Bitrate problems-frameserving SVCD to SVCD to resize image

[Wills]

I've got a 2 CD SVCD movie, which was encoded at the wrong size - it's full screen when the original film was 1.78:1.

So I'm using VirtualDub (MPG Version) to frameserve it to TMPGEnc with a resize filter (about 480x355 instead of 480x480).

So far so good. But, a major problem! I want to put these on CD afterwards, obviously.

The original files are 100% of a 700 Meg CD (about 778 Meg). Since I'm frameserving to TMPGEnc, I can't use the Wizard, which means I can't use the bitrate calculator in the wizard to work out the average bitrate to make it 100% of a 700 Meg CD again. If I leave it as 2520 Kbits per sec (default for SVCD), it makes each half about 1.3 gigs.

I know that sometimes TMPGEnc can be tricked into opening the Wizard on SVCDs to get to the calculator stage and then cancelling - by installing PowerDVD. I've done this before and had it working before. But for some reason when I try this with these files, TMGEnc crashes out.

How can I figure out the bitrate to give TMPGEnc ? Or even better, how can I invoke the bitrate calculator without using the wizard? I 've had a swizz through the site here about bitrate calculators and am completely lost. Help!!

[BJ_M]

svcd are supposed to be 480x480 -- leave them alone ..

[Wills]

Thanks for the help I suppose but that's not very helpful.
Read the post. I am resizing the movie - it has the wrong aspect ratio. That's why this whole thing has come up.
The 480x355 is part of the resizing process - the rest of the 355 margin is filled up to 480 with black border, making the aspect ratio correct.
And I still need to know the bitrate, please peeps.......

[reboot]

https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

[nBt]

Would you say it's better to do the resizing in VirtualDub than in the encoder (in my case TMPGEnc)?

Right now I only use VirtualDub to load the .avi, extract the audio to full size, attach that as audio and start frameserving.

What difference will it make if I do the resizing (and maybe other settings as well) in VirtualDub?

[reboot]

I do ALL my filtering in virtualdub, that way the encoder doesn't spend 90% of it's time doing other things. Cuts WAY down on encoding time if you have everything set in virtualdub first, then frameserve. It will be much faster.
I don't even attach audio, I only encode video, and mux during authoring.

[mats.hogberg]

I do ALL my filtering in virtualdub, that way the encoder doesn't spend 90% of it's time doing other things

So do I, but more and more I use AviSynth - which seems like an even more efficient approach (even if I have no figures to back that assumption up).

/Mats

[reboot]

I agree, avisynth is another great way, however the learning curve is steeper than vdub's
IMHO, vdub does a great job, avisynth does an exceptional job, with the right scripting...

[nBt]

Yeah - I've read several places that AviSynth ain't for the newbies so I'll wait a bit till I start with that. But I'll try set everything up in VirtualDub. Also... what I just encoded turned out to be in wrong resolution, but of course if I knew TMPGEnc perfectly it wouldn't have happened .

[reboot]

Just set the input res in tmpgenc to as close to what it really is (4:3 or 16:9), maintain aspect ratio 2, then set output to 4:3 (standard TV).
Tmpgenc will letterbox it if needed.

[nBt]

But if the resize filter is used in VirtualDub - is it then necessary to also set it in TMPGEnc?

[reboot]

You can resize anything you want in vdub, but if you're adding letterboxes, then tmpgenc spends time encoding black bars. Don't bother, just crop video to it's actual size, don't reshape it (stretch or squash) and then frameserve. Let tmpgenc add letterboxes, it's MUCH faster than encoding a bunch of black stuff

[nBt]

Allright. Thanx