HELP -- TMPGEnc encoding keeps turning out too large?

[fubarduck]

OK, so I've been following Doom9's guide to transcoding DVD streams with TMPGEnc and I have been consistently getting too large of an encoding in the end. I definitely am doing something wrong, so I will post details and other unclear things in the guide.

<clip from guide>
Rate control mode is where you have a lot of options. If you use the 2 pass VBR mode you can have the best control over the output size so I suggest you use it. Set the average bitrate as calculated before, the minimum bitrate to 0 bits/s and the maximum bitrate to 10mbit minus the bitrate of all your audio streams. Keep in mind that here a megabit is 1000kilobits, not 1024 as usual in the computer world. DVD-R calculator will help you calculate the average bitrate.
<clip from guide>

OK, this was a very confusing paragraph overall. I entered "0" as the minimum bitrate. For the average bitrate, I read this post:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=24939&highlight=tmpgenc
and followed RPA's formula:
Size of Target Video Stream divided by movie length in seconds. This number always turned out to be large, for example:
NEW AVE. BITRATE = 3,238,234,238 / 5988.2 = 540,769
So, for the Average Bitrate setting, I would enter 5,407 kbits/sec (rounding down to be safe).

For the maximum bitrate, I would take 10,000 k/b (1000 * 10) and then subtract from that the bitrate of the audio stream. For example, with a 448 audio stream, I would subtract as follows:
10,000 - 448 = 9552.
So I would enter 9552 for Maximum Bitrate. I'm pretty sure I did this part wrong. Also, what if I had two audio streams, a 448 and a 192, for example? Someone please explain this step in more depth.

OK, these are the main things I think I'm messing up. Whenever I use these formulas, I end up with about 5.5 GB of VOBs rather than the desired 4.37 GB. I would appreciate any insight anyone can give.

Thanks,
fubarduck

[rpa]

Here's the formula:

NEW AVE. BITRATE = Size of new video stream x 8 /length of movie /1000

MAX. BITRATE = 10000 - (Size of audio stream x 8 / length of movie / 1000)

Size of streams are in bytes as calculated by DVD-R Calculator.

Good luck

[rpa]

BTW, my apologies for the incomplete formula I gave in my previous post.

Another thing, if you're planning to transcode in TMPGenc, be ready to get out of sync result when you remux it back with ifoedit. Tried three times already and always end with synch problem. Tell me if you get lucky. :)

[fubarduck]

Thanks a million RPA, my numbers are looking much more realistic now, this should do the trick ^_^

fubarduck

[fubarduck]

OK! New problem with controlling output size. I had no problem getting a near exact 4.37 GB when encoding Anime DVDs (4:3, 29.97 FPS) but now that I just started encoding a few Movie DVDs with TMPGEnc (NTSC,16:9, 23.94 or whatever (29.97 internally). After I stick everything in Maestro including all my audio tracks, I still am left with a good 600-700 unused megs! Is there a different formula used to calculate average and maximum bitrate for the type of movies I'm encoding now? If anyone knows, please lend your knowledge!

Thanks,
fubarduck