CBR, what bitrate ?

[jonnie]

Ok, so I realise that a PIII 733mhz 512mb is never going to be a beast, and there is no real point in prentending.
However having successfully managed to tweak everything so that I can now create SVCDs in approx 20hrs.

Havinr read through various forums and searches, I have come across the possibilty of Encoding with CBR, from what I understand this basically means a single pass, obviously this means lower quality, although the suggestion appears to be that for slower processors this could be a good idea if you use higher bitrates, currently I have the following: Max 2450 Min 300 and Max avg 2230,

What would be suitable settings to maintain quality without causing CCE to freeze ?

Kind regards
John

[markrb]

Actually CBR quality technically can be no worse then a simular max bitrate of a VBR. What is important is that CBR will force the file sizes to be larger. This is becuase every scene gets the same amount of bits even if it doesn't need it.

As for what settings to use that is really up to you. Do you want two cd's of good quality or 3 of great quality. The only way you are going to know for sure is to try it yourself. Quality is a very subjective thing and everyone has their own opinion of what is good.
If you are use to an average rate of 2230 then try a few at 2200 and see what you think. Remember you may end up with more discs then you intended. This is normal.

Mark

[ev]

If you want speed, why not try "1 pass VBR"? I've used it a few times and the results aren't too bad at all. I highly recommend that you search the forum for people's opinions on how to set up. There are a few helpful threads out there.
I normally select Bicubic resize, set the minimum b/r to 1000 and maybe bump up the max. average a bit. Temporal smoother is recommended but I haven't tried myself as this slows things right down. I once converted a 95 min. movie onto 2 CD's and it took approx. 3 hours with my 1GHz T-Bird. I literally couldn't pick the difference between the DVD and the SVCD. Now don't get too excited because I've done others that weren't quite as good. It really depends on the movie.
Hope this helps you.

[marie]

I never had problems with CBR. I always use it, awesome quality. I always use 2 cds for all the DVDs i rip.

Anyhow. for the gurus here, what is better and faster, using CBR or VBR onr pass? (Same bitrate)

Thanks

[markrb]

CBR should be better and faster then 1 pass VBR. There are fewer calculations to make and there is no choosing of where to alocate bits at all, but I have never used 1 pass. I only use 3-4 pass or CBR.

Mark

[marie]

Is it really noticeable difference between CBR and 3-4pass VBR?

It will take me 30 hours to encode with 3 pass VBR..LOL and i am actually very satisfied with VBR encoding...

[markrb]

Yes and no. I can put a much higher average bitrate VBR on the same number of cd's I can put the same CBR bitrate encode.
In this case a 2 cd VBR of 2300 average will out perform a 1800 CBR encode to make it fit on the same number of discs.

I can do a 4 pass VBR encode on a typical movie in about 8-9 hours with my computer. Basically while I sleep.

Mark

[Rhaegar Targaryen]

I have a newbie-ish question since I'm new to SVCD, and hopefully keeping this within an already-open thread in the newbie forum, won't get me yelled at. ;)

My DivX SBC encoding-sense tells me that encoding a film at a CBR rate that is extremely close to the maximum bitrate of the format will result in a "no difference" encode. Does this hold for SVCD?

For example, I have an 81.5 minute movie, which if spanned onto 2 80-min. CD-R's will result in an average bitrate of 2447kbps given a 224kbps audio track. Since 2447 / 2500 = ~98%, can I assume that there is no benefit into using any sort of multi-pass VBR technique? That is, any quality benefit will be purely technical and not practical?

T.I.A.

[markrb]

If I read your question right You are asking why do a VBR encode of 2500 max if you can still fit the same video on the same number of cd's using a CBR encode close to the same bitrate.

I agree with this point it would be a waste of time to do a VBR if the CBR at a good rate will still fit the same number of cd's.

Many times this is not the case. What I can fit on 2 cd's using VBR would take 3 for a good CBR encode, but sometimes it does happen that you can.

I rarely do videos at that short a length so it doesn't often pay me to do a CBR encode.

Mark