The subtleties of burning/encoding

[buddycat]

Through a lot of trials , lots of errors and and time, I've been trying to find a reliable way convert my .avi files I've downloaded from time to time. My main program is Nero, which is not the greatest for convertng. I bought TMpgenc for my converting. I've been trying to find another program for authoring other than Nero for because I'm not happy with the encoding results. So I picked up DVDGui or some such for that. It, however, uses Nero as its burning agent.

I was wondering if, by using DVDGui, that it would eliminate my issues with the encoding (the animation looks a bit -- jittery, even after it's been converted to mpeg2 format) I've encountered with Nero? If this authoring program bypasses Nero's encoding and goes straight to the burning, would I finally get smoother results?

Or do I need to look at another free burning program (becasue I'm really tired of buying programs that seem to have the same results as all the rest and my wife is tired of my growls of anguish when I have a problem with)

By the way, I"m trying to work this all on my old WIN 98 computer because Nero on my XP does not play well with any other buring ptogram.
It'd be nice if I could use my older BAckpack external drive to burn with, but if I can get whatever to burn to the new one, I would.

[pchan]

1. TMPGEnc will encode from AVI to DVD(MPEG2) or VCD(MPEG1).

2. DVD authoring program e.g. DVDLab or TDA will author DVD menu + MPEG files to playable DVD contain in the Video_TS folder.

3. Use Nero to burn to DVD by just drag & drop the Video_TS into Nero. (Edit - use DVD Decrytor to burn in Win98)

[buddycat]

Thanks for the info, but correct me if I'm wrong - more $$$?

But, this give a better output even though I'm still using Nero to burn?