Hi

I'm creating CVDs (352x576 PAL Mpeg2) to watch TV captures on my DVD player and I am happily using TMPGenc for encoding to Mpeg2.
I've noticed that, when the video bitrate is below 1000 kbps, (computed for 120 minutes films or more) and using VBR, TMPGenc is not able to maintain the requested file size to fit a CD.
Instead it creates files in the area of 650-700 Mbyte rather than using the whole 800 (or 900) Mbytes available.

Of course the disk is viewable but I am unhappy about the wasted bandwidth.

The problem goes away if the speed is above 1000 kbps, as typically found in 1 and 1/2 hour films.

TMPGenc support people say this behaviour is normal for Mpeg2 encoders and indeed information as such is reported also in the help menu.

- but my question to experts would be why this happens?
- and is there any empirical turnaround to this?

Please do not suggest me to use CBR.
I do not want to use CBR because my experience say that at low bitrate it creates very poor video.
Thanks