Comp Test Target Quality vs. High Bitrate

[virgil990]

Not really sure if this is a "newbie" question but I figured modesty would be the best policy. I'm having some confusion as to whether increasing bitrate after the comp test in Gknot reaches 100% is beneficial. Likewise is 100% Target Quality in AutoGK giving me the highest quality even if the bitrate comes out to around 1200kbs? I've scoured the forums and read nearly all of the guides but I am having trouble finding a direct answer. I know the factors determining the bitrate in a target quality encode (resolution, action, contrast) but am concerned with 100% Target Quality encodes coming out with bitrates under 1000kbs. All responses are greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
virg

[stax76]

If you use 100% your file size will be bigger than the source if you don't resize the image. The point of using MPEG-4 is getting a much smaller file size. For two pass I recommend XviD at 60% and for single pass quantizer 3 which gives approximately the same result (file size and quality) as two pass 60%. This is high compression and it looks better if you use post processing, I'm using the DivX decoder with medium deblocking and little film effect for quantizer 3. If you don't want post processing you can't use that much compression but need rather 80% or quantizer 2.5, you'll get a much bigger file size which is bad.

[manono]

Hello and welcome to the forum-

I'm having some confusion as to whether increasing bitrate after the comp test in Gknot reaches 100% is beneficial.

If you're at 100%, then increasing the bitrate does nothing. That is, if 1200 gives you 100%, then you can set it to 1500, 2000, or 10000, but it'll still use only 1200. The same goes for 100% Target Quality in AutoGK.

...am concerned with 100% Target Quality encodes coming out with bitrates under 1000kbs.

Maybe the movie is very compressible. To use more bits, since there's not much configuration you can do in AutoGK, about all you can do is to raise the resolution.

[virgil990]

Thanks for the input guys. I thought you might answer as you did but just wanted to make sure (backing up my Bergman DVD's to Divx for an Archos AV5100 so you can imagine my concerns for quality.) Thanks again and thanks for the welcome manono.
Cheers,
Virg