Minimum Bitrate for Encoding to MPEG-2

[BrainStorm69]

I have read that some mpeg decoders need a certain minimum bitrate or they will not work. The site on which I read this did not specify what that minimum bitrate(s) is/are at which the decoder(s) had problems.

Does the DVD spec itself specify a minimum bitrate? If so, what is it? If not, what would generally be considered a "safe" minimum bitrate?

[jimmalenko]

I too have read this, but I haven't really been able to view it in action. I have created a DVD using clips with 1kbps MPEG-2 video and 320kbps AC3 audio (video was a black screen and I only did this as a DVD-MP3 alternative). One PC has PowerDVD on it and it coped fine, my two standalones handle it fine, but one PC has ULead's software DVD Player on it and it consistently cracked the shits with it every 5 minutes or so.

[Nilfennasion]

There is a minimum, but it is incredibly small at best. Most reliable DVD players will accept anything that is encoded at a total of 0.5 MB/s a second. Some will even accept 0.4 or 0.3, although you're risking something with those bitrates. The overtures, intermissions, and entr'actes (sp?) of such films as Lawrence Of Arabia have been encoded at a mere 0.5 MB/s, with most of that obviously taken up by soundtracks. Of course, this is much easier to pull off when the video is entirely composed of one big black background.