converting vids w/o quality loss

[majax79]

I have mpg and avi (xvid and divx) vids that I want to convert to another format without loosing the picture quality.

I have a ton of converting and editing programs but I'm not extremely knowledgeable. What should I be looking for and does it really matter what program I use or is the output settings what I really need to tweak?

[guns1inger]

What do you want to do with the Xvid/Divx files ? If you are doing this to make much smaller files, then quality loss is unavoidable. If you are doing this to get files to play on your standalone player, quality loss is unavoidable.

You can use Divx/Xvid to get comparable quality at around half the bitrate of mpeg-2 (assuming the mpeg-2 encoding wasn't done at a low bitrate to begin with). if you are looking for smaller files that playback on standalone players, I get acceptable results from AutoGK at around 100MB per 10 minutes at 640 x nnn

[majax79]

I'm cutting the vids down into specific clips.

I use avidemux for avis.
I use videoredo for pretty much everything else.

[guns1inger]

If you use both of those correctly, you will be getting almost lossless results. Both are capable of exporting while only having to encode the cut GOPs.