Svcd bit-rate settings...

[mh2360]

I have a movie split into 3 really high quality Divx files... I want to create 3 SVCDs from these. Burning these at the standard rate (2496k - video) means I need more than 3 disks.. the bit-calc on this site tells me that i need to set the rate at 1744k to fit one disk... what is the best setting for Tmpgenc CQ or 2 pass VBR and what min/max settings would i use...

[tenders]

if you want to put them on three discs,then i suggest you use the bitrate from the bitrate calc.i do not use vbr. cq can and will give you great quality,but the file size is very unpredictable.

[adam]

Your min and max settings need to be determined by one of two parameters, either the limits of the svcd standard should you choose to keep your disks completely compliant, or the limitations of your hardware player.

The min bitrate setting should be the lowest amount of bitrate you think you will need for any given sec in your movie. For example I have found that at 300kbits credits still look ok, at least as far as I am concerned. So I use this as my min. If you set your min to 0 than the encoder will basically choose your min for you and from my experience it rarely goes below 300 anyway. The only real reason to raise your min any higher than this is if you start to see low quality only in certain low motion/detail scenes or if your dvd player seems to be choking when the bitrate gets too low. This rarely happens but some dvd players are picky.

As for the max setting, the bitrate allowed is 2600kbits but since you will obviously have audio in your encodes as well, a more reasonable max bitrate is about 2500kbits. Again, use this is you want to keep your encodes compliant. Raising the max bitrate should increase quality but you will have to see how high your dvd player will accept and of course if you go beyond the svcd specs max then there are no guarantees, either on your current player or any future ones.

About CQ versus 2-pass vbr... What everyone agrees on is that with 2-pass vbr you can determine the exact bitrate to use to fill each cdr but it takes just about twice as long as CQ to encode. With CQ you get faster encoding times but the filesize is very unpredictable.

Now what not everyone agrees on, on this forum at least, is the quality differences between the two. Read any article on mpeg encoding, including the ones written by the mpeg consorsion (makers of mpeg standards) and it will state that multipass vbr encoding will always achieve higher quality results than 1-pass encoding, which is what CQ is. Perhaps there are some problems with TMPGenc's encoding algorithms, I don't know, but some people claim that CQ produces higher quality than 2-pass vbr. My personal tests don't support this but all I can tell you is to try both and see for yourself.