What is TOO High of a Bitrate for SVCD?

[Mr. E]

Hey

I recently made a short demo CD to play at work of some animated shorts (basically all of the Bonus features on my animated DVD's) and found that at 720x480 bitrate 3495 you can get 26 minutes with NO LOSS onto an SVCD. However, the only player that could keep up with that particular bitrate was the Sears! (JVC's and Pioneer's costing much more could not). Luckily, the demo is to be shown on a Sears, but my Mini-Sears (at home) can't do it either. This, believe it or not, is the first disc I've put into this $60 miracle player that has stumped it! Anyway, I'm currently experimenting with size vs. loss (smaller) at lower bitrates to see where my player starts accepting the discs. (I'm rendering a 1 min. clip right now at 640x480 bitrate 3001 -- weird number I know, but the calculator came up with it when I asked to calculate this frame size for 30 minutes on a disc -- ) Anyway, this shouldn't drop the quality too much, if at all, since I noticed I was rendering bigger than the source last time anyway. (Oops!)

Anyone experience this problem? What did you do? I'm thinking that the slightly smaller frame size and still decent bitrate (it still came up green) will be easier for my player and also increase the time I can get on one disc. I'm interested to see if the quality drops at all, and at which point it is noticeable. I'm normally not this picky (I have low bitrate VCDs in my collection too) but I have an idea for my band to market short discs containing one video and some pics that everyone can watch on any recent player. Don't worry, I can also "trick" an MPEG-2 file into burning with a VCD header, so the SVCD thing shouldn't be a problem either.

Any comments?

thanx
eric

[Mr. E]

OK, now I'm replying to my own post before anyone gets a chance.

The 640x480 looked great, ran fine on my DVD player, but those numbers give a lopsided frame (there was a black bar to the right of the screen.) Anyone know any "odd" frame rates designed to keep high quality, but still fit inside a TV screen? I don't want to lose the x480 part of the equation, so what number goes first keeping the movie even?

help!

eric

[Mr. E]

***S I G H***

I think I figured it out and I feel stupid. I had the autosize on Unconstricted, not SVCD. You can still change the frame size AND constrict the edges, apparently.

I'll let everyone know the results.

eric