DVD to mpg converting....

[jay_lubb]

I wonder if someone can explain this in layman's terms...

I ripped a dvd movie and I load it into TMPGEnc and I see the video is 9800kb/s and dvd takes up 3.37 Gigs space.

If I try to re-encode the movie in TMPGEnc to a DVD standard mpeg at 9200kb/s the resulting mpeg is approx 6.4 gigs.

Why is that? Is there an option I should change that would make the resulting mpg closer (smaller) in size without losing quality?

[DB83]

Not sure of the exact reason but your program is not reporting the actual bit rate but is reporting the maximum bit rate for dvd.

It would be impossible (or very unlikely) to have that 9200 bit rate encoded - that would equate to about one hour of video and on a DVD9 (dual-layer) disk. DVDs tend to be encoded at 5000-6000 for dual layer - 4000 bbps on a single layer disk will give you approx 2 hours of video, 6000 kbps on a same disk gives you approx 90 minutes.

The quickest way to get an mpeg of the same quality of the original dvd is to rip the disk to your HDD as one large vob and then use vob2mpg.

[ggtop]

Maybe you could explain us in layman's terms what you are trying to archive

DVD -> Rip -> TMpeg -> DVD...Are you bored ?

Whenever you reencode you loose quality and add artifacts to the video, even when you encode at a higher bitrate than the original. In other words there is no loose in quality if you just do nothing. (The only reason you could have is the use of filters on your source material that gives you personally the feeling of a better look)

ggtop

[jay_lubb]

I am re-encoding so I can alter the aspect ratio.

So lets say the dvd has a video of 8000kb/s (to make things easy) and I encode it to mpeg at 8000kb/s, should I use VBR two pass or CBR,
and does changing that option make the resulting mpeg the same size?

[ggtop]

Normally DVDs are encoded using VBR. I've only seen CBR for the menus.
But as DB83 wrote before you saw the max. bitrate. You could examine this by analyzing with bitrate viewer.
2 Pass VBR is always a good choice. But you are limited by your target size, DVD5 e.g. So TMpeg or whatever you use has to predict the average bitrate for encoding.

BTW 8000 kBit/s VBR (avg. bitrate) comes close to CBR as there is not much room left to increase bitrate because of DVD specs.

ggtop

[ulapines]

I am re-encoding so I can alter the aspect ratio.

And why would you want to change the aspect ratio and distort the movie?

[DB83]

Would have helped had you stated that you were seeking to change the aspect ratio in your first post.

The best advice I can give there is DO NOT DO IT. Firstly, you will have need to create the mpeg = lose quality (even at the same bit rate as originally). Then you will have to de-interlace that, crop it and re-encode = even more loss of quality.