STANDALONE DVD PLAYER MAXIMUM BIT RATE

[akagi]

Somebody at one stage told me that standalone DVD players can only read to a maximum bit rate - anything over this and the player cannot take advantage of it. Is this correct and if so what is that figure?

Depending on the reply that I get (hopefully) if I have video files that exceed the player max bit rate WHERE SPACE IS NOT AN ISSUE am I better off still rendering the files down to this max prior to burning or just leave them as is - i.e say the max is 8000bps and my files are at 10,000bps am I creating myself quality / compatability issues by leaving the files as is?

Cheers in advance.

[Cobra]

The player must be able to read all the data in the video file or else it cannot play the video. If you make the video too high a bitrate, then you will find it cannot keep up. To read more data per second, it must be able to spin the DVD faster. There is a limit to how fast the motor will go in most DVD players.

10,000kbps I believe is the maximum for DVD players, excluding audio. I'm not sure on this, so I may be wrong - someone will correct me if this is the case.

All I can say is to try making a small sample clip and burn to a rewritable disc to test it. Find your max and encode to it - it's the only way you can find out for sure.

Cobra

[akagi]

Just registered where I quote 'bps' above I mean 'kbps' !!!

[Cobra]

Well, I know what you meant anyway!

Cobra

[junkmalle]

I believe the maximum bitrate allowable for DVD is 9800 Kb/s -- including audio. So you audio and video together must be less than that.

[Nilfennasion]

The maximum combined bitrate for video and audio is 10 Mbps. Nothing more, nothing less. The sticking point is that every soundtrack you put into the disc eats into that 10 Mbps. Ditto for any seamless branching or alternate angle content. Since the specifications state that at least one Dolby Digital soundtrack has to be included, the maximum one can use on video winds up being 9.6 Mbps or thereabouts, depending on the bitrate you use for that Dolby soundtrack.

[junkmalle]

The maximum combined bitrate for video and audio is 10 Mbps. Nothing more, nothing less.

Do you have a definitive reference for this? I've been trying to find one. I've seen claims of 9600, 9800, and 10,000. I wonder how much of this has to do with nomenclature -- ie, meg meaning 1,000,000 vs meg meaning 1,048,576 (1024 * 1024). If you take 9800 Kbit/sec to mean 9800 * 1024 you get 10,035,200 bits/sec -- essentially the same as your claim or "10 Mbps" if we assume your meg equals 1,000,000. And if you take 9600 to mean 9.6 * 1024 * 1024 you get 10,066,329 -- again almost the same as your 10,000,000!

[adam]

Check out the DVD Demystified FAQ or better yet the book, or some of the technical notes under the DVD section of mpeg.org. The maximum supported bitrate for DVD is 10.08Mbits. That is video and audio and any other overhead. 9800kbits is only the max for the video stream. Most DVD players can play bitrates well above this but at the max supported resolution for DVD (720x480/576), generally you aren't going to get any benefit using higher then standard bitrates anyway.

[Nilfennasion]

Ah yes, that was what I was meaning to say. 10.08 Mbps is more than adequate if you have one video stream, one audio stream, and one subtitle stream. It's all those unncessary ones that cause problems. A lot of PAL DVDs have so many dubs and subtitle tracks it's ridiculous. And they wonder why DVDShrink is so popular?

[junkmalle]

Check out the DVD Demystified FAQ

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

It took a while but I finally found the definition of Mbps as used at that site. At the very end he talks about the confusion between computer kilo, mega, and giga prefixes (1024 based) vs. Système International d'Unités definition (1000 based). There he mentions that all his references to Mbps refer to million (1,000,000) bits per second.

Elsewhere he states that the maximum bitrate for audio, video, and subpicture combined is 10.08 Mbps (10,080,000 bits per second). And the maximum bitrate for the video itself is 9.8 Mbps (9,800,000 bits per second).

[Nilfennasion]

The problem with that is that people, not knowing the difference, will look at the covers for DVD-Rs and think they are getting a disc that holds 4.7 computer gigabytes. You wouldn't believe how much crap the salesmen get over that.

[spiderman2k1]

The info you need is here

https://www.videohelp.com/dvd