MPG>AVI (VirtualDubMod)>MPG Framerate Problem??

[deadlettr]

I have a homemade concert DVD sourced mpg I received that I'm trying to redo (way too dark and the colors are off). This mpg is NTSC 640X480 material. I don't know if this makes a difference, but the original DVD was authored by one of the Sonic programs as it has sonic "stuff" spread throughout the disc like a disease (not sure what all the extra files do but if you drop them into notepad they have comments about it being a sonic disc) - point being, the show is only 60 minutes (little over 1.6 gigs total), but was split over three VOBs on the disc and that when I ripped the video from the disc I had a HECK of a time getting the split VOBed material back into one mpg.....yep, tried DVDDecrypter....Shrink....VOBEdit....anyways, the way I got it to take was with VOBEdit and even at that, at the points where the VOBs were joined I ended up with a .5 second audio lag (total of 1 second by the end of the mpg) that I corrected on the side so it's no longer an issue, but I wanted to mention the Sonic stuff as I've never ripped from one of those discs before.

ANYWAYS, now to the problem:
I've taken the mpg and fed it into VirtualDubMod so I can make the changes to the color/brightness levels and am actually really happy with what I've managed to do (I can actually see people on the stage!). I "Save As" and use the Huffy AVI as the format (which I've never had problems with when pulling from VHS). After the avi is done I check it and don't see any problems. I've then used Vegas 6, Canopus Procoder, and TMPEnc to convert to mpg (actually used Vegas first, but after my problem I tried the other two for troubleshooting). I've used both my _filtered_ avi from VirtualDubMod, as well as using NO filters from VirtualDubMod (so it's not the filters doing anything).
When I create a DVD with these files, I end up with,....well at first I thought I was having some kind of motion blur problem but I'm pretty sure that's not it.....what I "think" I'm having is some kind of framerate problem as it looks a bit similiar to that blur you'd see on a bad PAL to NTSC conversion, but on a tiny scale....when watching on my TV/standalone DVD player it almost looks like that blurring you'd see on on your computer monitor when watching a video that is interlaced (those streaks you get)-fast motion on screen is like a hairline "stopmotion" action and I thought I was imagining it at first it's so small, but this is on my standalone player....I swear that on a monitor (which is smaller) I really can't see this motion so I'm not sure if it's showing on both.
Now here's some additonal info that I find interesting:
-Out of the encoders I've tried the TMPGEnc DOES NOT result in this problem. I've done a test burn of all three on the same disc and watched them one after another and the Vegas/Canopus conversions will have this problem but not the TMPGEnc. I "can" live with this I suppose to get my final mpg, but I'd really like to use Vegas (my default) so I can do some fades/transitions to make things look better.
-When I first had the thought in my mind that this might be a framerate problem I used GSpot to check my original mpg (29.970), my Vitualdub avi (29.971), and the re-encoded mpg (Vegas conversion 29.970). Hey I thought,...here's my problem so I went into VirtualDubMod and changed the framerate to 29.970000 (couple extra zeros for good luck)-VirtualDubMod will default back to 29.970 BUT when I checked my outputed avi with GSpot it now shows 29.970 (not 29.971) HOWEVER, this did not fix my problem....all files I'm testing with now show 29.970 when checked and I'm still having issues. I haven't worked with VirtualDubMod before, but I have used VirtualDub many times when pulling from VHS without any problems so I'm not sure where the avi encoding difference problem is between the two as I'd figured they work the same, hence my thought that maybe the original Sonic DVD auhoring did something weird.

So any ideas? Like I said, I can use TMPGEnc if forced to but it'll really hamper any additional work I can do on the file. Or maybe someone has some ideas on a way I can work on the original mpg's colors/brightness? As mentioned, this is only about 60 minutes long so the encoding engine isn't worrying me as I can crank the bitrate up high and I really can't see a difference at those levels of encoding.

Sorry for the length of this, but I'd rather try to get as many details layed down to try and help with any questions. I really appreciate any help!

[mikiem]

My guess would be that it's just the encoding process, with a slight chance made worse if the colors/color range in the filtered video are too far off. Easy way to tell I think would be to create a small clip using a single frame in Vegas, then encode that -- if it shows distortion it shouldn't be fps related.

As for another way to do it, Vegas has some decent color controls, but you'd have to first render to avi (I use DGIndex -> Avisynth -> V/Dub) or use VFAPI etc. as Vegas does not like mpg2.

[jagabo]

Vegas and Canopus probably got the field order of the HuffYUV AVI backwards.

[deadlettr]

Thanks for both replies. Shortly after I posted I had a wonderful experience of a hard drive crash on one of my systems (hmmm,...Dec 31-makes me wonder if Mr. Gates is telling me I didn't pay my toll this year ha!) and I'm trying to figure out the damage, ie, exactly what video material was lost so it may take me a couple days to look into either of your ideas. I did a quick check on line and haven't really cleared in my head exactly "what" VFAPI does, so I'll read around. DGIndex looks interesting from this site: http://neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec.html, but from your chain listing it looks like it would end up going through VirtualDub again (of course it wouldn't be the "Mod" version so maybe that'll fix it).
Of course, I never even thought of the field order as being a problem. I'll have to go into the config on Vegas and reverse it as an experiment when I'm done cleaning up the mess from my HD blowup.
If/when I figure it out I'll try to post a note here in case anyone else comes across it and needs help. It's amazing how much I'm able to work things out on my own just by searching previously posted topics so maybe this will help someone else later.

[mikiem]

Good luck with the hard drive - I'd suggest checking out the Easy Recovery line from Ontrack.

Otherwise, VFAPI works the same as DGIndex thru Avisynth, where you have a fake avi file essentially that can be used as input to various editing prog. & encoders. VFAPI is a bit old, and not as accurate when it comes to color conversions as the Avisynth method, but since it works with Vegas and Avisynth doesn't...