Low bitrate on episodic disc

[idbirch2]

I'm trying to back up a disc that has 6 episodes and a menu using DVD-RB 0.78 Pro and CCE 2.70.2.0. I have disabled "Steal space from extras" as this was making the bitrate calulations even worse.

After the Prepare phase it reads the High/Low/Average as 2,912/410/2,860

Why is the highest bitrate so close to the average? When using old methods I would always make sure that maximum bitrate was around the 8000 mark to ensure that complex scenes still looked OK. With an max bitrate of 2,912 the output is pretty rubbish. Why is RB setting the max bitrate so low and is there anything I can do to fix this?

Thanks.

[robot1]

It's not the max bitrate.
As DVD-RB encodes the cells according their original bitrate, it's the maximum average bitrate used for a cell.

[idbirch2]

Oh OK, max average and not actual max, fine. Hmm, the output's still quite pants though so I'll try shrinking the menus (although they aren't that big) and run through it again....