]

Convert it to an SVCD for best results. Just make sure you have a G4; it takes FOREVER on a G3. You could also try converting it to an XSVCD with MPEG-1 video.

[squeed]

nionlights,

I am pretty sure that ffMpeg will take an .AVI file. You can use it to create the .mpg file that you are looking for and it should look fine.

I have been getting spectacular results with the new version of ffMpeg. The only thing I am not sure of is if it takes a .AVI.

You may also want to try AVI2MOV. I am 100% sure that ffMpeg takes .MOV files and converts them to .MPG for VCD or SVCD burning.
I just don't know what the quality of AVI2MOV is.

-Squeed

http://www.squeeds.com
VCD & SVCD for MAC