How to decode black color properly?

[Keffie]

No matter which proggie or combo I try it seems that they all have a little problem with black/almost black color (DVD to VCD). When there's a lot of it (like night scenes, etc), there are always numerous pixel blocks dancing on the screen when viewed on a big TV. This effect is less of a pain on a PC monitor. Any ideas how to get rid of these?

[MITSUI_1]

If you're using TMPGE:

Go into "simple" color correction under the advanced tab.

Set Brightness to -3

Set Contract to +8 to +20

Set Gamma to -5 to -10

Be sure to try different settings for "Output YUV as YCbCr not CCIR601" on the quantize matrix window too.

Encode a clip where you've seen this problem.

If it still persists, bump the above down one more on "brightness."
If the problem stops but you can't see anything you probably lowered brightness too much.

Repeat and rinse as desired until ya like the result.

All those dancing macro block effects are eating bandwidth. You'll notice your quality go up if/when you fix this.