Good bitrate for DVD viewing?

[duraysteeus]

Hi Everyone,

When I'm converting my projects in Vegas to MPEG-2 for DVD authoring, I see that there are several choices under the CBR box (in the custom render settings). Unfortunately I've discovered that my movie which is 1 hour and 56 minutes can only fit in my DVD project if I render it with a CBR of 4,200,000 bps.

Is 4,200,000 bps an acceptable viewing quality for DVDs? I don't trust my own eyes. I've heard a lot of folks say 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 is the average.

-Dustin

[redwudz]

You are the best judge of quality. If that's the size you need to achieve, then that's the bitrate you need to use. I would like a higher bitrate, maybe up around 6000kbps or 7000kbps for maximum quality. But a lot depends on your original material. If the quality is extremely high, you might notice a small difference with 4200kbps. In most cases, probably not. You could always opt for a DL disc or split to two discs if you really have a quality problem. I would assume you've got your audio crunched down with AC3 or similar to make the most room for your video bitrate.

[duraysteeus]

Yes, I'm using AC3 audio at 192 kbps. You see, I have tried rendering the video at the default settings of about 6 Mbps. However, by the time I got to Vegas it told me my project was too big and had to be recompressed. So I'm trying to avoid recompressing anything.

[sohaibrazzaq]

I use atleast 5.5 MB/s for video. If the video is longer to be accomodate on DVD at this bitrate then i use 2 Pass VBR, i will suggest you to use two pass VBR and your overall quality will improve greatly.

[guns1inger]

My bitrate calculator says that for 1 hour 56 minutes, with 192kbps AC3 audio, you can encode your video at 5050kbps. At that bitrate, I would encode 2 pass VBR, using 5050 as an average, 9200 max and 1500 min. Remember that you customise the templates in Vegas and override the numbers.

[BJ_M]

9200 is to high for vegas - you can run into issues .. for the main concept encoder in vegas - use a spread of 5025 avg. , 8400 max.,
3025 min.


2 pass vbr

[guns1inger]

I have never run into issues with the mainconcept encoder in Vegas using similar settings. What symptoms does it produce ?

That said, with an average around 5000, it is unlikely to get near 9200 max anyway . . . .