Comments

logiquem wrote on 4/1/2008, 6:14 AM
It is highly related to the video material and bitrate.

If you have a video with a changing background and fine shading textures, then, yes, 2 pass will make a big difference. If it is a majorly static subject/background, no.

Keep in mind also that if you are under 40 min lengh and you can work with a bitrate over, say 8 kb, there is no gain with 2 pass.

Hope this help.
JJKizak wrote on 4/1/2008, 6:15 AM
I don't think so. I flogged this out long ago without noticing much difference unless you are going to lower bitrates squeezing large projects on to DVDs. Haven't tried it lately though.
JJK
TGS wrote on 4/1/2008, 10:54 AM
For SD, I use it for anything from 7k average on down, but it's probably not noticeable until you get under 6K average (about 135 minute long mpeg or longer) That was about the rate I could see that 2 pass was helping.
johnmeyer wrote on 4/1/2008, 2:34 PM
This comes up a lot. I wish Sony would include it in a FAQ.

I've answered this in various ways, in other topics. Here are a few of those answers:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=576357

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=579552

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=576413

farss wrote on 4/1/2008, 2:45 PM
One thing I wish I could do is encode at 4:2:2
I have very little motion so I'd gladly trade the bandwidth for better chroma sampling.

Bob.
GaryV wrote on 4/1/2008, 5:14 PM
Thanks very much for all the excellent advice folks.

John,
The link to your Excel calculator seems to have expired. Any chance of reposting it so I can download it?

Thanks in advance,
Gary
johnmeyer wrote on 4/1/2008, 6:11 PM
John Meyer's Excel MPEG-2 Bitrate Calculator

(Link good for seven days).
corug7 wrote on 4/1/2008, 11:52 PM
Bob,

Switch to High Profile and you should have no problem encoding at 4:2:2. Of course, good luck playing it back on a set top player. For archival purposes or playback from a Vela card, it should work just fine.
farss wrote on 4/2/2008, 1:44 AM
Thank you, thank you!

I'd been tweaking the Level and not the Profile which is why it stayed greyed out. I'd thought it might have been a licencing restriction.

OK, so I can get to High Profile, no Studio Profile. Sure hope it can decode that though with the XDR doing 150Mb/sec.

Bob.
GaryV wrote on 4/2/2008, 6:56 AM
Got it John.
Thank you.
Gary