DVD Related Questions

fixler wrote on 5/8/2004, 11:15 PM

Hey Guys. I've got a few questions that I thought you would be able to help me out with. Well here it goes:

1. BACKGROUND: I run a production company that create/specialise in short multimedia presentations-tribute type stuff. Eg. Weddings Presentations. We usually use footage from old VHS tapes and that sort of material as well as collections of photos, scanned at 300dpi or higher (depending on how close we want to zoom/pan). Presentations usually end up at between 8 and 10 minutes (nothing big at all). We have been rendering to the default DVD Architect file template, while setting our render quality to best. This would be rendered with a variable bit rate: Min: 192 Avr: 6,000 Max: 8,000.
QUESTION: In order to get the best quality image for output should we use a constant bit rate of 9,800? What should we do, render wise to achieve the greatest looking results possible - not worrying about file size?

2. When transferring VHS and Hi8 (and similar quality media) to DVD, what bit rate should we render our captured files at. 5,000...6,000 (MPEG-2)?

Any help would be much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from you as always your responses seem really helpful.

Thanks,
fixler.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/8/2004, 11:21 PM

1. If you put the bitrate at 9800, there will be MANY computer or set top players that can't read this fast. Especially coming from VHS, you sure aren't gonna get any greater detail anyway.

2. You should do fine with the bitrates you mention. if it's really high motion, you've cropped it, and color corrected it, you might do a little faster.

HTH.

riredale wrote on 5/9/2004, 6:00 PM

I've done many DVDs where the min=0 (or as low as the encoder allows), avg=whatever, max=9,000.

If you do an average that is very high (say, above 9,000) then you're pushing the upper limits of what some players can handle, especially if they're dealing with a burned disk rather than with a pressed (replicated) disk. They are supposed to be able to deal with a total bitrate of 10.08Mb/sec, but from what I gather, a burned disk is much less reflective than the pressed disk, and sometimes it needs to back up and read the data again. In my own experience, a burned disk encoded at 9,500 played okay, but wouldn't fast-forward. When I reduced the bitrate to 8,500, it ran fine.