I know converting a lossy XVID to a DVD is not the best way to go, but that's what I have to deal with. I personally put all of my XVIDs onto a USB flash drive and stick it into the USB port on my Philips DVP5990 standalone, but I have a ton of XVIDs I want to share with friends who don't have an XVID player. I normally use NeroVision, but it has horrible quality and choppy playback from PAL to NTSC conversion. So far the easiest way I have found to do this was to use HCEnc using FAVC as the front end. For audio I just retained the AC3 audio that was already in the XVID. For the HC Options I used the Quality preset, 2 Pass VBR, and changed the CPU Core from HC Built In to MultiCoreEnc Number 4. I didn't touch anything in Advanced Scripting and used the default MPEG matrix. It encoded a LOT faster than NeroVision, but I would have to say that there was no real improvement in quality. The end result was pretty grainy and pixelated. What would be the best software to use that will give me the highest image quality possible? I have a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM, but I could care less about encoding speed. From what I've read, HCEnc should give me the best quality? Are there any settings I should change in FAVC, like something in Advanced Scripting or changing the Matrix?
It's very difficult to answer without being able to look at the xvid and the result - but the way you describe the results, it sounds as if the bitrate is too low. Have you tried Avstodvd ? http://sourceforge.net/projects/avstodvd/ Also uses HCenc, but it does the PAL > Ntsc in a good way by using DGpulldown.
Well there will always be a certain choppiness when 25fps is converted to 29.97. I've found Nero Vision 4's quality to be quite acceptable in general although pans do jerk a bit. With FAVC the defaults should work fine, although I would leave HCenc at 'built in'. And FAVC does use pulldown (as does ConvertXtoDVD and DVD Flick, but Nero doesn't). What is the running time and what size are the source AVIs?
