Better quality from ReplayTV MPEG2 => DivX

[wrenhunter]

Hi

I've recorded shows on a ReplayTV 5040 (RTV) and transferred them to my PC. The RTV apparently uses MPEG2, or a variant thereof. Using VirtualDubMpeg2, I can convert a 2 hour movie from ~3GB file from the RTV to a much smaller DivX (5.0.3), but the quality is noticeably degraded, compared to the original and to other DivX films I've seen. It's about as good as a Vcr-Vcr dub, if you've ever had the misfortune to see one of those.

I am using the defaults as specified on the How-to's on this site. Any advice on config settings within VDub to improve quality? I've searched the forums and seen some items on RTV but none addressing this item.

Thanks,

wren

[Cyrl]

My first suggestion if you plan on converting it to another format after the fact is to use High quality when you record, 3gb for 2 hours tells me you were using medium....

Second, the Replay TV mpegs are interlaced (60 fields per second, 30 interlaced frames), I'm not sure if you are deinterlacing before you do the conversion, or if your encoder can even do it, but it's just a simple Deinterlace (even Field) in TMPGENC....

My best suggestion is get a DVD burner, the replay MPG's dont' even need to be changed at all to be DVD compliant (well mostly) and make great DVD's...