I was attempting to convert 66 minutes of a DVD with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio to an SVCD with a resolution of 352x240. Using FitCD I calculated the bit rate (~1500) and I set the "coded film pixel" to 704 x 360 -- I got this size info from DVD2AVI. I saved the AVS file.

In CCE, I selected the AVS file and set the bit rates to:

min: 300
avg: 1500
max: 2616
VBR 4xpasses

When the process finished, I found that the resulting MPEG was only ~600 MB's -- ~130 MB's smaller than expected. For grins, I mux'd in the audio and burned the MPEG to disc... All 66 minutes were there, but the quality wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I repeated the process to make sure there wasn't a problem with this encode and I had the exact same results.

So I am wondering if anyone knows why CCE decided to only encode the file at an average of about ~1000 kbit instead of the requested ~1500 kbit? The night before I did a 352x240 XSVCD that was 1.85:1 and it worked flawlessly...?

Thanks in advance!