Better quality with DVD or SVCD

[DerJoe]

what do think gives better quality? SVCD with 2000bps or DVD with 2000bps.
Just wondering about your opinions...

[TBoneit]

Well that would depend on what resolution of DVD, 720 by 480 or 704 by 480 or 352 by 480 or 352 by 240 vs 480 by 480 SVCD (All are NTSC) for PAL just change the 2nd number.

Some should be worse and some would be better. But I'd still raise your bit rate.

Cheers

[DerJoe]

hmmm... so which resolution should I use for avi2dvd??? The wizard starts using a high resolution if the bitrate is 4000 or more. The posts here recommend using a resolution just under that of the original divx. What's your experience?
cheers

[TBoneit]

Well I don't use that program, I use TMPGenc at the various DVD resolutions with a CQ=85 setting. That gives an uncertain size output, but seesm to work for me and seems to be decent results assuming the input is good.

My undestanding is that CQ = constant quality and the higher the setting, the better the result but the bigger the file will be, it seems to be a form of VBR.

Good Luck
Hope this helps

[DerJoe]

Thanx for the ideas... greatly appreciated. I did not mean the program avi2dvd, but just converting from avi to dvd.
I use TMPGEnc as well, but just started a new post, because I'm not sure my (macroblock-)problem is related to bitrate!
Are you always able to fit your movies on one DVD using the CQ method?
Approximately how many minutes can you fit on one DVD? Do you get any blocks?
Cheers,
Joe

[ZippyP.]

hmmm... so which resolution should I use for avi2dvd??? The wizard starts using a high resolution if the bitrate is 4000 or more. The posts here recommend using a resolution just under that of the original divx. What's your experience?
cheers

Going from a lower resolution to a higher one is not recommended, it can create blockiness and artifacts. Stick to one that is fairly close or slightly lower for best results. You can't create more pixels from nothing (well you can, it just looks crappy.)

A 2000 Kb/s rate would be a tossup in quality between SVCD @480x480 or 1/2 DVD @352x480. It depends on the source resolution and also whether you use CBR or 2-pass VBR for encoding. If using 2-pass I'd say SVCD, if CBR I'd say 1/2 DVD, but that's just a guess.

[ZippyP.]

Also to add, having read your other post...

I use 2-pass VBR to give the best results within a limited bitrate. You pick a minimum, average and maximum bitrate. The average sets the file size almost exactly (unlike CQ) and the min and max set the limits for the encoder. For example... using your 2000 as avg. you could set minimum at 500 and maximum at 4000 and get noticeably better results than CBR @2000. Major drawback...2-passes, so almost double the encoding time. The first pass is used to analyze the video for best use of bitrate and the second pass actually encodes. Go to environmental settings>cpu and give it a 4GB cache size (or more) to speed up encoding by 20% or so. I encode overnight so time doesn't matter.

Hope that helps.

[TBoneit]

Yup 2 Pass Vbr is better but in a hurry so I use the CQ=?? and accept the variable output size. What I do they fit more than one on a blank DVD disk. Especially at 1/2 D1 from avi captures from my ADVC-100. I usually capture the funny bits from TV shows for example and compile them onto a DVD for later viewing.

Cheers
RT