Saved space from DTS->AC3 used for picture quality?

[The_Unknown]

Hello,

a little question concerning the DTS->AC3-conversion:
If I understood correctly, BD-RB does this by default. Is the space, which is free through this conversion, used for additional picture quality?

And another question concerning the Auto-quality setting. Is it true to say that ABR-encoding is faster and produces minor quality than 2-pass encoding?

Thanks in forward.

Bye The_Unknown

[jdobbs]

Hello,

a little question concerning the DTS->AC3-conversion:
If I understood correctly, BD-RB does this by default. Is the space, which is free through this conversion, used for additional picture quality?

And another question concerning the Auto-quality setting. Is it true to say that ABR-encoding is faster and produces minor quality than 2-pass encoding?

Thanks in forward.

Bye The_Unknown Yes, saved space is applied to video.

One pass ABR is faster. Saying it produces inferior quality wouldn't be completely accurate. Yes, 2 pass ABR would in most cases produce a better result with the same settings, especially when the encode is challenging. But sometimes the bitrate is high enough that you wouldn't be able to detect any differences... so in those cases, there's really no advantage to 2 pass.

BD Rebuider's automatic setting recognizes when settings are needed (2 pass, higher quality settings, etc.) and adjusts based on the available target space. In other words, if it chooses one pass -- it's probably the best quality/time balance for that particular encode.

But... if you don't feel good about automatic settings and you are going to choose a fixed quality mode for all your encodes -- it would be wise to choose 2 pass as your default. I would also choose the "High Quality (Default)" setting. It might take longer than is needed -- but it's better to err on the side of overkill.

I personally use "Automatic".