Mark's Dvd Bite Rate program showed calculated too small

[clashradio]

Hello,

I'm using Vegas 12 as my NLE program & DVD Architect for menus & to burn to disc. I have a HD project that's 1hr 57min 1080P, PCM audio. So I entered all the data into the program called Mark's DVD Bite Rate in order to know what to enter in the Min, Average and Max for the bite rate. After entering all the final information like, type of menu and how much safety percent etc It spit out:

Variable Bit rate
Max=8264
Average=8264
Min=4128.

I'm burning to a BD25 so I entered 26,843,545,600 in the bytes capacity box since that program doesn't have an option for outputting to BD.
So in Vegas I entered 8,264,000 for Max & Average, and 4,128,000 for Min. When the project was finished rendering it was only about 5G. Way too small. Changing the length of the motion menu, or the safety percentage didn't changed the calculated bit rates at all. I was expecting a file size of about 20G. Obviously I want the best quality, that's why I'm outputting to BD.

Please help,

Jason

[DB83]

I do not know that program but if it does what its title says then it calculates for a dvd not for a blu ray and those bitrates you quote are more typical for a dvd.

Have a look at the software section from this site. There may be a more appropriate program for Blu Ray. But simple maths dictate that bit rate would be 5 to 6 times what you are entering.

Also check 'What is' for allowed bitrates for blu ray.

[mail2tom]

You might also want to look at AVCHDCalculator.

[redwudz]

For info, look to 'WHAT IS' Blu-ray to the upper left on this page. Also there is the DVD info.

[jagabo]

I suspect the calculator you used used only works for DVD sizes and limited your bitrate for 2 hours on a dual layer DVD. You want a bitrate about 3x higher for single layer BD -- so about 25000 kbps average. Use a calculator designed to work with BD (or at least one that is limited to DVD):

http://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php

I don't know why Vegas didn't deliver the bitrate you asked for. Maybe your material is to simple (a slideshow, for example).

[clashradio]

Ok, I checked out "What Is" (Blu-Ray). Stats show a blu-ray's Max bit rate is 40Mb. Vegas' Max default is set to 30, & that's what I used. So I'm confused as to why DVD Architect says "project too big for media"?

As far as the program AVCHDCalculator, I'm rendering as MPEG2, not a avchd file. Does that matter when calculating the bit rate?

The cool thing about Mark's DVD Bit Rate is you have the options to calculate for menu(s), which will eat up data as well. But it seems to not work for BD calculations.

[manono]

As far as the program AVCHDCalculator, I'm rendering as MPEG2, not a avchd file. Does that matter when calculating the bit rate?

No, bitrate is figured the same way across all codecs.

[clashradio]

Still confused as to why DVD Architect says "media file is too big" etc/and how to know exactly where to set the bit rate for max quality.

The rendered video file (rendered using 30Mb Max, 25 Avg, 20 Min-default in Vegas) is 20.46Gb. Rendered audio file is 1.88Gb. The rendered motion menu is 180Mb.

In Architect when I check the properties it shows the menu as 121Mb and the video/audio file at 24,405.9Mb. The only error message in the Description box says "the audio on track 1 (the menu) will be compressed". The default video bit rate in Architect is 18Mb, and goes up to 40. When I click "Fit to disc" it says "media file too big" etc.

I rendered this exact same project using a max bit rate of 25Mb, and it fit on the BD25 just fine this time. How do I know using say 28M would have been enough compression?

So why is the file size in DVD-A showing 24G, but when I right-click on the file itself it's only 20g?

[manono]

Still confused as to why DVD Architect says "media file is too big" ...

Because DVD Architect thinks you're making a DVD?

...how to know exactly where to set the bit rate for max quality.

By doing strictly bitrate-based encodes you really don't know what bitrate should be used since there's no real correlation between bitrate used and the output quality, except to say the higher the better. You could always do a quality-based encode, final file size be damned. Or you could check the output in something like Tecoltd Bitrate Viewer which has a Q-Level (quality level) indicator.