can someone help me encode this video?

[ssjkakaroto]

hi there, i was trying to encode (with xvid 1.0b2) a quick passage of the game mario3 that was captured with huffyuv but for some reason even at quantizer 2 the image looks very inferior to the original, i tried changing all possible options but it didnt matter (and this happens with other codecs too!)
can anyone tell me what am i doing wrong or is it just impossible to encode this video in good quality?
here's some sshots:
Frame 1 Uncompressed (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/1unc.png)
Frame 1 Xvid (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/1xvid.png)
Frame 58 Uncompressed (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/58unc.png)
Frame 58 Xvid (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/58xvid.png)
Frame 209 Uncompressed (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/209unc.png)
Frame 209 Xvid (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/209xvid.png)
Uncompressed movie (14MB) (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/Super%20Mario%20Bros%203%20(J)%20%5bhuffyuv%5d.avi)
Compressed movie (1MB) (http://alunos.fis.unb.br/~aaron/mario/Super%20Mario%20Bros%203%20(J)%20%5bxvid%5d.avi)

thanks in advance

[Teegedeck]

Now, I've always wanted to see something that's even more difficult for an MPEG4 codec than anime... Using the anime/GC animation matrix would be the first thing I'd try. Using cartoon mode a second. And increasing the saturation in avisynth seems necessary, too.

[ssjkakaroto]

Teegedeck was there a animation matrix? :p
i tried cartoon mode on/off and didnt see any difference (as i said none of the settings made significant difference), i'll try tweaking the saturation and see what it does
but what really bugged me is the fact that the colors are so vivid in the original but so "weak" on the compressed one, is it somewhat related to the saturation?

[Manao]

Don't forget that when you're encoding to MPEG-4, you're using YV12 colorspace. Hence, you lose half the resolution in chroma. So, when you have red against black, at the border, there will be something 'wrong', and you can do nothing about it. Well, almost nothing in fact. Enlarge your video by 2 horizontally and vertically, using pointresize, and then encode your video. That should give you better results.

[ssjkakaroto]

thx manao, that actually gave me better results
we cant notice the loss in chroma in dvd movies because they're already in yv12 right?

[mf]

Maybe the MS Screen codec can help you instead?