Is 7,000 kb's High enough for home vids on dvd?

[jra111]

I noticed last night that my editing program set to 100% quality only goes up to 7000 kb's a sec. When I click properties it says its variable bit rate. I noticed when I played it in realplayer it gives a bit rate of about 6800 but never changes. When I put it in my dvd player the bit rate varies from 2.4 megs a sec up to 7.4 megs a sec. What bitrate does everyone do there mpeg2's at? IM wondering it I should get another program so I can go to 8000 kb's a sec. Does to high of a bitrate create compatibility probs for stand alone players? Or am I good with what I got?

[bugster]

You don't actually say what program you are using to produce these mpeg-2 videos, just what bitrate it produces. Although bitrate plays an important part in determining the quality of the finished product it is not the only part of the equation. Obviously the quality of the source material is important. By this I don't simply mean how good the raw (DV?) avi looks to you but also how well it was shot. Excessive movement (such as camera shake), fast panning shots and variable light conditions can give any mpeg encoder a hard time. And of course the encoder itself plays a major part. Given a single piece of source material and using the same settings (or closest possible equivalents) different encoders give different reults. Best results are most often produced using standalone dedicated encoding software such as TmpGnec, CCE or perhaps MainConcept. Encoders including in editing/authoring packages tend be inferior though do seem to be improving in more recent software releases.

Having said all that, quality is very subjective. If you are happy with your results, stick with it. If not, try different encoding methods to see what suits you. There are plenty of guides and lots of advice to be had for several different encoders on this site.

Hope this helps.

[jra111]

Thanks , IM using arcsoft Showbiz. I have been reading up on the different encoders and like you said I think what I have is acceptable to me all though I havent seen what a Tmpegnc movie looks like . Its also a time thing from what I have read Tmpegnc take 8 hours to encode 1 hour where my program an hour takes an 1 1/2 hours to transcode. I think for the time I have to put into it and what Ive got its acceptable.