Which is better "Variable" or "Constant"

[Erwin]

I have been capturing the Simpsons with an ATI AIW 128Pro and I have been capturing with the VBR on and the CBR on. It seems like the VBR looks better at times, but I am not sure. It seems like CBR would always look better since the bit rate is not supposed to decline. Thanks for the replies in advance.

[tjdmobile]

VBR can potentially save a lot of space (I sometimes use it in MMC). However, VBR causes some DVD players problems with chapters, occassionally I can forward to a chapter and the sync will be completely off. Therefor, 90% of my recording is simply done CBR. Different story in DVD Rips. VBR all the way!

TJD

[jesterspet535]

If you are not worried about playing your file in a stand alone player, then you may want to look into the finer details of VBR. VBR allows low movement scenes to be compressed more than normal with a neglible quality difference, so that as higher BR can be used on high action scenes, thus reducing the amount of pixilazation that occurs during high actions scenes.

Since you are capturing cartoons, you fall into a special area. Your needs are different from those capturing live action. You may be able to use either one without a noticeable difference in quality.

Personally, I use VBR as much as possible. it allows me to capture those high action scenes with great detail & results without having to increase my bitrate needlessly. Normally if i need more bitrate, I only have to increase it by 20-30 bits overall, rather than 200-300 bits, and thus keeping my resulting filesize down.

hope this helps

[Jens Gervil]

I have a Hauppauge PVR card, and I do the captures with 12 MB/sec (CBR) and reencode afterwards to VBR SVCD. I might seem like an overkill, but I get some pretty nice clips out of it.

So what I'm trying to say is, make your captures with the highest possible CBR rate on you system, and reencode the file afterwards (to VBR for best quality with smallest file size)

[Erwin]

"If you are not worried about playing your file in a stand alone player, then you may want to look into the finer details of VBR. VBR allows low movement scenes to be compressed more than normal with a neglible quality difference, so that as higher BR can be used on high action scenes, thus reducing the amount of pixilazation that occurs during high actions scenes."

I am mostly capturing for DVD players. I have 2 that play xVCDs (Curtis Mathes CMD5000 and Pioneer DV-250). I have watched most of my xVCDs after I have burned them. There is action scenes quite often in the Simpsons actually. I captured with CBR turned on and the video was OK, but there was that occasional clear line around the characters and objects. I am using the MMC_Reg_Tools just in case anyone wants to know. This program helps tremendously. It seemed like VBR handled the fast scenes better. I may stick with VBR. I captured a halloween episode (recorded originally in SP) from 1999 which was recorded with the VCR that I am using using the CBR option, and it still didn't look as good as the VBR capture that was from a 7 year halloween episode recorded at SLP speed. One thing that is great about cartoons is that they are much for forgiving in capturing than live action movies/shows.