quality degraded after encode

[vertigo]

First let me say that I appreciate all the help i've had so far here. Many are very knowledgeable.

My only problem is now, I am coverting from avi to mpg (to make an svcd). After the encode, the quality is seriously degraded. What tweaks can I use? I tried noise reduction, ghosting, and sharpness, but in the black areas of movies, it was way too saturated and you can see blocks, whereas in the original, it is a perfect black background. When I click on custom color, under the advanced tab, nothing happens. How do you set up custom colors or how do I make these adjustments?

Thanks again.

[Gorfunion]

i have the same problem. i know how u feel. i haven't found a way to fix this yet, but i am still learning. i went ahead and just d/l'ed the mpeg files ready for vcd as a ways of going around it. does nobody know what this problem is?

[vertigo]

I figured it out. You have to *double-click* custom color correction. Then a box will pop up. I then set the RGB for each color down -30. This fixed the problem!

Thanks!

[Gorfunion]

so it's not so pixelated in the dark areas now? i'm gonna have to try that. thanks for the post.