AVI to DVD Questions

[RdM642]

I'd like some advice.

In my home I have a WHS, a few PCs, two WD TV LIVE and one O!Play.

In addition to SD DVD on ISO, I have a number of avi files of films. typical size 2 avi files per film of is 45 minutes on 700 or more mb (I supposed for vcd). I own the full Nero 8.

My question is about the AVI's. I was thinking about converting them to DVD or MKV.

There would be some advantage to me in that I would like to to place chapters.

I am unconcerned with size of finished files since disk space for me is about $0.07/GB and full sized 4GB films I have on ISO cost me $0.28 a piece to store.

Questions:
1) Is there any visual acuity advantage to upconverting these 45minute/700 MB? Or is everything that could be recovered completely lost when it was down converted? I have some reason to want chapters, but I am curious as to whether there is any way to get better than what I have with AVI's or if indeed it will be worse?

2) I am unable to find what encoder Nero 8 uses. Does anyone know if it is one of the known encoders, an especially good one, or not as good as some of the free encoders?

3) I am unable to figure out if I can do this in batch with Nero. Do any of the free solutions with best free encoders do this in batch but also have the ability to place chapters at a user defined interval?

Thank you in advance

[jagabo]

Some advanced upscalers ("super resolution") may improve sharp edges a little bit (less aliasing artifacts, see http://www.thedeemon.com/ for examples, and be aware that his examples are cherry picked) but with highly compressed sources they will accentuate artifacts too. It's generally not worth it.

If you want to add chapters to your AVI files I would recommend you just remux them into an MKV container with something like MkvMuxGui.

[RdM642]

Thank you.