Nero and mpeg encoding problem

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

I just got my first DVDR drive this weekend. Bundled with it was Nero,
which I stupidly assumed, just by virtue of having heard the name,
would be fine for my purposes: making DVD copies of existing avi format
home videos.

The problem comes in encoding to mpeg2. Well, if I choose "SP" as the
quality setting I get unacceptable artifacts. Transitions are jagged
and mosaics of little squares appear. If I switch to "High Quality",
the picture is crystal clear but frames appear to be missing (the movie
becomes jumpy and "snags" every now and then).

What is the problem here? Is it the s/w or the video card I have?
Either way, can someone please make a recommendation as to how to solve
the problem? I'm running XP on a Dell box with a P4, 512MB of RAM, and
more than enough storage space. I don't know what sort of video card I
have (how can you tell?), but I seem to recall it was the Dell
recommended one for video editing.

Many thanks in advance,
John