DV to MPEG 1 question

[m_ajmera]

I am trying to convert my DV videos to MPEG 1 and burn them on a CD. The DV videos are 720 * 480 while MPEG 1 is 320 * 240. Is it necessary that I crop the videos before converting them. I am using Avi2Cd for the conversion. Will cropping them while they are still DV get me better quality?

[setarip]

No, you don't want to crop them (which means cutting off portions) from 720x480 to 320x240 (or 352x240, which is also acceptable for VCD) - you want to resize them to 320x240 (or, once again, 352x240).

Let us know of your success ;>}

[m_ajmera]

Oops, sorry about the confusion, I meant resize the videos and not crop them. Anyways I did try both
1. Resizing them when they are Dv and convert them to MPEG
2. Convert them to MPEG and let avi2cd resize it.

Either ways the quality seems almost comparable, maybe 2 yeilds slightly better results, the file size is also slightly larger for 2.
Any comments?

Also does anyone know of a program that'll let me capture DV from my 1394, let me edit it and convert it to MPEG in one pass, right now I am using premiere to edit and convert to avi and then use avi2cd to convert to mpeg.

Thanks
Mayank

[setarip]

I would suggest that you do the resizing under whatever program (AVI2VCD or ny favorite, TMPGEnc) you are using to convert the files to VCD format - after all that's their specialty.