Min avg. Bitrate for SVCD

[Fireball29]

Hi!

What do you guys think is the minimum avg. bitrate for a SVCD? I often read, that lower than 1800 one should make a XVCD, which gifes better quality? Is that true? VCDs often have poor quality for me due to low resolution.

I have a digital Sony TV that enhances Quality with filters and i think even movies with the avg. bitrate of 1500 look great for me.

What are your experiences?

Cheers, Fireball

[Kedirekin]

I agree. Most of the movies I do end up being letterbox, and an average of 1600, or even 1500, is usually fine. For full screen encodes, I try to keep the average above 1800.

[Matthew]

I'm only a newbie, but am tentative about letting the bitrate drop below 2000 :D (using 5 pass).

[chainsaw135]

It all depends for me also sometimes 1800 is fine other times 2100 is needed depends on the lighting and the source I think...plus if i'm resizing or not ect but staying around those 2 #'s have kept the size down while keeping good quality.

[Dropbear]

anything under 1900 avg is decidedly dodgy on PAL conversions that I do.

[role]

Depends on what kind of movie - if one man dies slowly or if a bunch of men dies quickly...

As a rule of thumb I would say (for PAL resolution) and letterbox (2.35:1) 1700 kbit/s results in OK quality.

For "full screen" (16:9 or 4:3) I go for higher bitrate or a XSVCD with reduced resolution together with a low number for the Image Quality Priority. To much block noise for my taste otherwise...

Obviously messing arround with the resolution may give you compatibillity problems between various stand-alone players :(

I´ve tried on my Philips (761), which seems to handle allmost anything up to DVD resolution (multiple of 16 of course). I´ve also tried a Samsung (model=don't remember), which only seems accept 288 as vertical (besides the standard). But for example (512*288) is quite acceptable to me.

For "AVI2SVCD" re-encoding of Divx AVI's I go for XSVCD simply because these AVI's normally have a decreased vertical resolution. Increasing the resolution will only lead to addition of block noise, and no increase of image quality.

[Maras]

For test i did 1000kbps avg bitrate movie. It looks bad, but... it's not playable on my pioneer 545 :angry:
There is many badframe-like errors, and stills sometimes.
CD works OK on PowerDVD player :confused:
I did not test for VCD, but is there any limit for players ? Can I use lower bitrate as min. when doing vbr ?

[Labersack]

There are some players which get in trouble if the bitrate drops under 1150kbs. Maybe you own such a player.

[ev]

I think it totally depends on the movie. Sometimes I get surprisingly good results with low bitrates. I recently put a 148 minute movie on 2 CD's. The bitrate was 1257kbps so I did a 5 pass encode. I couldn't believe my eyes. The quality was excelent and even better than some encodes I've done over 2000kbps. Maybe 5 pass really does make a difference.....Who knows?

[Maras]

Originally posted by Labersack
There are some players which get in trouble if the bitrate drops under 1150kbs. Maybe you own such a player.

Problem solved. Muxing by I-Author solves it :-)

[jimmyjamesbob]

I have recently created three different SVCDs on a single 70min CD that were a least 115 mins long. The average bitrate was around 900 with 5 pass VBR. The quality was excellent. Is there any reason not to create SVCDs on a single CD? It seems to play in all of my DVD players just fine and quality is outstanding.

[Labersack]

If the quality is good enough for you and your player can handle it, there is no reason not to do this.

[Holomatrix]

Originally posted by jimmyjamesbob
I have recently created three different SVCDs on a single 70min CD that were a least 115 mins long. The average bitrate was around 900 with 5 pass VBR. The quality was excellent. Is there any reason not to create SVCDs on a single CD? It seems to play in all of my DVD players just fine and quality is outstanding.

I use 4 pass and was wondering if you could try a 4 pass in CCE and see if the quality is worse.
Thanks

[m3taPT]

Im getting worried with the amount of people who want to make "more in 1 cd" and are worried with the number of (damn cheap) blanks over the movie quality.

