Question on Encoding Resolution & Bitrate for High Quali

[tdogg4ya]

I have been reading alot on encoding and authoring a VIDEO_TS for burning a dvd. I don't have any problem burning a dvd, but have questions on resolution settings and quality/time settings. I want to fit about 5 hours of mpeg1 video on a dvdr. I know that you need to encode audio into 48khz, and I am probably going to check out some TMPGENc templates off of www.kvcd.com. My tools I use are, TMPGENc, Ulead DVD Movie Studio. My question is... The mpeg1 video I have is I believe 352x240. I have made a dvd with about 400 minutes at 352x240, and successfully created the dvd, but quality was low and there was quite a bit of artifacting. Should I encode the video to 352x480? Is there a quality loss when converting to a higher resolution? If I use a template and make sure audio is 48khz, and resolution is 352x480, should the quality be alot better? Any help would be greatly apprieciated!

[bugster]

If you already have the video in mpeg-1 at 352*240 then re-encoding it and resizing it will only reduce quality, so what resolution will look better is irrelevant.

You need a bitrate of less than 1800kbs to get 5 hours on a DVD.

If you still have the original source and can re-capture you can do this at a higher resolution and then encode how you want. At this bitrate it is debatable as to which would be the better resolution. The lower resolution would have fewer macroblocks in high motion scenes but the higher resolution would give a slightly sharper image. Why not try a short test clip and see for yourself which you prefer.

[tdogg4ya]

So maybe I should re-code with higher bitrate? Can I do that in TMPGENc? I thought vcd setting in TMGENc didn't let me choose bitrate like mpeg2 did. I will try again with higher quality mpegs on the 352x240 resolution. My first test quality was low

[housepig]

what is the source of the original files?

increasing a low resolution file to a higher resolution is usually not going to make it any better looking, because the data isn't there... the encoder is just going to guess what should be in the empty spaces, so the results will be just as ugly or moreso than the original.

if you have access to the original material, reencode it at a larger resolution.

but there's only so much data to go around - if you want to pack a lot of time on the disc, the appearance will suffer. Maybe you should try fitting less on a disc?

[ZippyP.]

If you can encode from the original source then you should try 352x480 in mpeg2, which is known as CVD resolution (or 1/2 DVD). This would look good at an average bitrate of 1800 using 2-pass VBR as your encoding method. You can get a TMPGEnc template in the Tools section for CVD. 2-pass VBR is going to take almost twice as long to encode but it gets the most on a disk while preserving quality.

Like housepig says, don't encode from a lower to higher resolution. The quality will not improve, in fact it gets worse.

[tdogg4ya]

I don't have original material, I only have high quality mpeg1 450mb clip at 352x240 resolution. If I burn these in Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2, and let it convert audio to 8khz automatically, will the quality be the same? Should I adjust the project settings to 352x240 or just leave it default. I have don't adjust resolution checked also. Will they be the same quality on the dvd as the vcd?

[bugster]

OK, so you have VCD compliant (well, in terms of resolution anyway) mpeg-1. Re-encoding is pointless as these are already DVD compliant except for the audio. I don't use Ulead MF 2 so can't say for definate your settings are correct but they sound OK. Why not try it. Use a DVD-RW in case anything goes wrong.

[tdogg4ya]

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if my apple superdrive DVR-104 does DVD-RW? Still looking into it. Thanks Guys

[bugster]

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if my apple superdrive DVR-104 does DVD-RW? Still looking into it. Thanks Guys

Yes it does

[tdogg4ya]

Thanks Buster.

If I do convert them to dvd format using TMPGEnc, how many minutes could I put on a dvd using DVD Movie Factory 2?

[bugster]

It all depends on the bitrate the movies are encoded at. Use a bitrate calculator from the tools section to find out.