blocky encoding

[thebestmixes]

i have upgraded to ver 7 from 6, i have used your software for yonks and it has been great, but with 7 the quality im getting is awful, what i do is take 3 movies mabye a mkv or an avi or mp4 and make a multi dvd with menus etc, never had a problem always worked so well and easy, but now the final product makes the films look all blocky and def not the quality of the original and i have played with settings and tried several failed versions on 2 different computers, im a computer techie by trade so im not a fool but im lost to why it takes a perfect avi and makes it look so bad, i changed the setting from auto as several suggested and still very poor quality, i set it so it wouldnt encode and just copy the source that failed, can anyone suggest the best settings for doing this and ill give it one more go before i drop this and find another program, im running windows 7 x64 with a ati radeon r7 200 gpu, i just take 3 films under 4gb and want a menu driven disk for 3 films so im not asking for much, any settings u may suggest??

[Claire]

Hello,

To start it would be best if you could post your log file of the conversion, you can find that here
C:\ProgramData\VSO\ConvertXToDVD\7\Log

The only big change between version 6 and version 7 is the menu template creator which was added, so the encoding engine was not adjusted or changed (or not so in regards to how quality could be affected).

I'd be happy to send you older version 6s if you want to test with those.

When you load the files in ConvertXtoDVD and if you play them in the preview window on the right side of the interface how do the files play there before conversion? Any "blockiness"?

[thebestmixes]

ive gone back to ver5 now it seemed ok when i did one title, i tried 4 titles and the total was under 4gb but it all went very poor picture again, i never had this issue before im wondering if its the gpu causing this, i have 3 pc`s on the go all trying different things with mixed results,i thought by not allowing the encoding and making it use the source only the end result would be just as good but with a menu, i was wrong,......i just finished a 4 title with 2 page menu and its gone the same with a fresh install of ver5. wish i had never uninstalled when it did work....lol

[Claire]

Hello,

It can't be your GPU unless you have the option checked to use hardware optimizations (and therefore hardware decoding, as there is no hardware encoding with ConvertXtoDVD).

I think the different results you are seeing are mainly influenced by how many files you convert in one project. Depending on the total project size (playing time duration) the files will be compressed more or less to not go over the target size and this is what affects quality.

The two settings that will affect your quality (assuming you leave the option to FUll D1) is encoding options, (automatic, sp, mp, or log) and target size.

We recommend following the advise given by the conversion adviser (street light ) in the lower left hand corner of the interface. Best leave the encoding option to automatic and (for ideal results it to be on Automatic SP or MP) you can even increase the target size and convert and see if your final end result is still small enough to fit on a single layer DVD.

[thebestmixes]

i think u may be on to something not sure why this version cant handle 4 small movies, so what i did was i uninstalled everything cleaned all out downloaded the latest version and did one movie which looked fine i assumed i had fixed it and did the 4 again and the picture went blocky again very poor definition so i will try 2 movies this time and then 3 see what happens.

[thebestmixes]

well i did a 3 title multi movie disk and slightly better im still not sure why the picture still isnt as good as the source, 3 movies total 2.1gb still looks poor to my eyes not sure what else to try so any setting suggestions? why cant it just copy the source and add a menu without all this...

[Coral]

It would help if you post the specs of the movies. You can use the freeware MediaInfo to get the picture resolution and frame rate. Keep in mind that for PAL DVD the picture resolution is 720X576 and that of NTSC is 720X480. So if your movies are in HD resolution you are bound to see a difference in quality.