Newbie DV AVI to MPEG1 Encoding Advice

[rickmercer]

Hi, Finally found this great resource, knew it had to be around somewhere!

I encode DV AVI files to DivX using DrDivx, which works very well.
Encode DV AVI to wmv with Procoder, which seems to be ok for 256ks or whatever default is.

My question is about converting from DV AVI to MPEG1 files.

Went through lots of experimentation before settling on MainConcept Mpeg Encoder 1.4.1 ? but still not getting great results. Compared to other MPEG1 conversions I have seen on other sites, mine are at least 1.5 times the size and not as great
quality. Close, just not as good. Best results so far are with 2 pass VBR 1600 max, 1000average, 300min, mono 32000Hz, 320x240. Have tried lots of other settings too.

I have also tried TMPG, Procoder, Vegas, Pinnacle, Neo, etc. etc. a whole slew of them. I think I need to edit the matrix to get better results, but the only advice I have found is
experiment with it.

Any suggestions on how to get better and more compressed results when converting from DV AVI to MPEG1?

Thanks Much!