Strange 'speeded up' playback when encoding with VBR

[little_bloke]

Hi,

I'm Using Cinemacraft to encode DV (PAL) to DVD (PAL) complient Video to be put onto a DVD.. only the video stream, I'm processing the sound seperately.

When I use CBR at a single pass with a birate of 7,000kbs the encoding is realatively sucessful, albeit with some occational nasty artifacts every so often.

When I use VBR things become very strange. It appears that the video is playing back at a slighly faster speed. Using a DVD player like winDVD I can watch the seconds tick away inconsistently.... like the speed is varying along with the bitrate...

Obviously I would like to achieve the best possible results for the project I am working on..

Do I have to use CBR if encoding for DVD?

Will a multipass CBR resolve my artifacts issues?

If I should be able to use VBR can anyone explain why the video speeds up.

With this project the time taken to encode is no issue I'd just like know where I may be going wrong...!

Thanks

LB

[RabidDog]

try doing a test on something else, another source. Vbr or CBr should have no effect on the playback. There is no such thing as multipass CBR.
You would only use vbr when you have a shortage of space. Try upping your cbr bitrate to 8000 or 8500, Burn to a RW and play/test on a real DVD player

[little_bloke]

I've tested the source on a variety of equipment including commercial standalone DVD players, the problem remains. It does not seem to be effected by changing bitrates, though I haven't gone above 8500.

As for CBR Multipass, there seems to be an option in a recent version of CCE (Premiere Plugin 2.67), it appears to perform a 2 pass VBR encode then encode the result as CBR!!?

Heres a pic:

http://www.thedreamingtree.co.uk/_temp/multipassCBR.gif

My biggest issue is space, its well over three hours of footage that needs to be of a very high quality, spread over three DVD's and have room for 3-5 languages and come in at under 3.9 GB per DVD!

BTW if is matters, the audio streams are encoded to AC3, plain stereo.

The Multipass CBR works well but takes ages and it's bulky, I'd like to choose VBR if I can, purely for the reduction in file size, should any more footage need to be added

Thanks for your help!

LB