mpeg 2

[loopyloops]

Where can I find the best quality settings for mpeg 2? Video data rate, etc.

[Craig Tucker]

Well the higher the bitrate, the better the quality (and the larger the filesize). At which point increasing the bitrate further has no noticable effect on the quality of the output video will depend on the quality of the source video.

Assuming you are using tmpgenc there is a guide here
http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html

[ZippyP.]

The "best" quality is to always use the highest bitrate possible for whatever type of disk that you're making. There will be a point however, past which you will not notice much difference. What that point is depends on the resolution, the type of the source and your own personal preference. Give us the source type (VHS, TV capture, DVD rip etc.) and the resolution and what you're trying to create (VCD,SVCD,DVD) and then someone may be able to tell you what they use.

Edit - Beat me to it Craig.

[loopyloops]

The "best" quality is to always use the highest bitrate possible for whatever type of disk that you're making. There will be a point however, past which you will not notice much difference. What that point is depends on the resolution, the type of the source and your own personal preference. Give us the source type (VHS, TV capture, DVD rip etc.) and the resolution and what you're trying to create (VCD,SVCD,DVD) and then someone may be able to tell you what they use.

Edit - Beat me to it Craig.

The source is an hours worth of .avi (captured from my minidv). I'm using Ulead Media Studia Pro 7 to convert to mpeg 2, but when I did it today, I noticed I ended up with a filed of about 2gb (from my 12.6 gb .avi) and the quality was terrible. I've used it before, and it was fine (not sure how the settings changed) and left me with a 3 plus gb file which looked great - I then convert that to dvd. I want the best quality mpeg 2 to convert to DVD.

The choices seem to be: 1. video data rate, 2. audio data rate, 3. stereo or joint stereo (what's that?) There are a couple more as well.

[ZippyP.]

You might want to try a different mpeg-2 encoder like TMPGEnc, the quality of it's output is top notch and it has a 30 day trial period.

Generally it's the video bitrate (data rate) which affects your output the most, the other two aren't relevant to picture quality. Keep it as high as possible.

[FulciLives]

When creating MPEG-2 DVD compliant video files you can safely go up to around 8000kbps for the video. This is really the highest you should go.

The problem is 8000kbps will only give you about 1 hour of A/V on a DVD disc. So it is common to use a lower bitrate but if your video is only 1 hour long (which is what I'm getting from reading your post) then by all means MAX the video out at 8000kbps and use LPCM WAV audio instead of MP2 audio.

If you need to put more than 1 hour on a DVD then there are ways of doing that the best of which is the use of a 2-pass or multi-pass VBR encode where you set a MIN bitrate, an AVG bitrate and a MAX bitrate.

But if you do your video at 8000kbps then you just need to do a CBR encode since that is about the best you can get. It only makes sense (and a lot of sense at that) to use 2-pass/multi-pass VBR when you need to fit more than 1 hour per DVD disc.

Again you should look into TMPGEnc Plus or CINEMA CRAFT ENCODER (aka CCE BASIC) as those are the two most popular and the two best MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoding software programs.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman