I have been playing around with a lot of different settings and programs for capturing, editing, rendering and authoring DVDs. I have a Pinnacle DC10plus capture card, and VHS player connected to video composite input, I use Pinnacle Studio 8 for the capture under custom settings, 608x464, 29.97 FPS, PCM 44.1kHz, 2400 kb/sec, I am capturing a 2 hour source, then I first rendered it in Studio, which renders at CBR rate, the quality was terrible, pixelated and grany, especally action scenes.

I tried a few things to fix this, since my audio is low quality, I selected
compressed audio to bring up bit rate, then used TMPGEnc with VBR and MP2 audio (compressed audio), then make file size 105%, it seems all programs, especially Studio have a safety factor and do not use the entire DVD, I use Nero to burn VIDEO_TS to DVD and 105% with basic navigation and no action menus works the best.

I guess after all my experience with Video transfer I have 2 big questions:

My inital capture settings, 608x464, 29.97 FPS, PCM 44.1kHz, 2400 kb/sec
I picked to reduce file size a little bit without compromizing quality, since I am inputting at 2400 kb/sec and my bit rate on my output is 4200 kb/sec or higher, am I loosing quality from my inital capture, or is it the full frame, compressed thing?

I am considering Pinnacle Studio 9, does it render at VBR and is the quality similar or comprable to TMPGenc encoding?