Maximum Safe Bitrate

[SCDVD]

What is generally considered to be the maximum safe bitrate that can be expected to play on virtually all DVD players?

[guns1inger]

How long (or short) is a piece of string ?

I have players that will happily play burned discs encoded at 9400 or higher. More conservative players will say as low as 7800. I usually use around 8700 and have never had any issues across a wide range of players.

[levick]

This is one of those million dollar questions..
Alot depends on your viewing pleasure. I have found that 4 Mb/s (4000 Kb/s) is acceptable
for a 34" CRT tv however have raised that to at least 5 Mb/s for newer 50" flat screen units.

This is of course to give a good quality end result.

Most commercial dvds appear to encoded at an average bit rate of around 6000 Kb/s and higher

This of course is only my personal findings.

[SCDVD]

How long (or short) is a piece of string ?

I have players that will happily play burned discs encoded at 9400 or higher. More conservative players will say as low as 7800. I usually use around 8700 and have never had any issues across a wide range of players.

Your 8700 figure sounds like a good "safe" number. I know the DVD spec says 9848 is the maximum bitrate for an in spec DVD but I'm worried that the $29.95 Walmart special player might tend to choke at 9000+ bit rates.

[MysticE]

How long (or short) is a piece of string ?

I have players that will happily play burned discs encoded at 9400 or higher. More conservative players will say as low as 7800. I usually use around 8700 and have never had any issues across a wide range of players.

Your 8700 figure sounds like a good "safe" number. I know the DVD spec says 9848 is the maximum bitrate for an in spec DVD but I'm worried that the $29.95 Walmart special player might tend to choke at 9000+ bit rates.

Seems odd to be concerned about maximum bitrates then talk about junk players.

[SCDVD]

Seems odd to be concerned about maximum bitrates then talk about junk players.

If you are distributing a DVD that will be viewed on a wide variety of players, it would be a good idea to have them play on all of them. Nothing odd about that.

[manono]

But all DVD players, even the $29.95 ones, are required to play all compliant DVDs. No reason to cripple your DVD because there are a few players out there that might not play it well. But that said, and although I always use a higher max bitrate myself, your 8700kbps figure for the video sounds reasonable. There aren't all that many retail DVDs that use a max video bitrate higher than that.

I know the DVD spec says 9848 is the maximum bitrate for an in spec DVD

The spec allows for a total of 10080kbps, with a max of 9800kbps for the video alone:

https://www.videohelp.com/dvd

[SCDVD]

Thanks Manano. i always appreciate your advice and opinions.

[MOVIEGEEK]

I do 8,000kbps just to be safe.