Fist of all will a mpeg 1 video clip with a proper and intact gop sequence have a better picture quality than one without a proper and intact gop sequence? If the answer is no then just reply no and don't read any futher, this might be confusing.

I capture video with a Snazzi card not sure witch one I got it second hand, but it can capture up to 4 megs per second if that describes it enuff.

I am using it to capture tv shows to put to disk, I edit the large files with Ifilm, leaving just a few frames from the commercials left in so I can get the most of the show. Then I use Virtual dub to see the gop sequence. I go till there is no commercial frames and were there is a start of a gop sequence (I frame) say that frame is 30 and say my end frame is 59 last b frame. I bring it into Panasonic, and set the frames to be encoded to 31 to 60, and start the encode. I set the frames to be encoded that way because Virtual dub starts out with frame 0.

Is frame 0 the same frame as frame 1 in panosonic?

Next problem, I bring the newly encoded file back into virtualdub and find that my file has a first gop string of 19 frames and it usually ends in a p frame. After that first set of gop's the rest are fine and intact. I am using a gop sequence of IBBPBBPBBPBBPBB with 29.97 fps.

Why does this happen?

I have also noticed, when I bring either my encoded file or my sorce file into Tmpeg and do a source range, that the amount of frames do not match between any three video programs I am using.

Does Panosonic mpeg encoder rewrite the gop sequence, and the amount of frames that are being encoded don't match up for a complete gop sequence? If it does write a new gop then is there a magic number to divide the amount of total frames by? I have tried dividing by 15 (I to the last B), and tried 16 (I to I) and had the same results as described earlier in my post.

Is there a basic gop to frame number utillity for easy encoding out there? Or a program that will write a new gop once I have my encode file done?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thank you for your time