How to make an mpeg-movie from still images?

[Joerg Johannes <j-j@gmx.de>]

Hi everybody

I have a lot of imgaes (output from pymol, a molecular graphics rendering 
program), which I would like to join together as an mpeg movie.
So far I have tried out ffmpeg (converted the images to .ppm format and used
ffmpeg -i film_00%2d.ppm -s 640x480 -r 25 -an film.mpg
The restult is very low-quality (compression artifacts everywhere, etc), no 
matter what I try out for bitrate (-b #### with #### 3000 up to 12000 and 
more)
I'd like to create a near-DVD-quality movie from which I can start and 
transcode it to a useful size and bitrate. Any suggestions what program to 
use?

thanks
joerg

PS.: The pymol website refers to a program named makempeg which I could not 
find for download (google refers to ftp://havefun.stanford.edu which seems to 
exist no more). If anyone knows where else to get it, please tell me.