Need help with MPG-2 settings

dsf wrote on 3/15/2005, 8:05 PM

Could someone suggest a rule of thumb for the Main Concept encoder MPG settings, eventual destination a DVD. I am thinking of scenes with much movement, specifically hand held camera or shooting out of a moving vehicle. If you just set the vide quality setting to "Best" would that be good enough? Or does it matter?

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 3/15/2005, 8:27 PM

Are you using DVD Architect or not? If yes, use the DVD Architect template for PAL or NTSC. If not, you'll want to use the DVD NTSC template. Depending on length of program, a bitstream of 8000kpbs is good for high motion. If your program is longer than 60 mins, you'll want to consult a bitrate calculator. They are found all over the web, there are 2 on the VASST site, and I think Edward Troxel has one on his site.
Unless you've got a lot of stills on the timeline, rendering to "Good" is generally just fine.

vitalforce wrote on 3/15/2005, 8:45 PM

If the movie's over 60 minutes there's also Nero Recode (part of the Nero Burning Rom 6.0 suite)--it has done a phenomenal job of preserving all detectable quality in a film project that's 1 hr. 45 min.--plays back on a regular DVD.

B_JM wrote on 3/15/2005, 8:47 PM

dont use recode though for mpeg2 encoding (i hope thats not what you meant) , it is one of the worse mpeg2 encoders out there ...

logiquem wrote on 3/16/2005, 5:42 AM

Draft, preview,good or best settings are related to render operation only (it set the precision used by Vegas to render, just like the preview monitor quality setting) , not mpeg encoding.

Mpeg encoding quality depend of bit rate and encoding method (cbr or vbr).

If you want to test different encoding quality on high moving selected sequences, use "preview in player" fonction. Very usefull for mpeg2.

craftech wrote on 3/16/2005, 6:58 AM

A good rule of thumb is an average bitrate of 6000 using Vegas. How long is the video, and do you have an authoring program with an AC3 encoder such as DVDA?

John