Good Bit rate for HD Video

[jozamm]

Hi all,

I am not much into Video editing. I am in the process of transition from DV tape to an HD camcorder.

To store videos from the DV tape (720x576) I used to encode as Xvid with a Bitrate of 8000kbps.

Now I need to reduce the bit rate from the camcorder which is 1920x1080 MP4 at 24000kbps to a more manageable bit rate. Currently I am using the Video to Video converter for this operation as it also join files together but it does have a variable bit rate.

My questions are : 1) What is the best bitrate to encode not to get good quality and a decent file size. 2) Any free video software that can join files and have a variable bit rate option?

Thanks for your help,

jozamm

[Krispy Kritter]

The general rule of thumb (especially now with HDD prices so cheap) is to capture at the highest quality possible. Save a copy of the capture for future use.

Then use a copy of the capture to meet your current needs. Your source is HD (1080) and you are reducing it to DVD quality (or worse). While this may be ok with your current hardware, at some point I would expect that you will want to actually watch your material in high resolution. Which you will not be able to do when all of your saved material is already low resolution.

[_Al_]

What is the best bitrate to encode not to get good quality and a decent file size.

Nobody precisely knows that bitrate. If it that could be pronounced, that would be sticky in this forum with that magic number depending on any resolution. It could be 6000 kbps just talking heads using tripod or 60000 panning with camcorder thru trees and recording those millions shimmering leaves.

There is constant quality encoding, I'm pretty sure even Video to Video can set it. It could be called CRF or RF or something like that. The point is you set quantizer/quality (yes, encoder could encode to desired quality, it checks differences to original). That is a number from 0 to 32 or something. 0 means lossless compression, higher number means worse quality. Generally start with about 18 and encode. Check if that quality 18 is good enough for you. Set preset to medium. If setting to slower presets like slow, slower, you compress it a bit better, but encoding takes a bit longer. But quality is about the same. Be carefull, low light scenes or scenes with color gradients are first to give some artifacts so checking particular quantizer you check with those scenes.

Using certain CRF you get volume for your video. But the other video of yours , or different sample could be larger or smaller, because videos are not the same. But your quality is about the same and consistent in your production. So using CRF and the same number/quantizer you get about the idea what the average size per your video is only after considerable amount of video encoding and using different shooting scenarios.