Video quality worse after burning .srt subtitle into .avi file

[twenty]

Hi, I recently burned an .srt subtitle into an .avi file using ffmpegX for the mac, and it turns out that the quality is worse than the original .avi file.

I played it on my PS3 and when you press select you can see the bitrate (sp?) etc., and it was lower for the file with the burned in .srt sub than the original one.

I haven't changed any of the settings. Is there any way to maintain the original quality of the video whe burning an .srt file into an .avi file?

[guns1inger]

Do a constant quality encode. You may find that the file size is larger than the original, but the quality will be the same.

[jagabo]

The quality will always be worse when reencoding with lossy codecs (which includes all the high compression codecs like MPEG, WMV, etc.). Using sufficiently high bitrates will help keep the quality loss down to a bearable level, to the point where you really won't notice at normal playback speed.