How can i force CCE to respect my MIN and MAX BITRATE ?

[Miguel]

I'm using DVD2SVCD with CCE 2.50SP for a long now and i never had problems when doing my SVCD CBR encodings. Now i'm testing some VBR settings to trying to squeeze my mpgs and to see for myself if VBR its worse or better than VBR. I've tried almost everything. Mostly suggestions from this forum and DOOM9's, but i can't make CCE respect my bitrate settings. I'm trying to use a 4 pass VBR with Min:1150,Max: 2300, Max avg:2000. The movie: Jurassic Park I. Encoding just first chapter to test. It has a lot of dark images and the problem is with this "black images". When i use Bitrate Viewer to check bitrate... i see values like 112 or 200 as bitrate. How can this be if i put 1150 as MIN BITRATE ? Is there any workaround to this problem ? I can't lower my min bitrate more than 1150 because i've a Pioneer DV-444 and it doesn't like bitrates lower than 1150.

Any help would be nice

[adam]

Have you actually tried playing these on your standalone dvd player? The reason I ask is because I find that Bitrate Viewer's analysis of high and low bitrate points is often very inaccurrate. Also from my experience CCE is very good about respecting all bitrate settings, certainly more than any other encoder I've ever used.

I have encoded lots of movies with CCE and I have never seen the bitrate go as low as 200 even on the credits. I think bitrate viewer must be giving you false info.

If CCE is in fact allocating too few bits during certain scenes then there is a way to force it to respect your min setting but not through DVD2SVCD. You will need to do a CBR or 1-pass VBR encode at the same avg bitrate you wish to use in your final encode. Make sure that the create .vaf file is checked. After this first pass is done the advanced option will be unlocked and you can go through and set the local bitrate for any given scene in the movie.

[Miguel]

Thanks Adam, i'll try it tonight.
I don't known if bitrate viewer is giving me false values but my Standalone, Pioneer DV-444, make some green squares when playing this very dark images, like begin credits. If i encode with CBR everything is ok.

[Miguel]

I've tried and it works, But after make some changes in VBR advance settings i've got many GOPs with "gray" background. I don't know how to solve this. I need to learn how to change this settings a bit more.

Thanks