Bitrate.......

[MuTTLeY]

Hey there,

When converting an DVD to SVCD, i'm using Bitrate Calculator to see what bitrate i have to use.

In DVDx i type in the calculated bitrate, and when it's finished i want to burn the SVCD on cd-r. But the MPEG's are 830MB.

With Nero it says the size is to big.
Does the bitrate must be lower, so the MPEG is about 800 MB ??

With Nero i can't burn it right now, cd-r is to short.

[speedy]

That's right. Lower the bitrate.

[meandhers]

How low can you go and still get a desirable result???

[Vejita-sama]

It really depends on the quaility of the source and how you encode. I don't use DVDx so I don't know what options are aviable.

For a DVD rip the source is excellent. There are two encoding options: CBR - constant bitrate, and VBR - varabile bitrate. CBR uses one bitrate for the whole movie. VBR will attempt to raise the bitrate in high motion scences, and lower the bitrate in low motion scences, so that the average bitrate will make the movie be the size entered/calculated.

The thing about VBR is that for it work work 'at it's best' you really need to make several passes over the movie. That is, encode the movie, then make another pass/encode so it can tell where the raise/lower the bitrate. This is known as multipass VBR. And as the name states, each pass takes as long as the first. So this really ups the encode time.

Now let's say you DVD players max bitrate is ~2880kbit/s. From a DVD rip you can lower the audio bitrate from 224kbit/s to 128kbit/s and still have excellent audio (btw you can often save encoding time but leaving the audio at 48k and not downmixing to 44.1k, MOST DVD players support this).

Personally for live action movies if the video bitrate is at 2200kbit/s or greater I use CBR, less than that I use multipass VBR.

I've gone as low as video=1350kbit/s audio=128kbit/s encoding in CCE with 3pass VBR and still get a DVD quaility encode. Quaility is largely subjective so just try a few settings and see what you like...

[holistic]

My method is thus :

once i have the total run time of the DVD (.vob files), i enter it into a bitrate calc.

example (from memory here) a 90 minute CD on 650 Mb was about 790 b/s - i upped it to 800.
mpeg the 'VOB' on no shock horror to big ....
well i just cut the credits and viola......it fit

try not to go below 800 BR if using DIVIX


Your best friend is the bitrate calc. All you need is the length of the movie to achieve your answers. Change your bitrate to modify the capacity - Mb .