I am trying to downgrade the quality of the movie IT which is a double sided (NOT dual layer) DVD. So I am reconverting two VOB files and then merging them together. Since the movie is so damn long (187 minutes) I want to use the bitrate that will maximize the DVDr so that I can obtain as much quality as possible. However, ffmpeg has a "calculate bitrate" and a "best bitrate" and I have no clue which one to choose. I used "best bitrate" and got a 1.2 gig file... it was supposed to be at least 2 gigs and it gave me one that was 800 megs off!!! That certainly wasn't the best bitrate.

This morning I started doing another encode of the same file at 2993 which is what mrbitbudget told me to use for my file and I am waiting for the outcome. Also, I used the vcdhelp.com/calc to get something like 3011 and decided to go with mrbitbuget which sounded a little better.

So finally, my question is... what is the best DVD to DVD-R bitrate calculator out there for mac?! There has to be one that actually works well.

Also, how do I mux two m2v files together and how do I mux two mp2 files together?

Thanks!