is this the same thing?

[efiste2]

im putting two 50 min episodes onto a DVDr from VHs using TMPGenc and am reducing the bitrate by half to fit them onto i disc for encoding , This maybe doing the samething but if i could encode at the best bitrate and then DVDshrink the final authoured file (both episodes) down to fit on 1 disc would i be doing exactly the same thing as reducing the bitrate in TMPGenc or could it produce a better end result ?

[bugster]

TmpGenc is an encoder, DVDshrink is a transcoder. They work in different ways attempting to get the same result. Using an encoder with the correct bitrate from the start (and other settings correct for the situation also) should produce better results than using a transcoder to shrink, especially if using 2-pass VBR or CQ mode encoding. But quality is very subjective so in the end only you can really decide which is the way to go.