High Quality Encoding AVI -> MPEG2

[vl0001]

Hi,

Pulling my hair out trying to encode a high quality conversion from AVI to MPEG2.

I've tried a number of software packages, numerous settings but the results are blocky and nowhere near the original.

The original is 24bpp, 25fps, Xvid and I've tried ffmpegx and compressor with all the high quality check boxes, 2-pass encoding, Video BitRate of ~4Mbs, letterbox to keep original aspect ratio - you name it, i've tried it.

Just wondering if the average results are due to settings, the software or just the inability to encode AVI's to MPEG2 at a quality close to the original...

Any help much appreciated - apologies if this has been answered elsewhere - I've looked!!

[aedipuss]

most likely just a low quality source file. xvid is already highly compressed and not intended to be used to compress again to mpeg-2. using a bitrate of 8-9mbps when encoding to mpeg-2 may give you a result close to the look of the xvid if you aren't re-sizing it also.

[jagabo]

4 Mb/s is probably just too low for the material.