Are high bitrates really needed when converting DVD->SVCD

[hone]

I've ripped several cartoons (Dumbo,Little Mermaid,Monsters Inc ...) and were surprised that Smartripper indicated average bitrates of around 1000 for their Video tracks. So I concluded that similar average bitrates could be used for SVCD with the benefit of only needing one CD for the whole movie. And indeed, those SVCDs - converted with TMGEnc 2.56.. - look great.

Then I wondered what high bitrates are good for, maybe one needs them for real movies. So I ripped "The Fifth Element". And even more surprising, its Video bitrate is even lower than that of the cartoons!

Did I misinterprete something?
Are here people with the same experiences?

[wulf109]

The average DVD movie is done at an average bitrate 6000Mbps,maximum of 9800Mbps,not 1000. Very few people would like the results of putting a 90-120 minute movie on one cdr.

[hone]

Guess you mixed up Megabit and kilobit.
All of my DVDs (mostly cartoons) have an average far below 6000kbps. And don't forget that I only mentioned the video bitrate not the overall bitrate. European DVDs usually are authored with lots of audio tracks and subtitles in various languages. This consumes a substantial part of the overall bitrate. Furthermore I found that the video stream of some cartoons isn't even MPEG2 but MPEG1 (which is limited to 1856 and typical 1150[=VCD]!).

[BJ_M]

smart ripper dosnt report the correct bit rate and it doesnt report even correctly mpeg2 and mpeg1 files .. at least in version 2.41 .. nor does italways report the correct time ..

but other than that it works fine..

[Baldrick]

Use instead bitrate viewer to check the bitrate
www.vcdhelp.com/tools#other