[Bob01605]

I guess there could be different opinions here but QUALITY should be the overriding factor when you encode. These people who put 70 to 80 minutes one one CD ( Hey - It was a 2 1/2 hour movie but I "squeezed" it onto just TWO Cd's - and the quality is "great"!! ) drive me nuts. They are probably people who play it on a 27" TV and REALLY couldn't see the difference.
Some of you who don't use a third CD when you start going over two hours on a movie are going to be surprised at the difference in quality between a 1475 Kb/sec encode ( Hey - I got Jurassic Park - 2 hr and 7 min on 2 Cd's !! ) and a 2200 kb/sec encode when you move up to a projection TV.
I just encoded "Wooodstock '69 " - The Directors Cut - A 3 hour and 45 min documentary about the Woodstock 1969 Rock Festival - Should I use 4 or 5 CD ? You know I used 5. FOUR cd with 192 sound would have given me about 1730 kbps. 5 Cd gave me just over 2200 kbps for this encode ..
If 3 CD's for a 2+ hour movie bothers you then buy a CD changer - Press a button and in 10 seconds the next part starts up ..

Bob

[m3taPT]

Bob, u finished what i said perfectly. I just didnt even had the time to bother, cause i was blue and red all over.

If i encode a 4hr movie and it has to be 5 or 6 cd, so be it. If i take upon myself that such a "pain" is not worth it, i go and buy the damn dvd. Actually, i do buy a lot, even if they are 2cd svcds :)

[markrb]

I do not do any encode with the video bitrate average below 2000. I will make changes to assure me of the higher video bitrate.
I will cut off the credits.
I will use larger CD's like 90 or 99 minutes
I have a 3 disc changer so everything can be at least 3 discs without getting my lazy ass off the chair.

Lately my encodes have been way out of spec. This is because my DVD player(Apex-5131) supports this and 99 minute cd's up to 1gb each.
Most of my encodes have been:
5000 MAX
3300 MAX AVG
1000 MIN
224 or 192 Audio

I can fit a 100 minute movie on 3 80 minute discs with these settings. If the movie is a little longer I will go to 90 minute cd's and even longer then that then 99 minute cd's and finally I will start lowering the average. I try to keep all encodes at 3 discs so I don't have to get up out of my chair.

Mark

[m3taPT]

I think those are awesome settings :)

mark, please allow me to make a humble remark: if you have a somehow .. hmm lets say "above average" sound system, with digital output, the whole 4+1+subwoofer speaker system.. (like i do)... 224 is REALLY amazingly superior to 192. at least to my ears. that "or 192" of yours stands out a little below the other high standard configs :)

[markrb]

I actually have an 8(2 speaker mono center rear and sub) speaker 6.1 Dolby Pro Logic II setup for my Home theater and an 84" Front Screen projector.
I use 224 whenever the material, in my ears, warants it. Like if musical in nature or many special effects. Otherwise if a heavy speech laden drama there isn't really a need for it. I have done extensive tests on different types of material and found I could not tell the difference between 192 and 224 about 80% of the time doing a blind listen test.
The times I could hear a difference was when there was much going on. Like music, speech and action all happening at the same time. These tend to be more the big budget blockbusters and I tend to buy these instead of converting them.

Mark

[ovi]

I know this is not the topic that was started here but as you were talking about audio....

How do you tell the diference between a 128 kbit and a 224 kbit sound stream???

Are there some effects missing in the 128 stream? Or is there more "noise"? Becaus I always use 128; have to admit I never tried anything else....and I do have a sound system that should allow me to hear a difference if I knew what to look ( ahh, hear) for.

[markrb]

It's all about room for data. The larger you let the bitrate be the more accurate and honest the sound is to the original.
It's the same with video bitrate. Does an encode at 1000 look as good as one at 5000? Most likely not.

Many audiofiles feel that an MP3 at any bitrate will not produce the sound quality of a much less compressed PCM standard CD audio file. The less compression the more dynamic range is kept.

When you reduce the bitrate you compress the sound to fewer and fewer bits. That drum sound that had 10 bits dedicated to it at 224 may have 3 on it at 128. So the sound will not have the same dynamic range or other parts are scarificed.

Have a read of the audio FAQ. Just look in the audio forum or find a post by DSPguru. He has it linked in his signature.

Mark

[smiller667]

You will get compression artefacts with a too low audio bitrate ... and you can recognize those artefacts easily once you heard them. Like markrb pointed out, I find it esp. obvious for passages of the film with lots of audio, i.e. sound + music.
Also, keep in mind that the MP2 audio that's being used for VCD and SVCD is less compressed compared to MP3. You will need a higher bitrate to obtain the same subjective "quality" compared to an MP3 encode of the same audio. Thus, I try never to go below 160, preferentially 224 ... remember, VCD has 224 (fixed) - and you want something better than or at least equal to VCD, don't you? :)

[ovi]

I will really give 128 and 256 a try and compare to see if I can hear the difference.

Normally I concentrate much more on the graphics and less on to the sound but I will try a blind test.