Understanding Bitrate...

[drewzor]

I would like to ask a real basic question.

If you have a mpeg2 video file and convert it to
a cbr 2000kps mpeg2 video file,
will re-encoding it at 4000kps increase the over all size of the video file?

Does this apply to all codecs?

What I'm asking is once infomation is lost it cannot be replaced or does it get replaced with noise and therefore increase the final size of the mpeg2 video file

[guns1inger]

It will double the size of the file. Yes, it holds for all codecs - audio and video. The encoder will simply pad it out to fill the space.

It is pretty simple. The measure of bitrate, in kbps, is a constant. Doesn't matter if you use Xvid, mpeg or AC3, if the files all have the same length (running time) and bitrate, they will be the same size. That is why you only need one bitrate calculator, regardless of the encoding you are doing.

[drewzor]

Cool thats for clarifing that for me guns1inger, much appreciated.