highest possible dvd comliant bitrate is??

[kenmasters83]

whats the highest possible dvd bit rate i can use and which is better constant bitrate or variable bit-rate??

i dont care about the size its going to be shrunk anyway with dvd-shrink..

oh yeah and is it possible to have a bitrate of 9000 for a 2 hour compressed movie or is there limitations i should be aware of?? i will be using 4.7's to make the burn..

[GeorgeW]

look at the "What is -- DVD" link in the top left corner.

[bugster]

whats the highest possible dvd bit rate i can use

9.8Mbps

and which is better constant bitrate or variable bit-rate??

That depends. VBR allows you to fit more playing time within a restricted filesize but takes longer to encode.

i dont care about the size its going to be shrunk anyway with dvd-shrink..

If you care about quality, use the correct bitrate to start with as this will produce better results than encoding oversize and using DVDshrink later.

oh yeah and is it possible to have a bitrate of 9000 for a 2 hour compressed movie or is there limitations i should be aware of?? i will be using 4.7's to make the burn..

Use a bitrate calculator.

[Gurm]

Be aware that "highest DVD-compliant bitrate" and "highest bitrate that the majority of players will handle" are two different things.

6-8Mbps is safe.

[bugster]

Be aware that "highest DVD-compliant bitrate" and "highest bitrate that the majority of players will handle" are two different things.

6-8Mbps is safe.

Lets expand on that a little. Any player carrying the DVD-Video logo will quite happily handle the highest compliant DVD bitrate, from a shop bought pressed commercial disk. However, many believe that DVDr disks have a higher rate of read errors, thus putting more strain on the built in error correction mechanisms and making it more difficult for the player to be able to handle sutianed reading of the disk at max bitrate (more retries required etc). I am not sure how true and accurate this is but it is always wise to be safe and so keep the max bitrate used a little below that allowed.

[lordsmurf]

10.08

[adam]

10.08Mbits is for the program stream. You have to subtract out your audio bitrate(s), subtitle(s), and some additional bits for overhead to determine the max you can attribute to video.

A good rule of thumb for your max is 9800 - audio bitrate(s). This should give you enough room for subtitles and overhead.

As bugster said, all dvd players are required to support the full bitrate levels allowed in the DVD specs, and they are required to do so at a sustained rate. I agree that its possible using recordable media could mix things up a bit, but I've never actually heard of this happening.

[SLK001]

All DVDs are read by the player at a constant rate of 26.16 Mbps. After a 16/8 decoding, this results in a data bitrate of 13.08 Mbps. Subtract 2 Mbps of error correction, and 1 Mbps of navigational overhead and you have a data stream that YOU can use of 10.08 Mbps. Of this 10.08 Mbps, the MAX that can be video is 9.8 Mbps (by specification). Therefore, whether you have a DVD that is encoded at 2.8 Mbps or have a Superbit DVD, it is read by the player at a constant rate of 26.18 Mbps.

So, 9.8 Mbps is your maximum rate for your video.

[Epicurus8a]

Many broadcasters utilize 8Mbps or lower.

[Gurm]

There are plenty of set-top boxes that just CANNOT handle a full-bitrate stream. The amount of cheap junk out there is staggering. Heck, some of us PURPOSELY bought the cheap junk because it plays PAL.

(*cough*Cyberhome*cough*)

At any rate, DVD-R most definitely has a lower maximum bitrate, probably as was stated due to error correction. DVD-RW has an even LOWER bitrate. In fact, I've made more than a couple -RW's that refuse to play in my Cyberhome because the bitrate + error correction is just too much for it.

[adam]

I think you've just got a defective player Gurm. All DVD players are required to play full bitrate, factory pressed DVDs.

[Gurm]

Oh, c'mon. All DVD players are required to play dual-layer discs, too - yet when Contact came out it crashed so many players there was nearly an epidemic. Don't get me started on how many players refused to play "The Matrix". There are PLENTY of players out there that won't handle the upper end of video bandwidth - and even more that won't do it on DVD-R.

[adam]

You are grossly overgeneralizing. Sure there are plenty of problem DVDs out there, and plenty of DVD players which won't play compliant DVDs for one reason or another, (usually because of complex authoring in general like with Matrix's seamless branching) but I am quite confident that none of these problem disks are such because of their bitrate (assuming its compliant) or the fact that they are dual layer.

Virtually all commercial DVDs max out at 10.08Mbits. A substantial amount of DVDs on the market are dual layer.

A DVD incapable of playing full bitrate DVDs or dual layered disks would have playback problems on just about any commercial DVD in existence. There are plenty of extensive lists describing authoring errors or general problems present on various commercial DVDs, and the players where those problems present themselves. If you are having problems with a DVD check these to find out the real reason why playback is suffering, since it is surely not because of its bitrate.

Check out the DVD section of mpeg.org for a writing by one of the DVD Forum's members where he describes the licensing process. He says that all DVD players are required to playback DVDs at a constant rate of 10.08mbits or else they are not authorized to use the DVD logo. This is a basic function that all DVD players must support, regardless of how cheap the electronics they use are.

As for recordable media playback, everyone's mileage will vary.