newbie svcd encoding questions

[kidhavoc765]

I have an amd athlon xp 2400+, 2.0ghz system with an ata100 80GB hard drive, 1024mb of ddr300 ram, 128mb geforcefx 5200 ddr video card and am running Windows XP professional. I have been using TMPGenc to encode from either dvd rips or divx avi files to svcd. I am curious, are there any programs out there that are faster and/or more efficient in encoding from a dvd or divx source to svcd than TMPGenc? Likewise, I've read guides on here on ideas for using the software settings but are there any settings that will specificly increase the speed of encoding without hurting the image quality too much? Also, I've run into issues of the final svcd having several parts that look blocky or choppy, especially on dark scenes in movies. I've tried encoding at variable bit rate 2 pass as well as constant bit rate and even constant quality. Could someone give me advice as to how to clean up the video to help reduce blockyness in the picture? Also I have heard that svcd can have mpeg 5.1 audio instead of just stereo, are there any guides or links on the net someone could point me to as to learn information on this? Thanks for any help anyone can give.

[ZippyP.]

I am curious, are there any programs out there that are faster and/or more efficient in encoding from a dvd or divx source to svcd than TMPGenc?

...are there any settings that will specificly increase the speed of encoding without hurting the image quality too much?

Could someone give me advice as to how to clean up the video to help reduce blockyness in the picture?

Also I have heard that svcd can have mpeg 5.1 audio instead of just stereo, are there any guides or links on the net someone could point me to as to learn information on this?

I hear that Cinemacraft Encoder (CCE) and Mainconcept encoder are faster and give good results.

Try "Motion Estimate" under Motion Search Precision, it's faster and the results are good to my eyes.

Check the box "Soften block noise" under the quantize matrix tab and experiment with some higher numbers in the two boxes. Some people say that it softens the overall video but try it for yourself. The block noise comes from the source video, the encoding method won't eliminate it completely.

Try this guide for an SVCD with AC3 sound.

Good luck! 8)