Recommended compression values for 720p

[Artas1984]

When ripping from DVD i have noticed people use from as low as 1500 kbps to 10000 kbps compression ratios for 720p videos.

What are the recommended ones, however?

[manono]

What are the recommended ones, however?

There are none as different sources compress differently and different people are satisfied with differing levels of quality. You'll need many fewer bits for the same quality of a man reading the news as compared to a high-speed car chase. To avoid the problem just run constant quality encodes for the quality you want.

And why would you make 720p videos from DVD sources?

[Artas1984]

I don't need the blabering.. Just answer the question, will you? What is considered a good compression ratio for 720p?

[Artas1984]

And why would you make 720p videos from DVD sources?

I meant HQ DVD. Sure, the standart DVD MP2 is 720X576, not 1280x720..

[Baldrick]

What is HQ DVD? DVD is max 720x.576. Nothing else.

[Hoser Rob]

Sorry to blabber but manono and baldrick are 100% right. There's more to it than just bitrate (which is what I believe you mean by "compression ratio"). And there is no such thing as 720p DVD.

If you're talking about using target bit rate, though (I tend to think Handbrake myself), these are fair estimates for h.264:

Passable = about 1500
Good = about 2400
Excellent = about 4300

That's for a NTSC 720*480 DVD, which is 480p and pretty standard. At 4300KB/s the output file won't be that much smaller than the input. You'll want 2 pass encoding. It's essential for good quality with target bit rate or file size method. If your software doesn't have 2 pass, junk it.

Lately I've been getting into the advanced h.264 settings with Handbrake in constant quality mode, so I'm letting the software handle the bit rate itself. You can really get good results that way with better compression too. But they're complex. The handbrake docs will point you to them. The mplayer docs have good baseline settings in general.

If you want to try advanced .264 settings in 2 pass mode you'd better have a gamer machine. It'll take 3 times as long. I'm starting to understand why so many .264 geeks here use constant quality mode.

[Farscape1]

I don't need the blabering.. Just answer the question, will you? What is considered a good compression ratio for 720p?

people like you never cease to amaze me. you think you can demand answers???

720p from a dvd source???? lol. that's what hardware players are for.

[jagabo]

Manono's response was entirely accurate. And your original post already had your answer. Different videos require different amounts of bitrate to maintain quality. There is no single bitrate that's best for all videos. Look at the videos in this post:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/295672-A-problem-for-video-experts?p=1811057&viewfu...=1#post1811057

They are standard definition and xvid but the issues are the same. There is a 20 fold difference in bitrate between the clean recording and the noisy recording.

If you use constant quality encoding you will always get the quality you specify. And it will be faster because you don't need two passes.

[ilpilo]

European Broadcaster Union (EBU):
for hdtv the best format is
H264/AVC 720p, 50fps, at least 10000 kbps of bitrate

[Artas1984]

I meant no disrespect - just wanted opinions on what people think is a good enough bit ratio for 720 pixels..

And i just found out there is no HD DVD MPEG2 video - only HD DVD DISCS... WOW.

[cal_tony]

For those of you that posted on this topic..thank you.

I'm always looking for info on using h264 for DVDs. Mostly I use Vidcoder[a simpler to use version of Handbrake] or XMediaRecode. They're easy to use and I am generally satisfied with the results they produce but I'm always trying out the different options they provide so this topic is something I always read thru.

Recently, Baldrick mentioned Vidcoder again. I had previously used the program but switched to XMediaRecode for my recoding. However, just his mentioning it caused me to try it again. Now I use that most often.

Tony