.mov to .mpg

[nurv]

Well i made a 30 second animation in after effects and the resolution i used was ntsc 720 480. Now i used the TMPGEnc to convert the file to mpg, the quality just completley stinks. The original file is 596 megs and it compressed it to 4.11mb. I gotta be doing sumtin wrong here. All i want is the quality to match the original file and to be played on a dvd player. Any help would be appreciated.

[kinneera]

Well, 596MB to 4.11MB is 145:1 compression, which certainly explains the loss of image quality! You'll need to give more details about your TMPGEnc encoding parameters.

[nurv]

well, the original animation was set up for ntsc dv widescreen 720x480 Pixel Aspect Ratio of D1/DV NTSC Widescreen Frame Aspect Ratio 9:5. and fps is 29.97.
Settings i used in TMPGEnc are as follows:

Video:
Stream Type: MPEG1 Video
Size: 720x480
Frame Rate: 29.97
Rate Control Mode: Constant Bitrate(CBR)
Bit Rate: 1150
Motion Search Precision: High Quality (Slow)

Advanced:
Video Source Type: Non-Interlaced(Progressive)
Feild Order: Top Feild Firs(Feild A)
Source Aspect Ratio: 1:1(VGA)
Video Arrangement Method: Fullscreen Keep Aspect Ratio (automatically changes it to 320x240, dont know y)
System:
Stream Type: MPEG1 System(automatic).

Using that right there is making the file ALOT smaller causing it to lose most quality. It is also not keeping the size of the origanal file which is 720x480.

[kinneera]

A number of comments I can make:

1. 720x480 at 1150Kbps is going to look terrible no matter what. Either resize to 352x240, or throw more bits at it.
2. Your source aspect ratio should be 4:3, not 1:1 (unless the aspect ratio seems to be OK)
3. The video arrangement method doesn't change the resolution - I'm not sure what you mean by that

Also, if it is animation, change the quantization matrix from default to CG/Animation. Apply a smoother of some sort, spatial smoothers seem to work well with animation.