Equipment:
AMD 1.2ghz Thunderbird / ATI AIW 7500 capture card / Maxtor 7200 80gb HD / FIC AZ11EA mobo - All ViaTech 4-in-1 and ATI capture drivers current.

Here's the scenario:
I am capping an old skate video (Powell Peralta Bones Brigade Video 2 - Future Primitive) with composite input and converting to SVCD -- I've had fair to good results working with Intervideo WinDVD-R (which is convenient, but yields unacceptable when played on my Mintek 1600)

Direct captures with the AIW7500 using WinDVD-R with a custom MPEG2 profile (2700 bitrate @ 480x480 / 192kb mpeg2 audio - with GOP = 2 / SubGOP = 1 - motion vectors at 16 /16 or 32/32 (doesn't seem to matter)) still yield ghosting (blurring) on high motion scenes -- which, of course, there's plenty of when your capturing a skate video...


So since the lazy method (heheh) isn't working, I'm looking to capture and convert *properly* using VirtualDub to TMPGEnc, but I've found the pre-made templates - well, *lame*...
I have a 22mb VDub capture (640x480 using PicVideo codec @ quality 19 - few dropped frames) ready on my HD awaiting conversion...

No problems with frameserving the multipart AVI to TMPGEnc, but I tried CCE with dismal results...


I've tried the standard TMPGEnc MPEG2 template with *poor* results - tons of block noise and motion blurring - I've tried softening block noise @ 35... no better...

Encode time isn't an issue -- I'm more than willing to slave out a machine for 8-10 hours doing a proper (clean) encode.

Question: Am I on the right path?
I found that tweaking the GOP/SubGOP settings in WinDVR helped eliminate 'blocking' on the custom MPEG2 profile I set up, so my thought is that this can be applied to TMPGEnc as well. Higher settings produced more blurring though... which I'm trying to reduce (or eliminate)...

Problem is, GOP settings are a bit over my head at the moment - point me in the right direction anyone?

Obviously, I'd like an SVCD-compliant MPEG2 conversion @ 480x480 where the high motion scenes are crisp -- DVD quality is not expected, but I'd like it to be watchable -- How is this possible?

Thanks for reading by the way...