I have DV from a minidv camera thru firewire and I need help in converting it

[Help me im stupid]

I am not well informed about this and I did read the dv to divx faq, but need some further guiding (see my username). I can learn fast though. Here is a copy and paste of my begging for help on your divx boards (before i noticed this board):
"So far I have about 1GB with like 1000 bitrate or something. divx 5.0.5 with adware btw (same results with free 5.0.3) And the quality sucks, it's all "liney" (like it's coming apart), blurry and squarish... Oh and of course I am using virtual dub, the regular one from the site. I tried xvid and i had similar results.
To sum up, 700-1300 bitrate and still crappy results and large size. And I have a crappy video card, but AFAIK it should not matter. Thank you."

Ok, so I will still mess around a bit. But I don't know anything about the whole de-interlace, multipass, what's going on. What bitrate to use. Sorry if I sound stupid or annoying, but if someone could help me (prefferably through instant messaging) I would be very grateful. I need this by Saturday to send to Europe. I am in US. .....so actually, would I have to convert it to pal? i dont think it would matter since they'd just watch it on their pc. My main concern is, I see divx movies with great quality and small size, why doesn't any of that happen for me? Thank you!

[lemon]

A bitrate of 1000 is too low for a full-image (720x480)
You can raise the bitrate (try 4000) or reduce image.
A 512x384 resolution should be ok, it has a square pixel aspect ratio, and is small enough to be able to be good compressed with a 1000 bitrate.
Anyway, you should try a 2-pass compression, it improves greatly the quality (normally).
Other thing you can try is to apply some smoothing filter.

Ah, and since your source is interlaced (if it comes from a DV camera that has not progressive mode) you should deinterlace it always before resizing).

[Help me im stupid]

I did try to de-interlace and the results were good, but "not good enough" so I guess i should resize. Thanks. I'm on lunch now so when I get back I will post more.

[Help me im stupid]

umm I don't really get why it is 512x384, can you confirm that? (my size is 720x480 as of now and I am thinking it should be 512x341) But i suppose you do know better, but I don't want my video to be screwed up....... how does it work exactly? i read the faq and yours doesn't seem to be correct, but all I am saying is that I don't understand it and i just want to confirm it wasn't a typo ( I am not questioning you master)

[lemon]

720x480 is not square pixels.
Tv does not use square pixels. Computer screens use square pixels.
Screen proportion is always 4/3 /except in 16/9 TVs).
Computer screens have square pixels (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, an exception is 1280x1024 that is not square). TV uses not square pixels.
512x384 is 4/3 proportion with square pixels, ready to be seen on computer screen. 720x480 must be resized (on computer screen) to cover the whole screen, although it is good to see on TV.

[Help me im stupid]

oh.....well actually since it is divx I can only watch it (or at least will only watch it) on the pc. And virtualdubmod, btw, won't let me choose it otherwise, it has some weird thingy... I dunno. But thanks though.