Blocky VCD & SCVD - not all encoders created equal

[aboutNothing]

I'm using Pinnacle Studio 7 and I found the VCD and SVCD mpegs to be too blocky from my tastes. It wasn't bad for simple scenes, but outside with lots of color and movement gave it fits.

I tried the default TMPGenc VCD encoding, and found the quality of the produced MPG to exceed even the SVCD from Pinnacle. I post this for two reasons.
1) It surprised me that mpeg encoding from two different encoders could produce different results. I figured they all used the same codec so they should produce the same results - shows you how much I know!

2) Since 1 seems to be true, what encoders would you recommend?

- Dave

[resnullius]

cce tmpegenc or if you're very patient, media cleaner pro they all give fairly similar results