How to calculate bitrate setting to fit on 4.7 Gb DVD ?

simonrond wrote on 12/9/2004, 4:37 PM
When I am rendering my project from avi to mainconcept mpeg2, I always try to have the maximum amount of bitrate, and sometime, the final mpeg2 file is too big to fit on a simgle dvd 4.7 disc. Some people talk about bitrate calculation software, but how to calculate bitrate when there is a max., an average and a min. bitrate?

Whoo!

Thanks!

Simonrond

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 12/9/2004, 4:53 PM
Impossible to predict, because no two sources will encode the same file size with VBR.
If the source is rather consistent throughout, you could encode say, 1/10th of the material and get a rough idea of what the final filesize will be like.
ScottW wrote on 12/9/2004, 4:56 PM
If you go to Google and type in: bitrate calculator
the first link that comes up will be: http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm
and there's a nice little java calculator - if you don't have java installed you'll need to install it to use this calculator.

Don't be confused by the 4.37(DVD5) option - from the computer's perspective you only have 4.37GB available.

The next problem is how much to leave for menus - if it's just a few simple menus, you can probably use just slightly lower than the calculated value; if they are complex menus (motion backgrounds, animated thumbs, etc.) then you may need to do a trial prepare of just the menu with a dummy movie(s) to see how much space the menus are going to consume.

By the way, there's not always a lot of advantage to going for the maximum amount of bitrate - depending on the material etc. In addition, going to maximums, like 9603 kb/s for the bitrate can actually cause playability issues with some players.

--Scott
ScottW wrote on 12/9/2004, 4:58 PM
Actually you can predict even with VBR - that's what the average is all about. If you tell the MC encoder to use an average bitrate of 6,000 - then it usually hits pretty close to that. Using 2-pass VBR allows the encoder to hit very close to the average requested.

--Scott
elena-b7304 wrote on 7/22/2025, 8:16 AM

After installing the bitrate 1.0 calculator script, I receive this error and am unable to view anything:
[obs-bitrate-calculator-settings.lua] Error occurring during file execution: Obs-bitrate-settings-calculator.lua: 26: dlopen (libobs.dylib, 5): image not found... ontend-tools / scripts

How do I approach the problem?

rraud wrote on 7/22/2025, 4:34 PM

I recall using 'DVD Shrink' on a project render that was too large for a standard DVD, I further recall considering a dual-sided DVD-5, but instead used 'DVD shrink' for more reliable end-user playback. It was a long, long time ago and I do not recollect that many details except it came out good,
I also recall 'Marks Bit Rate Calculator' around the same WIndows XP era.