ways to determine the bitrate of your dvd to xvid or h264 encodes

[codemaster]

Let's say you have a huge 7 GB .iso image of a DVD, and you want to encode it with x264 or to xvid only if you want to maintain compatibility with standalone dvd players.

Either way, you start by making some decisions, adding crop filters, deinterlace filters and so on depending on the source, but what do you do when you have to decide what bitrate the encoded video stream should have.

How do you arrive at such a decision wich include so many variables ?

For example, I would imagine that different videos require different bitrates. Maybe a talk show of 45 min needs less bitrate than a sports show of 45 min. Maybe there are tools that analize the footage and calculates that it should not have less than X kbps, utilizing a formula to calculate the bitrate based on certain variables. Or maybe someone did alot of tests and made some rules, for example, no less than 1400 kbps for talk shows, no less than 2400 kbps for sport shows, etc.

Or how do you usually approach this problem ?

[manono]

Or how do you usually approach this problem ?

By encoding for some sort of constant quant or constant quality. That way the bitrate becomes whatever it has to be to achieve the quality you want.

[codemaster]

I just found out about CRF in x264, this solves the bitrate problem