I am a newbie on board. I have a lot of DivX and Xvid AVI downloaded from the internet that I need to burn them on DVD. The AVI are usually low to medium quality.
Before KDVD, I was using TMPGEnc Plus with 2-pass VBR and avg bitrate of 4800 Kbs. Results were quite acceptable except the output file size and some loss in sharpness and details.

I am looking for a template that can optimize the quality of the conversion. I tried my first half-D1 KDVD but when I watched it on my standalone player, it was quite blocky which is typical for low bitrate in the MPEG-2.

Am I on the right track to use KVCD/KDVD to optimize the conversion of low quality AVI?

Some guides pls.

no surprise for your bad results....
the source is divx/xvid, 2 pass vbr, avg bitrate 4000....
seems that you don't read any guide yet, then you don't get good results!
take a look in the guides in main page:

http://www.kvcd.net

you will find everything you need!

ahh...we don't support download files,
please, read the disclaimer !

...welcome in forum Uruk-hai !

Such a high Average Bitrate and bad results weather using the 2-pass mode.

it's not an reverse "miracle" my friend EM,.....

think in his source !

But with an average of 4800kbps I think you can't see a difference between CQ and 2-pass. But CQ is faster even with prediction.

Thank U for all response. Trust me. I did read the guides before posting. However that it does not imply that I understand all of them fully and this was the reason I got bad result.

There are certain areas that confused me:
1) The avisynch script referred by black prince assumes a DVD or clean source, in my case my source is low-medium quality DivX/Xivd
2) I could not find an approprite template for 352x240. There wasn't one for MPEG2 and the one for MPEG1 is LBR (low bit rate). I need something better. That was the reason I settled on half-D1 although I know well that I should pick 352x240.

Is KDVD only meant for shrinking DVD into smaller size?
Do I really need to use an avisynch script to frameserve to TMPGEnc before I can get decent result out of the exisiting templates?

Uruk-hai wrote:

"However that it does not imply that I understand all of them fully and this was the reason I got bad result. "
yes, really!

"...in my case my source is low-medium quality DivX/Xivd "
for this reason i wrote:
"the source is divx/xvid" and "think in his source ! "

"I could not find an approprite template for 352x240. There wasn't one for MPEG2 and the one for MPEG1 "
maybe i'm wrong but you can't encode mpeg2 at 352x240!

"Is KDVD only meant for shrinking DVD into smaller size? "
yes and without loose quality but the source have to be clean!

"Do I really need to use an avisynch script to frameserve to TMPGEnc before..."
it's a better choice.

you need to know D.I.K.O. , you're lucky....take a look :

http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=79

we don't know anything better for divx/xvid sources than D.I.K.O.

You're wrong.

it's the ONE AND ONLY choice when the source is a divx and the destination is a KDVD.
Oh... no, there is an other choice : NEVER DO KDVD FOM DIVX.

Phil wrote:

"You're wrong. "
yeah...
i never did and don't knew about 352x240 mpeg2...standalones play it?
but i wrote -> maybe ...then i'm 50% right! (maybe)

"ONE AND ONLY choice.."
only?.....then here i'm 100% wrong !

"NEVER DO KDVD FOM DIVX"
yeah, here you are 100% right!