Interlaced and progressive encoding

[doson]

I want to convert some files from different sources to DVD, and I need to know if I should do interlaced or progressive (non-interlace) encoding. Actually, I tried both ways and didn't see much difference, so that's why I'm confused...
1) Should I encode progressive when my source id DivX/XviD?
2) If my source is DVD, should I encode the same type as the source? (some of my DVDs are progressive, others are not)
3) What about other formats such as QuickTime, Windows Media, ASF?
4) And most imprtant, when encoding from DV camera?

I really appreciate if someone could help me out with this

[Poplar]

It's a loaded question, but I'll try my best.

First of all, you are converting from different sources to DVD? Well, if this is what you really mean, you need to create DVD-compliant video and audio streams, with decent quality. You don't want to put some crap on your expensive DVD medium. So you can forget QuickTime, ASF, WMF, because most of these files are not worth being stored on DVD.

DV video can be very high quality and therefore worth the try. You need to convert them to DVD compliant mpeg-2 audio and video streams. The best encoder to do that is CCE. DV video is interlaced, so you just leave them that way. For film sources, you need to encode them as progressive frames. If your source is NTSC film, you need to do IVTC and 3:2 pulldown. Since I don't have a DVD burner, I don't know what authoring software you should use.

Good luck.