I'm currently making SVCDs of a few TV shows with the following setup:

* I capture to MPEG2 with a Matrox G450etv card (at 704x480)
* I use FlaskMPEG (with the BBMPEG plug-in from the BBMPEG site) to convert to SVCD - VBR, MQuant=4, max bitrate=2376000, ave. bitrate=2112000.
* I use Nero to burn the SVCDs.

This allows me to easily fit the program (minus commercials) on a 700 MB CDR.

The quality is *OK*, but not great - definitely less than VHS. I'm not getting any macroblocks - it's just a little jumpy on pans and a bit distorted when panning past complex scenery. I've read that TMPGEnc is a better quality encoder, and I've played around with it a bit, but the reason I use FlaskMPEG is that I can scroll through the captured file and set multiple mark in/out points, saving the segments between commercials as distinct jobs (and this distinct files which can be accessed as seperate tracks on the SVCD). Working full time and trying to finish grad school, the time savings of setting all the edit points at once and letting it batch convert the segments overnight is great.

As far as I can tell, TMPGEnc only allows one mark in/out at a time. Is there a secret method or plug-in that would allow it to function in a similar way to FlaskMPEG? If so, I'd like to give it a shot. If not, I'll stick with FlaskMPEG because I don't have the time to piddle around with multiple edit/conversion sessions for each show recorded.

Anyone who knows of a fix, or how I might get better quality from FlaskMPEG and BBMPEG - I'd be forever grateful.

Thanks.