Right Size, Wrong Bitrate

[Zardoz]

Succesfully ripped a DVD to HD (CladDVD), Extracted the main title (Shrink DVD), Tried to Burn (TMPGEnc DVD Author).

The file size is OK to fit, but TMPGEnc says the (9800 video and audio 448 = 10248) bitrate is above the 9848 kbps limit & won't burn.

Is there an easy way (without encoding) to reduce the bitrate on the VTS files?

I tried to compresss using Shrink but I don't think that reduces the bitrate.

How come the bit rate is too high when it is the same one on the ripped files? In other words, it worked for the commercial disk.

In any advice will be greatly appreciated.

[SLK001]

Well, I don't know what your problem is, because the combined audio+video+substream bitrate is 10.08Mbps, of which 9.8Mbps can be video.

Them's there's the facts.

[Zardoz]

Well apparently TMPGEnc DVD Author thinks there's a problem because the projected bitrate is 10.248 Mbps (note the 448 kbps 6-ch AV3 file) and warns that if the combined bitrate is above the 10.08 limit I have to override and author a "non-standard" DVD, which is not supported by many DVD players.

Again, was the original DVD non-standard, how can I fix this, and does having a non-standard DVD really matter?

[SLK001]

I didn't read your first post correctly. What you have is probably the bitrate in the header is set to 9.8Mbps, and TMPG is believing that this BR is real. Run your video through BitRate Viewer and see what the real max rate is - my guess is that it is less than 9.8 (actually, it has to be). You can run your M2V file through RESTREAM, and set the BR in the header to either a much lower number, or use the max rate from BRViewer.

The number in the header is more often than not incorrect. I guess that it is just "for informational use only", but some programs treat it as gospel.

[Zardoz]

Thanks for your reply SLK001. I ran bitrate viewer as you advised. However, I ran it on the VOB files from the original rip and on the main-movie VOBs that I separated out with DVD shrink. I never really demuxed to get MV2 files.

In any case, Bitrate viewer indicated a peak bitrate of 10.6 Mb/s (I assume this is computed from the combined stream) but nominal of 9.8 Mb/s (I assume this is the video only and is "informational" as you indicated - derived from the header).

I'm not really sure whether Bitrate viewer defaults to reporting Mb/s or mb/s (1000 or 1024) because in the freeware version, I can't look at the settings...either way it's higher than the recommended 10.08 Mb/s. What's weird is the original rip to the HD has the same "excessive" peak rates, and that DVD plays fine (as far as I can tell).

What happens if the total bitrate goes higher than 10.08 Mb/s? Are the parts of the movie that have excessive rates corrupted or is the whole DVD affected? Bitrate Viewer seems to indicate that the excessive bitrates only occur very rarely in the VOB files.

[bugster]

What happens if the total bitrate goes higher than 10.08 Mb/s? Are the parts of the movie that have excessive rates corrupted or is the whole DVD affected? Bitrate Viewer seems to indicate that the excessive bitrates only occur very rarely in the VOB files.

That depends on your DVD player. It may play fine, it may stutter or it may simply stop. Only way to know for sure is try it. If the original plays OK you are probably OK.
I would expect most DVD players to have a small amount of 'headroom' to cater for this kind of situation, but you can never be sure.

[SLK001]

Bitrate Viewer has problems reporting the correct bitrate when there is a pulldown applied. Basically, you need to strip out the .M2V file, REMOVE the 3:2 pulldown flags (use PULLDOWN), then recheck the bitrates. There is no way that a production DVD will have a video bitrate greater than 9.8Mbps.

BTW, Bitrate Viewer only reports the video bitrates - it ignores the audio and substreams.