is a bitrate of 3159 acceptable for 3 hour 352x480 captures?

[kenmasters83]

i want to capture 3 hour movie's or toon's with a resolution of 352x480 with a bitrate of 3159 as per this sites bitrate calculator.

the question i am asking is will the quality be acceptable or real blocky??

oh yeah the bitrate will be constant instead of variable..

[reboot]

Have you tried it? That's the only way you're going to tell, as we have NO idea what your capture hardware or software is.
Please fill out your computer profile

[MOVIEGEEK]

It should be ok but as reboot said only you can tell.
I would use 256kbps audio.

[Richard_G]

352 x 480 is NTSC half D1. 3159 kbs at half D1 will give you the same quality as full frame (720 x 480) at 6318 kbs. For most footage it should be fine, the only time you might notice it start going bad will be on very complex action scenes.

I use half D1 at 3500 kbs for stuff recorded off TV and it is perfectly acceptable.

[Cornucopia]

Too bad you're going CBR. VBR would improve that quite a bit. Oh, well...

Audio doesn't need to be 256--what's the program material?

Audio-could poss. use mono at 1/2 usual bitrate. Could use less if just speech.

Video-how action-y is the video? how complex/finely detailed?

Scott

>>>>>>>>>
edit--animation might have been orginally progressive, in which case it makes sense from a space/bitrate/quality standpoint to use InverseTelecine and get it back to 24fps, then encode with flags.

Oh, wait...are you encoding straight to MPEG as you digitize?

[steve2713]

As those above suggested, in the end you'll have to try it to see how you like the end results. That said, it SHOULD look excellent, in my opinion (if it doesn't, blame it on user error :P). 3 hours at 352x480 on a DVD is quite easy to get excellent results, for the audio I'd personally probably use about 192 or 212.

[SatStorm]

For realtime mpeg 2 captures, ~3000 is OK (but not perfect... For perfect go 4000kb/s!)

But if you encode offline, is more than enough.
I capture avi, filter / resize, frameserve and encode to mpeg 2 with an average of 3000 (or less) and the picture that way looks perfect. In case of VHS tapes, it looks like the source. But of course, I know how to deal with all the issues manually and with the correct filtering. If you don't wish to do all this, just rise the bitrate in case you don't like the results. For anime / cartoons, an average of 3500 that way (without filtering) is neccessary IMO

[Nelson37]

There are too many variables, based on your capturing hardware, the amount of noise in your source, type of video, etc. to give an accurate answer. Try it and see what you think.

For some animation, fairly heavy smoothing filters can make a dramatic difference, though this is not good for most action movies.

Going to VBR should significantly increase perceived picture quality.

[kenmasters83]

sorry about all the information i left out.

i am using mainconcept's pvr software with line filtering disabled to increase the picture quality which it does by great leaps and bounds this mpeg2 encoder is easily on par with the huffyuv avi codec!.

here is my pc and OS i am using.

sempron 2400+
640mb of ram
160gig 7200 rpm HDD
leadtek winfast tv 2000 xp cards with latest drivers works great!!
windows2000 service pack one.

i didnt know a variable bitrate would increase the picture i figured it would lower??

i know 720x480 captures look excellent with a constant bitrate will it look even better with variable at that resolution or is that only for
352x480 captures??

i will tryout the above thanks for the tips i am just learing how to correctly capture at low resolution for long periods of time.

[Nelson37]

I guess I stated that incorrectly.

VBR will allow you to increase bitrate slightly without increasing filesize. It is this selectively applied higher bitrate which improves PQ. Works in all resolutions.

If you think the mpeg2 is as good as a huffy avi, you are not looking closely enough.

[DaveS]

sorry about all the information i left out.

i am using mainconcept's pvr software with line filtering disabled to increase the picture quality which it does by great leaps and bounds this mpeg2 encoder is easily on par with the huffyuv avi codec!.

here is my pc and OS i am using.

sempron 2400+
640mb of ram
160gig 7200 rpm HDD
leadtek winfast tv 2000 xp cards with latest drivers works great!!
windows2000 service pack one.

i didnt know a variable bitrate would increase the picture i figured it would lower??

i know 720x480 captures look excellent with a constant bitrate will it look even better with variable at that resolution or is that only for
352x480 captures??

i will tryout the above thanks for the tips i am just learing how to correctly capture at low resolution for long periods of time.

if your bitrate is around what you are saying and there is variability in your source (e.g. some action, some slow), VBR will help in terms of quality. Although, the end file size may not come out to be exactlly what you wanted - close, but not exact. But in that case, you could dvdshrink the prepared files down just a little to fit on a dvd if you find yourself slightly over. For 'average' stuff, that result would be fine eventhough you are re-encoding your source.

[kenmasters83]

i dunno but i cant stand the sight of macroblocks and compression i burnt 2 dvd-rw's with an avi captured with HUFFYUV.

and then with main concept pvr software it looks identical on my tv it must be because i am using such a high quality s-video cable??

also mainconcept pvr saves me the time it takes to encode from avi to mpeg.

BTW thanks for the tip with the variable bitrate it makes crystal clear captures.