Frustrated with down conversion! DVD9 to DVD5

[tonypro2]

I am trying to down convert a captured movie to make it fit on one DVD. I need about a 75%-80% reduction in bit rate. The DVD is encoded as progressive film according to DVD2AVI. I have tried two methods, neither of which is giving me much success. The first method is frameserving the VOBs to TMPGenc with DVD2AVI. When I try to encode using 3:2 pulldown to take advantage of the film nature, I get get horrible strobing effects during motion scenes. I have tried the auto IVTC mode of TMPGenc, but it doesn't help much. A full manual IVTC is too daunting a thought at this point.

My next try was using reMPEG - initially it looked like the perfect solution. Frame by frame analysis, preserving the structure. Unfortunately, almost every VOB file in the movie causes reMPEG to crash. For some reason, the first one worked, but each successive one can not be converted.

My last attempt will be using TMPGenc, but encoding at 29.9fps NTSC and loosing the film structure. This will sacrifice quality, but allow my sanity to be regained.

My basic question - what the heck are other people doing? If it is this hard to backup a DVD, I'll just buy two copies!

[tonypro2]

I see what I might have done wrong - I did not select "force film" in DVD2AVI. I am re encoding with TMPGenc now to test that theory...

[buckonine]

if i had a suggestion it would be to ditch tmpegenc and rempeg2. get a copy of CCE SP and use that for your mpeg-2 encoding/transcoding it's by far the best and fastest mpeg-2 encoder. there are many guides walking you through with that app.