Average Bitrate ~3700 - What Should Min Bitrate Be?

[LiquidLion]

I'm trying to backup Dead Man's Chest (movie only) and my average bitrate is around 3700. What should I choose for my minimum bitrate if I don't want macroblocks in dark scenes/areas? I heard that you should have at least 2000 for min bitrate, but my average is only 3700 in this situation.

I have same situation with Saving Private Ryan where average bitrate is ~3100. I mean, can I possibily use 1000 or 2000 for min bitrate in this situation, too, without affecting fast motion scenes?

Thanks!

EDIT: I'm planning to use 500 for min bitrate for both movies.

[Fishman0919]

What encoder are you using?

The min bitrate setup with DVD-RB will be fine, really no need to change that.

[LiquidLion]

What encoder are you using?

The min bitrate setup with DVD-RB will be fine, really no need to change that.

I'm using CCE Basic. For future reference, what is the min bitrate in DVD-RB?

Thanks!

EDIT: More specifically, I want to know a good min bitrate range for these movies because I sometimes want to encode these movies directly in CCE instead of using DVD-RB.

[Rippraff]

If I remember correctly min bitrate in RB is 300 (or maybe changed back to 500). But this has nothing to do, which min bitrate will be really used! Same goes for max bitrate.

Leave bitrate allocation to CCE. If you set min bitrate within RB to 300, this only means to tell the encoder "don't go below 300". Anyway if CCE decides the lowest bitrate to keep would be 1700 then 1700 will be used.

If you force an encoder to use 2000 as a minimum bitrate you will lack these bitrates in high motions scenes where higher bitrates are needed.

Cu Rippraff

[LiquidLion]

Thanks for info, guys.

Dead Man's Chest looked great. However, I can't say much for Saving Private Ryan. There's a scene showing Tom Hanks & Co. in a buidling and the only light source was the camp fire, so the scene is pretty dark. Their faces were extremely blocky. I'm going to raise my minimum from 500 to 1000 to see if it helps.

[jdobbs]

It will probably hurt more than help. Setting a minimum bitrate of 1000 will steal bitrate from the places that need it most. You may want to think about using adjusting VBR bias rather than minimum bitrate.

[LiquidLion]

It will probably hurt more than help. Setting a minimum bitrate of 1000 will steal bitrate from the places that need it most. You may want to think about using adjusting VBR bias rather than minimum bitrate.

I'm assuming I have to increase the vbr bias? I never thought about changing the vbr bias instead of min bitrate. Thanks!!

[jdobbs]

Yes. I'd recommend you try about 35 first.

[Boulder]

Thanks for info, guys.

Dead Man's Chest looked great. However, I can't say much for Saving Private Ryan. There's a scene showing Tom Hanks & Co. in a buidling and the only light source was the camp fire, so the scene is pretty dark. Their faces were extremely blocky. I'm going to raise my minimum from 500 to 1000 to see if it helps.SPR is a very tough one. Chances are that you can't get it look good at those scenes when encoding in a regular way, it would probably need manual bitrate curve adjustment.

[LiquidLion]

SPR is a very tough one. Chances are that you can't get it look good at those scenes when encoding in a regular way, it would probably need manual bitrate curve adjustment.

I'm not going to even pretend I know how to do manual bitrate curve adjustment. You're talking to a person whose expertise is clicking 'Rebuild' in DVD-RB.

I'm going to use all suggestions and do batch encodes of each setting and see which one looks best.

Thanks!

[jdobbs]

You can also use the segment editor to increase the bitrate for the scene that is showing the problem.

[feedback]

As jdobbs indicated, if you are using DVD-RB Pro. the "Video Segment Viewer/Editor" is a great way to adjust bitrate for any scene.

I use the editor all the time to drop the bitrate on the movie end credits, then apply those saved bits to other parts of the movie.

As a matter of fact, I backed up a movie the other day that had about 7 minutes :eek: of end credits @ 5meg.
I dropped the credits bitrate to about 1400Mbps then bumped up the bitrate on several action scenes in other parts of the movie.

Regards,

[LiquidLion]

The segment editor worked (first time using it). Thanks, guys!

[hallway]

There's a scene showing Tom Hanks & Co. in a buidling and the only light source was the camp fire, so the scene is pretty dark. Their faces were extremely blocky. From what I've read regarding MPEG encoding, flames or fire are most encoders worst enemy....

I have a dual-layer burner and a handful of dual-layer media. There's times that it might just be best to skip any re-encoding, IMO. I understand not everyone has this option, of course.

[dynospectrum]

Thanks for info, guys.

Dead Man's Chest looked great. However, I can't say much for Saving Private Ryan. There's a scene showing Tom Hanks & Co. in a buidling and the only light source was the camp fire, so the scene is pretty dark. Their faces were extremely blocky. I'm going to raise my minimum from 500 to 1000 to see if it helps.

Saving Private Ryan is way too big to backup imo. I was going to back it up myself on DVD5 but you are going to get crap quality no matter what since it's huge. The DVD doesn't even have extras, just movie and menu and it's DVD9. That means there's really nothing you could cut out except credits. Just backup Saving Private Ryan to a dual layer dvd+r.