Bit Rates on newer DVD's make no sense

[defense]

Has anyone else noticed that recently, more and more DVD's are being released with an unusually low bitrate? I mean, I first noticed it with XXX....that was a movie I thought would definitely need to be reencoded, but the average bitrate was much lower then I had expected. Also, movies like Friday After Next, Half Past Dead, and National Security, all have ridiculously low bitrates. When I was done ripping those movies, two of them were barely over 2.5 GB's! That's really surprising and even more surprsing when some other much OLDER movies with LITTLE ACTION such as Indecent Proposal..have the main vob set total MORE THEN 8 GB'S!

That really stunned me as well....why the hell would a movie like Indecent Proposal have such a ENORMOUSLY HIGH BITRATE? I mean, MORE THEN 8 GB'S????? That just doesn't make sense to me. Can anyone explain why those movies would have such a high bitrate, when it would seem like they wouldn't need to, while the newer movies have a much lower bitrate on average?

[jnk76]

IMOM.......just to fill space. If we've got extra space....use it. Raise the bitrate even though it quadrupals the space. Movies like XXX proabably has a tonne of extra features so they used a lower bitrate.

This is not factual just makes sense to me.

[Marco33]

I noticed the same thing. MI2 had a low bit rate. No encoding. The picture looked great on my 43"... 2+ hours but, I was suprised by the low bit rate.

Maybe they are using VBR to set up the disks. That would make sense. That way they could jam more stuff on a DVD-9.

[defense]

no question about it..MI2 is just another example....but man, to have movies like INDECENT PROPOSAL HAVE THE MAIN VOB SET AT OVER "8" GB's is really ridiculous...lol

[malducci]

I noticed the Boonedock Saints was like this too - the bitrate was @ 1.8 for quite a bit of the movie ( the panasonic DVD player I have has a bitrate display option on TV playback ).

[defense]

the boondock saints is a DVD-5...meaning, single layered and can fit completely on one DVDR...although that is a good point too...but that movie didn't have heavy action scenes like XXX, MIBII, And countless others.....i'm still stunned at that Indecent Proposal Vob Set...the biggest shocker i've seen as of yet...damn thing is bigger then LOTR, GLADIATOR, AND just about every other heavy action packed movie i've ever seen. Pretty damn funny.

[Digitizer]

Perhaps there is some new multi-pass VBR technology that makes this possible. I wonder what it is

[vance43211]

look at the economy

everybody is cutting corners

[DivXExpert]

All those movies that have low bitrates look like crap. If its VBR they are trying, its makes it look worse, and there is no need to make it small if you 9GB to put it on. If it was me. I would fill the whole disc, every time. It just shows how the movie companys don't care about quality.

[DivXExpert]

I don't see how it saves money. They are making the movies 3GB with no extras, then pressing them dual-layer, Thats not cutting corners, that is wasting money.

[SLK001]

Question: Are they legitimate DVDs from the studio, or did you get them on eBay? I bought some DVDs on eBay from a Hong Kong "dealer". They looked like multilayer disks, but these were 100% pirate. Not only were they single layer disks, but they were encoded so badly as to be unwatchable (and, they only consumed about 3.5GBytes on the disk).

I noticed what you are saying on a widescreen DVD that I recently watched. It was wider than 16:9, so the ugly "black bars" were added at the top and the bottom. These black bars can substantially lower the required bitrate, because much less detailed information is shown.

[defense]

@SLK, no these are actual purchased DVD's. I would never chance buying any dvd's off of Ebay. I was very skeptikal about DVD MEDIA and posted a question about it on the "media" section, and it got conflicting opinions.

Anyway, no, these are actual DVD's, and I do think it's a waste of money for the Hollywood Studios. They are quick to want all these B.S extras...but could care less about quality. That's why I posted this, because i've noticed more and more POPULAR HEAVY ACTION films being released on DVD are a terribley low average bitrate. Most of which don't even need any type of reencoding. But then you take movies like "GHOST" and INDECENT PROPOSAL which I would think could be just fine with half the bitrate....but they aren't...their bitrate is ridiculously high....the only answer I can think of as to "why"...is that it's because Hollywood "CAN"...but man....talk about a waste of money...they know DVD5's are much easier for people then DVD9's...so I guess they shell out the little extra for dual layer disks...so that they can prevent piracy as much as possible.

[poopyhead]

did you consider the audio streams, etc...

certain audio streams could be HUGE (maybe even near 1 gig???). those file sizes you were mentioning, were they stripped of all but one audio, or did they include all the audio, subs, etc... also, maybe there's a lot of director's commentary with the bigger files???

[vric]

this is the result of a better transfer that DVD offer now. Better transfer, so they can lower the bitrate and have the same quality as before..
Sure it's boring when you buy a DVD with low bitrate if it look crap, but if it look great (XXX had a very good image if I remember) then it's easyer to make backup

[adam]

Usually when the bitrate of the movie is low and its a DVD9, its because they wanted to put alot of extra's. This is just a judgement call by the studio. They obviously feel that they 1) can still achieve acceptable quality at that lower bitrate, and 2) feel that the DVD will sell better with the additional content.

Its true sometimes they do not fill the entire DVD. I think one reason for this is that studios use custom matrices which have been tailored for typical DVD bitrates. If they happen to have lots of extra room for a particular movie, they may still want to use their same matrix at that same level of bitrate. Some studios just plain make ridiculous decisions. I have seen tons of bad transfers.

As for DVDs which seem to use exceedingly high bitrates, I don't see what the problem is. There are many movies which do not need high bitrates, but which are just too long to squeeze onto a DVD5. In these instances they are forced to use a DVD9, but find themselves with more room then they have use for. Sometimes they only use what's necessary and you get a DVD9 that is only 5 or 6 gigs, and sometimes they just crank up the bitrate because they can. That's what I would do.

[Digitizer]

Yeah, I have little problem with overdoing it than insufficient bitrate. Keep in mind that we are talking mpeg compression here, which is VERY extreme. It needs all the bitrate that it can get. I always try to fill my DVD's up - you don't lose anything by using the free space...Except the free space itself