How to capture MPEG1 like a Professional VCD?

[hfurman]

I've been tinkering around with VCD, SVCD and MiniDVDs. I'm a little disappointed with either the quality or the time duration that can fit on a CD-R/W. Just recently I got an MPEG1 352x288 25fps 1152kbit/sec file, from a consumer VCD (one you would buy for a title film), and the quality was too good. How was it done, I've used TMPGEnc, LIGOS and ATI AIW and never come close to this. I would think it may have been professionally rendered with a hardware encoder? Can anyone tell me what I can do to obtain this quality and compression?

[moderntimes99]

I use a VideoOne real-time mpeg1 encoder, using an Optibase should give even better quality still. But you should definitely be able to get a similar quality using a software encoder if you are encoding from a really good source... What is your source in this case?

[Al Bundy]

Al wants to know the same thing. TMPGEnc is nice, but not nice enough.
I've seen some amazing VCDs. Even a DVD rip to VCD doesn't even come close. Generally speaking, the VCD picture created with TMPEnc does look good. A prof. VCD does look better.

Al wants to play with the prof. thingy they used. Gimme one.