Variable Bitrate Constant Bitrate...

[retroborg]

Hi
What’s the best bitrate mode to choose, when capturing from a TV-Antenna signal into mpeg2 codec?

Variable Bitrate?
Or…
Constant Bitrate?

I don’t want to lose any frames or witness jerkiness in the final video.
Also I’m thinking about capturing in this resolution: 720x576 PAL

I have a Leadtek WinFast DV2000 Video Capture card.

Thanks in advance.

[Suntan]

Try both and see. If vbr gives no dropped frames I would go with that as it should give better picture quality for the same bitrate.

-Suntan

[Capmaster]

Assuming you mean using your 2.4 GHz CPU machine, I would say that there is little chance of dropped frames because of CPU demand. Any problem would likely be caused by other factors, like bus speed, card limitations, etc.

Generally VBR is much more efficient than CBR in that it uses some intelligence during the capture - ramping up bitrate for action scenes, and dropping it for static dialog scenes, for example. I don't see any good reason for anyone to use CBR unless they have had problems specific to the VBR capture mode. That's just my opinion, but I think most of us here use VBR for quality reasons.