constant bitrate or variable bitrate?

[zak_swan]

whats the best way to encode a movie, constant bitrate or variable?

[ZippyP.]

"Best" is for you to decide.

VBR allocates higher bitrate to high motion scenes while saving bits from low motion scenes. It can give better results compared to CBR while keeping the file size to a minimum. If you use 2-pass it can take almost twice as long to encode.

CBR is fast and if the file size is not a concern then a high bitrate can be used to create quality video. If the bitrate is not high enough then some high motion scenes may suffer, but if the video does not contain any high motion scenes then CBR may be perfectly acceptable.

Your choice, but I encode overnight and always use 2-pass VBR.

[Vejita-sama]

Not quite true. The best encodes result from CBR encodes at the maxium bitrate. The problem is that at maxium bitrate you can only fit a small amount of runtime per disc. For VCD = 80min, SVCD = 38min, DVD = 60. For most people that's to short a time. So they lower the bitrate to fit more runtime per disc.

Here's an old post I wrote (about SVCD encodes but the same principles apply):

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=169977

scroll down to the 5th post (Vejita-sama)