Best quality Mpeg1 and cropping?

[Steve_SpotOn]

OK I'm new to FFmpegX and I'm testing it in relation to other encoders.... so please excuse if I miss something basic.

I'm working from a high quality PAL QuickTime movie and compressing to Mpeg1. I'm using the MPEG1 (ffmepg) codec and setting for VCD PAL with de-interlace filter.
The encoded file has significant black borders left and right (top and bottom are clean to the edge). I try again with crop values inserted (yes even numbers) and the result is exactly the same.... does the crop work? I need to have a clean image to the edge and as original file has slight black (not as much as has appeared in the encode) from original video it does need cropping.

Also any ideas for improving the quality... I'm trying to create the best Mpeg1 videos for replay on a variety of PC's and Macs (so doesn't have to be the VCD format)... would pushing the video bitrate and/or video size help (tests so far have not been successful).

TIA

Steve

[major]

You should disable "Decode with Quicktime" for the manual crop to work. However, if your source movie is a Quicktime movie, "Decode with Quicktime" is currently forced to overcome a ffmpeg decoding bug. You should use mpeg2enc engine if your source is a Quicktime movie.

[Steve_SpotOn]

So if I use the ffmpeg codec and disable the 'decode with QuickTime' I can crop but it won't encode....
so I try your suggestion of the mpeg2enc engine... but I can't crop (even with disable the 'decode with QuickTime') ...

I guess I'm snookered (as we say in the UK)!

Is an option to convert the original QuickTime to some other high quality file format... any suggestions?

Steve

[major]

Currently, if the source is MOV, you can only crop with mencoder engine (ie no mpeg-2). However, you can use Quicktime built-in "mask" feature to crop.

If the source is AVI, you can also crop with ffmpeg engine.

This will surely improve in future versions.