XVCD bitrate

[alexb]

I create XVCD's pushing the bitrate to the max to fill up 2 CDs. But I find that some movies look better at 1400 than others at 1900 bitrate.

I am using standard VCD PAL Template, changing only the bitrate.
What other settings should i change from standard VCD template, to achieve sharper and better image quality.

[Dhruv]

The Motion Search Precision also makes a hell of a difference. For best quality, change that to highest. But beware, the higher you select = the more encoding time.

[nvost361]

Also, what is the quality of the movies BEFORE using TMPGEnc? You CAN'T make a worse movie look better by changing the bitrate.

[Dave B]

As nvost361 states, source quality is very important when encoding to MPEG. If you are encoding from a DVD rip then the source will be very clean. Otherwise, if you are encoding from a capture or a med/low-bitrate MPEG, then a spatial noise reduction filter such as that available for VirtualDub can help clean the source.

Ultimately some films will always look better than others when compromising bitrates. Fast motion & Camera Pan scenes require far more bitrate than a still shot of an actor or similar. A film containing many action scenes may therefore look worse at 1900kbps than a more "sedate" film encoded at 1400kbps