Request for more technical information

[U977]

Aaah.. I've been reading on those forums for a long time, and here is finally my first post :-) Good idea to let users wait for 5 days before they can post to keep banned users away.

Here is my question. I've been using GordianKnot since my first visit on this site, some months ago (when I got decent hardware to do video encoding). It's easy to use, fast, always gave me good results except for some poorly encoded DVDs. I've been reading the FAQ and glossary on the main site, too, what are B frames, key frames, "delta" frames and so on. But what I really would like to know: what is the chain of operations done by GordianKnot? The whole process, I mean.
What is DVD2AVI used for? What is the use of the project file, and will it be used by GordianKnot itself, or will it be used by another component? I thought taht DVD2AVI was the frameserving tool (by the way, I did not find yet a good definition of frameserving. Could someone explain, please?), but I noticed that Avisynth is used to produce framesering files, so I guess that avisynth is the frameserving tool.
And finally, those AVS files are used by nandub/virtualdub, isn't it?
I would like to have a deeper understanding of Gordianknot, and video encoding in general. It's a start, because my technical backround about video is still poor. When I look at the XviD forum, I feel lost, because they they know far more better :-)

I know it's a lot to answer... Some may say that I should do searches. Usually, I find what I need using that way, but here, maybe I don't have teh good search keywords, I couldn't find that information. And I think it could be nice to have a central place that summarize the whole.

Thanks a lot for your patience to read all this! lol
And thanks for your help :-)

[CaPPyD]

I'm gonna try and answer this one, hopefully other people will jump in and correct me if I'm wrong or if I forget anything.

SMARTRIPPER(or other ripping application) - Used to transfer VOB files to HDD.

DVD2AVI - Creates a D2V Project file which references the VOB files and allows AVISYNTH to access them. Also can convert from 29.97fps to 23.976fps if possible with content.

GKNOT - Originally just a bitrate calculator, now will calculate the bitrate, encode the audio(using BESWEET), edit the STATS file and create the AVS for you.

AVISYNTH - Makes pre-encoding changes to the video source, such as cropping, image size, deinterlacing, IVTC and noise reduction.

NANDUB/VDUB - Encoding program. Based on the information given to it from all of the other applications, will encode your video source to either DivX 3.11, 4 or 5.

[U977]

Thanks, CaPPyD! I was wrong already in what I believed :-) Actually, I found another very recent post in the XviD area that speaks about other interesting topics that answer some otehr questions I had.