how's it goin? i use TMPGEnc and was wondering what bitrate i should encode my mpeg2's at when converting from avi files. i've read several of the guides but most of them reccomend 4500kbps. this creates a bigger than necessary file i feel. i was thinking if the avi is 200mbs, the mpeg shouldn't have to be bigger than 650mb's should it? lemme kno. thanx !!!

avi is a container, meaning it can include different types/compression schemes of video/audio ranging from uncompressed to extremly compressed.

you need to read some more guides, http://www.doom9.org is recommended.

ok man i've been reading up and after using the freeware gspot i see that my avi files were done with the divx encoder. apparently these were ripped from a dvd source by a divx gui. still though after some intense reading, i can't find a good comparison , as far as size goes, between the avi [divx] files and mpeg2. how much should one recompress with a mpeg encoder before quality is lost from the original divx file or avi file. thanx for the reply......

quality will always be lost.

as stephan said, quality will always be lost, but perhaps you won't notice it if you use the bitrate you suggested in first post (200MB divx to 650MB mpeg). probably you can go lower too.

i believe cce will give you better quality than tmpgenc.