Bitrate and resolution advice.

[ShinKyo]

Source material is: 640 x 480 rmvb

Now I have two options for the mpeg2 conversion:

1: 352 x 576 , Bitrate ~2520

2: 720 x 576 , Bitrate ~3400

Which option would produce a better picture quality on a normal TV-Screen?

BTW: both options are set in stone (don't ask me why...)

[guns1inger]

Neither. Both will give you poor to below average quality.

Nothing is set in stone. You can always put less on a disc. Unless the video is mostly still images or talking heads with little movement, the results will not be pretty. I also don't understand why the lower resolution also gets a lower bitrate. The running time won't change, so why should the bitrate drop ? If the bitrates remained the same, option 1 would most likely give superior results to option 2, but as it stands you are really asking which option is least crappy of two equally crappy options.

[jagabo]

If the video is a noiseless slideshow the larger frame size will look better. Otherwise it's not possible to say.

[jman98]

Better idea - Just put a border around the video to get it up to 720x576 instead of resizing it. If you have a good encoder that should look better than either of your 2 suggested alternatives. Resizing up, which you'll have to do in both cases at least in the vertical direction, is tricky and it can lead to bad quality if you don't do it correctly. But both guns1inger and jagabo have good points in their posts that are worth considering.

Note that rmbv isn't great for quality. If this is anime, just go with the bigger size. Animation is pretty clean to begin with and even in VCD animation can look pretty good. You'll gain nothing with anime by using the lower resolution AND the lower bit rate. The best choice is my suggestion for the borders to make it 720x576 (you can do this in AviSynth) and then encode it at 3400.

[jagabo]

The AR will be off if he simply adds borders (assuming the source is square pixel and he's making a 4:3 DAR video). He'll want to resize to about 586x480 and add borders to make a 720x576 frame with the correct AR.

[creamyhorror]

Making DVDs from RMVB anime, what a horrible idea

[ShinKyo]

I never said its anime... some people just assumed it lol. I try to encode a tv drama about 300 episodes. First option let me fit 5 episodes on a DVD, second option around 4 episodes. It has to compatible with three different dvd players and some of them are very old ( but I cant check it up right now).

As for the lower resolution lower bitrate: I assumed that lower resolution doesnt need that much bitrate, and if 2520 is enough for option 1 (and it usually is more than enough, cuz I usually encode in that res + bitrate), why should I bump it up? I just wanna know if its worth to double the vertial lines with less than 50% bitrate improvement, thus needing more DVDs and storage place in the end. So is it worth it or not? What do you guys think?

BTW: I never asked for the ebst quality, I asked for the better quality of the two given options.

[davexnet]

You're fitting more hours and minutes when using the 1/2 D1 resolution. Nothing wrong with that.
However, the overall bitrate is a little low. If it looks OK to you, that's the main thing.

In the past when I've attempted something like this, I used HCenc and fiddled with Lumgain and AQ
to get the best I could at the allotted bit-rate.

[poisondeathray]

I would guess #2, but there's only 1 way to know for sure. There are too many factors that go into what would make it better or worse

I agree with davexnet - I would use HCEnc , because it seems to be significantly better than other MPEG2 encoders at lower bitrates.

[lordsmurf]

Both are too low. The 352 is maybe 1000k too low, the 720 is about half what it needs to be.

If it looks OK to you

Because so many people share discs or watch discs with others, I have to disagree. This pathetic excuse for overly compressing video needs to be retired now.