Hi,

I've got a very cheap DVD player, but I have had trouble even when going with fixed 8 Mbps video and 384K audio. Using those settings it mostly plays fine, but there are "stutters" in a couple of spots. I've dropped to 7 Mbps with 256K audio, and that seemed to be fine.

Dean

We usually don't go above 6Mbps, even though you can there is rarely a need for it. Most set to players can handle up to around 7.5-8Mbps without any problems, but that also depends if you use AC3 or PCM audio. Most computer and laptop DVD-ROM drives can have problems if you go above 5 or 6Mbps. We usually try to find out from our clients what the DVD wil be played back on primarily. If they say computer we try not to go above 4.5Mbps soetimes 5, if it for a set top DVD Player we try not to go above 6Mbps.

I really don't know what anyone wants to go higher than the default settings of the standard template and risk it won't play in some set top players or play poorly. Unless you're using a very expensive camera I would think its mostly wasted effort.

Peaks are one thing, average is another. The maximum average bitrate is what you should foucs on. I don't think you can go much about 8,000 without risking compatibility issues, but I admit that I don't have any proof. The dvdrhelp site may be of some help:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com

"risk it won't play in some set top players or play poorly. Unless you're using a very expensive camera I would think its mostly wasted effort"
1.There is NO RISK that higher bitrate won't play in set top players
2.You can encode up to 9.5 Mbps for DVD and you have 0.3 Mbps for the audio(ac3 2 channel 192 Template)
3.It's got nothing to do with "expensive cameras"
Anyway MainConcept did a wonderful update to their encoder v.1.4,now it supports 2 pass VBR.And it is the most tweakable encoder (if you know what you're doing)
AudioIvan

Usually AC3 is better simply becasue it takes up less space on the disc and cuts down on your overall bandwith for playback. IF you have a really high bitrate video and you use PCM audio you are a lot more likely to have it crash than if you have a high bitrate video and AC3 audio.

Also:
"1.There is NO RISK that higher bitrate won't play in set top players"

I have seen it happen MANY times where a video encoded usually around 8Mbps or higher has crashed in certain DVD players. We actually did a test of this once, we put 2 programs on a DVD, one was encoded at 5Mbps and the other at 9Mbps. We then went to a couple Electronics stores (best buy, circuit city etc..) and tried to play them in various makes and models of players. The 5Mbps played flawlessly on all players, the 9Mbps video crashed on probably 25% of the players we tested it in. I know it isn't a controlled scientific compatability test, but it is a real world test.

Actualy what you're paying for is just the DVD Decoder Chip that does deinterlacing on the fly,decoding the video on the fly that complies with DVD,SVCD,VCD....standards.Some of them are better and some of them are cheep nothingness.Like you said it may happen but DVD standards have been set long time ago and what it's happening today it's multimedia marketing with competition in prices.

According to the responses it seems that the 8.5 maximum I have used several times has been too high although I haven't had one returned. I attributed it to a combination of the media and the software (DVDA). I haven't tried PCM. Why do that when you can keep the audio file size smaller with AC-3 and thereby gove more space to the video.

In your experiments, have you factored in ? :

1. The authoring program
2. The media
3. The burning program
4. The burner itself.
5. DVD-R vs DVD+R

John

DELETED

Thanks for the input Zippy. As an event videographer my customers are all using the DVDs on standalone DVD players. Actually when I play DVDs on my computer I use a hardware decoder card which plays them flawlessly (around $45).

John

1. The authoring program - Sonic Fusion, top of the line
2. The media - Verbatim and Taiyo yuden (best ones out there)
3. The burning program - The Fusion Imager Program
4. The burner itself. - Apple Superdrive (pioneer A-04 I believe)
5. DVD-R vs DVD+R - We only use DVD-R's we find that there are too many problems with the +R format and it is not widely accepted by the DVD Forum.

Basically you can go as high as you want to, but just because you can, doesn't mean there is a need to. My cars spedometer goes up to 120, yet I still drive 60 :) Unless you're doing a hollywood film, there is rarely a need to go above 6Mbps CBR, you'll notice even a lot of the hollywood DVD's stay around 5-7Mbps VBR. The more you push it, the more problems you will have, so why push it if you don't need to.