CBR vs. VBR and CQ

[smokingweed3000]

Hi
Can someone please tell me the difference between CBR and VBR in quality and in general. And is CQ better then any of them?
Thanks

[kriskim]

CBR is always better quality than VBR at the same bitrate. always. however, cbr filesize is bigger than that of vbr. cbr encodes the entire movie at a preset bitrate. vbr goes through and finds places where it can steal bitrate from scenes where it's unnecessary (like solid black frames, low-motion etc) to give to higher-motion scenes.

when you have space to spare and it doesn't really matter(ie. for svcd menus, or short clips ), go for cbr. you'll save a lot of time (2pass vbr doubles the encoding time). for movies where you're trying to stretch bitrate thin, vbr is your best friend.

i'm not too familiar with tmpgenc, as i use cce for all my mpg2 needs, but i would imagine that tmpgenc's 2pass vbr should be better than it's CQ...