DVD write bitrate questioin

[jjvb]

When writing to DVD with Pinnacle Studio 8, if you check the best quality option, it appears to write at an 8000 bitrate. If you check custom, you can adjust this number. I think the actual DV bitrate is about 3600. Do you gain any quality by writing at 8000? I know you lose a lot of disc space. Or should you write at 3600 or 4000? I want the best quality I can get, but if there is no gain over 3600, I don't want to waste the space.

Thanks.

[Baldrick]

dv bitrate is 3600 kbyte/s while dvd max bitrate is 9800 kbit/s = 1225 kbyte/s.

But dv and dvd compression is entirely different so you can't just compare the bitrates. If you want best dvd quality use the highest possible dvd bitrate.

[bugster]

DV bitrate and mpeg-2 or DVD bitrate have no direct relationship.

Mpeg-2 bitrate does affect quality, often significantly. But so does the type and quality of the source material.

Home video from any source usually benefits from high bitrate more than professionally shot material. This is because camera shake caused by hand held cameras eats up an encoders available bitrate.

If you are encoding home video from DV and want the best possible quality, use a high bitrate.

[jjvb]

Thanks for the replies. I now understand what is going on. I had a project ready to burn to DVD and it was three minutes too long. I reduced the bitrate with the custom setting to 7600 so that it would fit on the DVD. At what bitrate setting would you expect noticable quality reduction? I know there are many variables. These are home movies so the quality is not great to begin with. Guess I could burn a few test DVDs at reduced bitrates to see. Thanks again.