Resolution and Bitrates

seanybear wrote on 6/12/2002, 10:47 AM

I am not yet ready to convert to DVD, but want to be ready for the future. So, I have been delving into both VCD’s and SVCD’s. I seem to be getting the “best” quality from XVCD’s at both higher resolution and bitrates. I have tried the following:

352x240
352x480
480x480
720x480
720x420

with bitrates from 1.15K (VCD standard) up to 4.0K – which all seem to play fine in my RCA DVD player. My videos generally run anywhere from 6-20 minutes, so file size is not really a problem for compilation to a CD. So my questions to the forum:

1. What correlation exists between bitrate and resolution? For example, if going from a 352x240 to a 740x480, do we have to double the bitrate to maintain the same quality?

2. What is the best (X)VCD format to use for later conversion to DVD?

3. Should the audio be changed from 44.1KHz to 48KHz to maintain DVD standards?

Thanks for any input on this subject.

Comments

kkolbo wrote on 6/12/2002, 11:29 AM

Actually I find that if you plan to go to DVD later, Archive a DV AVI for encode later or archive the finished project back to tape. Tring to step up a lower rate format to DVD is esentially worthless.

K

riredale wrote on 6/12/2002, 1:24 PM

Two thoughts:

(1) if you're doubling the vertical resolution AND doubling the horizontal resolution, you now have 4 times the number of pixels to manage. Seems to me that your bitrate will have to be 4 times greater.

(2) If you want to view your videos 10 years from now, I would think really hard about using anything but VCD and DVD disks. Those two formats are pretty much guaranteed to be around for decades, but my gut feel is that it will be much harder to find players for other formats.

I bought my Pioneer DVR-A04 for about $330 a month or two ago, so prices are rapidly dropping.