What ABR to achieve DVD Quality?

[dwswager]

Can someone point me to the answer to this basic question?

I'm encoding DVD to AVC using MEGUI. I use a variant of one of the 2 pass "slower" profiles from Sharktooth.

What average bitrate for AVC will provide essentially equivalent quality to DVD MPEG2? I realize there is a lot rolled into what is required, but I'm just looking for a guideline. What I normally do is divide the DVD video size by 2.3 and set the video filesize in the Bitrate calculator and use that as the target filesize. Any thoughts?

[Dark Shikari]

I'd think H.264 could do better than 2.3 in comparison to MPEG-2...

[foxyshadis]

Hard to say, since DVDs can be anywhere from 3000-9000kbps. But I'd start by doing a crf 20 or 22 encode with x264; if you use nero someone might be able to chime in with the equivalent. That way you don't have to guess and juggle bitrate and quality; you just encode everything to the same quality, though some will be larger and some smaller.