A question about encoding

OmegaMan wrote on 8/9/2004, 12:54 PM
Whenever I render a 20GB AVI file to MPEG it usually reduces the size to around 500MB. Since I'm burning this to a DVD it would be better if it would render it down to 4GB. The quality of MPEG 2 at 500MB is considerably less than the original input. Is there some way of varying this input so that the quality would be better? (By the way the figures I'm using may be off, I'm just using them for illustration)

Comments

ScottW wrote on 8/9/2004, 1:01 PM
Sure, click the "customize" button on the Save As screen for rendering an MPEG-2, select the video tab and increase the average bit rate for VBR encoding, or choose CBR encoding and specify a higher bitrate (like 8,000 Kb/s).

--Scott
johnmeyer wrote on 8/9/2004, 2:19 PM
Yes, just to clarify, click on the "Render As" option in the File menu, select MPEG-2 as the "Save As Type" option, select one of the "DVD Architect" templates (NTSC or PAL), and then click on the "Custom ..." button. Click on the "Video" tab, and then change the "Average (bps)" variable bit rate to a number that will make your encoded MPEG-2 as big as possible, without being too large to fit onto a single DVD. You can use this calculator: (Bitrate Calculator) to determine the exact bitrate needed. You will need to know the length of the video to be encoded.

This calculator assumes that you do not have any other video to be encoded, and that you plan to create a DVD with fairly simple menus (if you plan to have lots of animated menus, and sound effects for each menu, then you probably should use a bitrate value smaller than suggested by this calculator).

Hopefully Sony will include an automatic feature in a future release of Vegas that will let users who are encoding a single project into a DVD do this encoding at the proper bitrate without having to do these calculations separately. It would take about five minutes of programming to do this, and would answer a tremendous number of questions that come up on this forum almost every single day.
OmegaMan wrote on 8/9/2004, 9:34 PM
This is the screen that I'm looking at

http://img17.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img17&image=Encodingbitratecalcualtor.gif

So if I had a two-hour AVI file that I want to burn to a DVD what should I change the settings to? Another question I have is what is that video quality slider all about? I moved it all away to the right and it didn't change any of the other settings.
johnmeyer wrote on 8/10/2004, 9:39 AM
Please go back and read my previous post. I don't know how to answer your question in any more detail. Do not change other settings (like the quality slider, which should be left at its default "High" setting).
Jsnkc wrote on 8/10/2004, 10:01 AM
For 2 hours you should be able to be around 4Mbps for the video bitrate with AC3 audio at 192 And still have some room for menus and things like that. If it is just a pop-n-play DVD (video only) then you could probably get away with a 4.3 Mbps. You never want to completely fill up a DVD becasue you are just asking for problems. I usually try to stay at around 4GB of data max, usually less if possible.
JaysonHolovacs wrote on 8/10/2004, 10:51 AM
This could be a truly crazy request, but does anyone know if it's possible to port John Meyer's bitrate calculator to a script and let it be run from inside Vegas? Seems like that could be a pretty useful tool.

-Jayson