Video encoding (not TG)

[ske]

Well, parts of this topic have been brought up in earlier threads but mostly regarding resizing and dvd-ripping.. but I hope you'll bear with me.

I've been getting into a little bit of video editing/encoding lately (mainly GT4 drift vids yet ).. But I'm a bit stumped by the horrible quality per MB I get using WMV. I notice that eg VUK's TG eps are a hell of a lot better, higher screen size AND smaller in relative filesize

Does anyone have enough experience in encoding that they could tell me which settings/filters/etc to use when encoding my vids like that? If it's possible to encode like that directly from Vegas, that'd be a big plus.. but I realize Vegas don't have all the options apps like VirtualDub has. My XVid renders so far seem way yoo grainy, blocky and big... If needed, I could probably render the file using Huffyuv first, then convert in an outside app.. but since Vegas CAN encode XviD I'm hoping I wouldn't have to.

Another problem I'm having with XviD encoding is that I seem to get 16:9 letterboxing even though the actual clip is 4:3... resulting in both horizontal and vertical letterboxing

My vids are usually about 5 minutes in length -- and I'm aiming for 1mbps or less total (8mb/minute) with a screen res of 640x500 (or 640x480 for that matter)... which should be plenty when I look at the quality of those 350MB clips.

Any help or input will be greatly appreciated

Edit: Links to my first vids, btw... as you can see, the vid quality per MB leaves a lot to be desired

• "Helpless"
  "Dtcc volume 1"

(right click, save as.. )