how to determine the correct bitrate?

[mobius80]

sorry about this, still confused after reading forums, and the guide. in dvd2svcd where u have to select the bitrate, on the bottom is where i enter what i want it to be, but i dont understand this "min average" and "max average", when choosing the values, it could be either too low, or too high (and yes i know about the side bar recommendations for each movie lenght) but i just dont understand how to determine the correct min and max bitrate.

example: my movie is 90min long, so in my opinion.. i would do this:

MinAvg: 2100 MaxAvg:2300

but maybe i could make them both higher a bit to get better picture? is there anyway to determine the exact range i should use?

thanks for the time and effort to help

[hoozdapimp]

the min average will never let the average bitrate be under your specified value...so if you have a 2hour movie and select your min average to be 2000, but you want 2 hours to go on 2 discs, you'll probably end up getting 3 discs instead since the average would need to be less than 2000 to fit on 2 discs.

basically they are just there to make sure you never have averages below or above certain values...i use my min average to be 1700 and max average to be 2500 and never change them

[markrb]

Best to leave the settings at default until you really have it down.

I never check Min AVG unless I am doing a CBR encode.

Each setting is a limitor.

Max=Bitrate cannot go higher
Max Avg= Avg Bitrate cannot go higher
Min= Bitrate cannot go lower
Min Avg= Avg Bitrate cannot go lower

Now if you consider that Max and Min are the easiest to figure. Simply consider them top and bottom.

Avg on the other hand for some reason confuses people. This is simply used in the part where DVD2SVCD has to figure out what the Avg bitrate will be to fit on the number of CD's you have chosen to use. The biggest reason for the MAX AVG is that CCE can have a problem if this setting it too close to the MAX.

Problems can occur if you mess with the MIN AVG and MAX AVG settings. If the Min AVG is set too high then DVD2SVCD cannot drop the bitrate enough to fit on the number of CD's you asked it for.
If the Max AVG is set too low then DVD2SVCD cannot raise the bitrate enough to make the video big enough to fit the number of cd's asked for.

Pretty much leave Min AVG unchecked and leave Max AVG at least 120 Kbit below the MAX setting.

Hope this helps,
Mark