About bitrate settings for Procoder

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Hi,

Please help with a copule of questions about bitrates for Procoder 2.0.

1. Based on the length of the movie bitcalculator advises the following bitrates: 8832 (max) 5040 (aver) 3024 (min) (VBR).

Isn't it too high especially Max? As far as I know Procoder does a decent job in low bitrates too. If it is, am I using calculator in a wrong way?

2. I am converting DVD from PAL to NTSC. Gspot shows bitrate 8500 in the PAL DVD. Does it mean that I must keep the same bitrate in the resulting NTSC DVD to keep the picture quality or I can set it lower?

Thank you!

[redwudz]

The bitrate is determined by the running time of the video and the size you want it to be. PAL or NTSC won't make a lot of difference there. I'd say your VBR bitrate was a bit on the low side but I would go with the calculators recommendations. It would rarely hit the higher bitrate number during an encode, so I wouldn't worry about that.

If the original was a CBR bitrate of 8500, then that would be much the same for the NTSC version, or possibly a little higher for the exact same quality. But you probably don't want that big of a file.

You can try a encode of a representative clip of maybe 10 minutes at the different bitrate settings and see if you can spot any difference. Probably little if any will be visible between your VBR and the original CBR of 8500.

Finally, converting PAL to NTSC has all sorts of other issues involved. Framerate conversions can get complex, but I assume you have done this before. If not, plenty of guides here: https://www.videohelp.com/convert#4;41

I usually use the DgPulldown method, but I don't do those conversions very often.

The best advice is not to do framerate conversions if you can anyway avoid them. Using a DVD player that plays PAL video will generally give you the best results instead of converting, but good luck.

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Redwudz,

Thank you!

Sorry for confusion. It is not CBR but VBR 8500. Gspot shows just one bitrate.

You are right: I tried a few clips and I cannot see the difference on my TV screen.

As for the frames, I do not touch them and just leave defaults in Procoder.

I have two standalones: Panasonic and Philips. Even after conversion into NTSC, Panasonic has way better picture comparing to Philips (HDMI).

[FulciLives]

A proper PAL to NTSC done on a computer will look better than most DVD players that do PAL to NTSC "on-the-fly" but this is assuming you did the PAL to NTSC correctly.

Using Procoder alone with no pre-processing (ala an AviSynth script) ... while not the worst method ... is not the best method of doing PAL to NTSC.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

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FulciviLives,

Thank you!

I had no idea about pre-processing. I converted a couple of DVDs right into NTSC with Procoder. They look not bad but far from being perfect.

I browsed the link in your posting (AviSynth) but it is really confusing for a newbie like myself. Guides just mention a few words about the script and it is hard to understand its purpose.

I would really appreciate if you could please refer me to some easy reading to understand about AviSynth script, its purpose and correlation with Procoder.

Thank you very much!

P.S. Just a quick question: when converting avi to NTSC, should I also use the script?

[FulciLives]

Here is some help:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=261056

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=300144

Hope that helps!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

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Thanks a lot!