Good MP4 bitrate for TV Show DVD Rips?

[thefinalprophecy]

I want to rip some TV DVD discs to MP4 for streaming with XBOX 360. I used the default settings profile on Handbreak for the 360 and came out with about 700MB per episode (42 minutes, 24fps, 718x480 res, ~2000kbps bitrate). What should I lower it to? I'm used to standard AVI/Xvid rips for 42 minute TV shows at 350MB. and I assumed that MP4/h.264 offered better compression.

[jagabo]

It depends on how clean your sources are and the nature of the video. Use CRF encoding and you'll always get exactly the right bitrate for the quality you specify.

[thefinalprophecy]

okay but what is a good bitrate to specify? basically, i do not want to waste space if it's only a standard def encoding.

[jagabo]

CRF encoding is constant quality. You specify the quality, the encoder uses whatever bitrate is necessary to deliver that quality. You don't know what that bitrate will be beforehand.

Bitrate based encoding is the opposite side of the coin. You specify the bitrate and the encoder delivers whatever quality it can with that bitrate. You don't know what that quality will be beforehand.

[Scarpad]

The reason most scene rips look great at lower bitrates is that they are encoding using Hi Def Sources, using the same bitrate on lower quality DVD Rips definately does not yield the same result...