is cq better or worse ?

[westy]

hi all .. ive been (*cough) backing up my dvds for about 6 months now .. i masterd the vcd. Then moved to svcd where i had to test a few settings to get it right.. i like my rips to be very good indeed. after messing with settings and takeing note to what other said on these forums i came up with this setting as the best i could get ...

useing : smartripper : dvd2avi : tmpgenc :

in tmpgenc i load up the pal svcd . choose Constant Quality (CG)
as my rate control . i go into the settings and put the quality on highest (100) i set the max bitrate to 2520 and the min to 2200 and set the motion search precision to normal ..
i put a maximum of 38 mins on each cd. doesnt matter how many cds it takes 3 (normally). as there cheap anyway ..
the picture is the best picture ive done yet and its as close to the original as i can see.. there is NO blockyness in the background or in black like ive seen on others ...
what i want to know is is CQ good or is there something evan better i can use .. ive tested a few differnt ways but this is the best ive done .... thanks in advance for any responce ...

[poopyhead]

you need to change some settings to get better quality:file size ratio

1) motion search accuracy should be set no lower than HIGH QUALITY (SLOW).... it will improve quality w/o increasing filesize...the higest quality (slowest) setting is just way to slow and the quality improvement is very small, if any...

2) min bitrate too high. there are scenes that don't need 2200 bitrate. try setting it between 0-300... (i.e. credits don't need that high bitrate). you're wasting filesize by giving scenes extra bitrate when they don't need it.

3) as for CQ, you should not set your CQ to 100. by doing so, you are basically encoding your rip at a constant bitrate (which is your max bitrate). so your entire rip should be at 2520. hence, you should lower your CQ to actually let the VBR work and save you some filesize. your CQ should be no larger than 70. this way, VBR will allocate more bitrate to scenes that need it (fast action, heavy background, etc..) and allocate less bitrate to others (slow scenes, credits, etc..)

4) CQ VBR vs. 2 pass VBR.... the latter has much better filesize prediction because it utilizes an avg. bitrate. hence, based on the avg. bitrate and the length of the movie, you can always predict the filesize w/ pretty good accuracy. this is especially important if you wanna squeeze movies onto LESS discs. also, because it makes 2 passes, the bitrate allocation is even better (i.e. it makes sure that every scene gets the most efficient amount of bitrate).

as for CQ, it only makes 1 pass. so the bitrate allocation will not be as good. also, filesize prediction is not as good. hence, if you wanna fit a movie onto less CDs, 2 pass VBR is the way to go, but takes twice as long to encode.

[banjazzer]

i go into the settings and put the quality on highest (100) i set the max bitrate to 2520 and the min to 2200

Your maximum is so close to your minimum you may as well encode CBR at a slightly lower bitrate - and save yourself a lot of time! 8)