Which gives out a better quality, avi to mpg or avi to dvd.

I have 2 avi files that I want to put together into one DVD. I converted the avi file directly to dvd on Winavi and the video came out really grainy, I wasn't expecting an exact duplicate but I want something close.
What do you guys think is the best way to keep the video quality and what tools do you use.

 

Hi,
winavi is a pisce of junk
use tmpgene and higher the bitrate

 

I admit I'm a little extremailst, but I think that the movie quality depends mainly on the original movie and NOT by the final media. I mean, an AVI movie is already a compressed movie (and this causes a loss of quality). Therefore, unless the AVI movie is really HUGE and its quality is really high (a DVD movie - the VOB file - is 4.5 GB large and has a resolution of 720x480. What do you expect from a 700 Mb large AVI?).
Therefore my point of view is: making a VCD from a well ripped movie, even if his final resolution will be only 352x240(288 if PAL) is much better than a 700x400 AVI movie of small size (and therefore its AVI compression had to remove lot of things). Therefore, a 2CD movie (1 CD = 80' of VCD movie, therefore you often need 2 CDs), made with TMPGenc with Settings ____ Video ___ Motion Search Precision = highest quality (very slow) starting from a decent AVI is more beautiful than a DVD movie into a DVD starting from the same AVI movie.
And the same reason (and the fact that only 50' of SVCD movie fit into a CD-R; would I put a movie on 3 CDs?) makes me prefer VCDs to SVCDs.
OK, you have the nuisance of changing CD (part 1 and part 2 because, for the same quality reason, I prefer VCDs to KVCDs) but the result is acceptable (and you just need a CD-ROM burner).
Some people may disagree, but for Christmas my parents offered to buy for me a DVD burner and I said "thanks, but I prefer something else".