Drawing the line at bitrate vs. resolution? I'm so confused

[BlueWeasel]

I've got several AVIs (Divx, Xvid) that I am looking at converting to DVD, and I think I've ready every possible guide on Videohelp, Doom9, KVCD.net. But it seems like every guide or forum post I read has something different.

The AVIs are 640x480 or 512x384 22-min long TV episodes.

I'm trying to put the episodes on a DVD with menus. Generally, I thought about putting 11 episodes on a single DVD (roughly 4 hours), but I'm worried that the bitrate would be too low if I wanted to use 704x480 or 720x480 resolution.

Taking into account overhead for menus, etc:

7 episodes @ 128kbps audio --> ~3600kbps bitrate avg
11 episodes @ 128kpbs audio --> ~2400kbps bitrate avg

Now, given those average bitrate values, what optimal resolution would you use?

I'm thinking 704x480/720x480 for the 3600kbps, and 352x480 for the 2400 kbps.

[BJ_M]

352x480 for all of them ...

how did you come up with 160 for audio though ?

You mean 128 ac3

[BlueWeasel]

352x480 for all of them ...
how did you come up with 160 for audio though ?
You mean 128 ac3

Yeah, I meant 128kbps audio...I've been reading way too may guides over the past few days

I'm glad you answered like that BJ_M, because I think that's the root of my misunderstanding.

Why do you think to use 352x480? Is it because:

(1) the avg bitrates I give above aren't high enough in your opinion for 704/720x480 resolution?

(2) I should try to avoid "resizing' to the higher resolution? ie, always try to use the same resolution as my source (impossible here) or lower.

Or a combination of these 2 factors?

[BJ_M]

1 & 2 both , mostly 2 though ...

[lordsmurf]

128 is super low ... artifacts in audio
Use 192-384k, most use 224-256

[BJ_M]

yea - 128 is low, it is 13.8khz apx. bandwidth, but he prob, has source mp3 at about the same bit rate i bet and in such case, 192 (a common standard) is not going to make much diff. ...

specially since source are TV series, mostly dialog anyway which sounds fine at that bitrate for the vast majority of users FOR THIS TYPE OF SOURCE .... I would put the extra bitrate into the video which is marginal anyway for most peoples encoding skills ..

Keep in mind that most TV broadcast (and FM) is compressed to this bandwidth anyhow .. sometimes even less I notice on so called digital TV..

It is a judgement call and you are right and I am also right in my reasoning ..

[BJ_M]

could even encode it 1 channel AC3