Max bitrate allowed on Mini-DVD?

[NVulture]

Is the maximum bitrate allowed on a minidvd significantly lower than that of a DVD?

I've recently started trying to backup some of my older DVDs to CDRs to play on my Apex set top DVD player.

The problem is that the MiniDVD stutters through the entire segment of video that i've burned onto it.

When i've CCE'd the DVD down to max bitrate of about 4500, then it will play smoothly in the DVD player.

Is this normal or should I be able to watch my DVDs on MiniDVD CDRs without any CCE compressing?

[Crazyjoe]

It depends on your stand alone player, but normally 4,5 MBit is the maximum bitrate possible. Because the data is more "wide spread" on the CD in comparison to DVD, the disc has to rotate at higher speeds to achieve the same data rate per second. And usually the disc drives can't spinn a disc over a certain speed.

So 4,5 MBit is really the maximum.

[waldok]

I agree with that, from my own experience. With my standalone, anything above 4MBits/s would start stuttering.

Stick under 4000 and you'll be fine (you should do some tests with your player first, for example by encoding one short DVD chapter at different constant bitrates).

Waldok:cool:

[NVulture]

Thanks a lot guys! This problem has been bugging me for the past couple months.

There goes my hopes of getting original DVD material onto CD-Rs for set top playback... Time to start saving up for that dvd burner... lol

My Apex 1010W seems to max out at 4.5 mbit...

Thanks again for the help!!

[waldok]

To be honest Vulture, I doubt you will stick with MiniDVD for a long time. I did exactly the same, and after 2 or 3 movies where you need to have 4 Cd-Rs to preserve both image quality and AC3 5.1 sound, well, I bought a DVD burner. I always said nefore I don't mind being interrupted in the middle of a movie and having to stand up to switch Cds, but hey, 3 times in a 1h30 movie, it is too much finally ;)
DVD-+R is soooo muuuuch easier, one disc per movie for most movies, and with tools like the latest DVD2one, things get really easy if you don't want to spend too much time reencoding and authoring.
(maybe I wouldn't have moved to DVD-R so quickly if I had had a multi-discs standalone, where you can put 3 CD-Rs and just enjoy the movie...)

Just my experience for what it's worth, but I admit I still enjoyed making miniDVDs, especially the "splitting to several discs" part, hat was a bit hard to achieve wth good results (particularly regarding subtitles). Globally, the MiniDVD route was too much time consuming and not so convenient to use at playback time in my case.

If ever you need some help about it during your process, feel free to ask.

Waldok:cool:

[auenf]

Originally posted by waldok
I always said nefore I don't mind being interrupted in the middle of a movie and having to stand up to switch Cds, but hey, 3 times in a 1h30 movie, it is too much finally ;)

or you could have gone for a standalone that was a multidisc player ;)

Enf...

[waldok]

I sure would have, but I couldn't find any multidisc player here.
So, I thought, well, I'd have a beer or two during the movies, cannot hurt.
But then I realize I was not thirsty during every movie, so sometimes I had to stand up ONLY for switching the CD (can you BELIEVE that ?)so I said, damn it, let's go buy a DVD burner. (sure could have gotten meself a bunch of beers for that price, but then I'd have had to stand up so many tiiiiimes.....for the cold beers...

Nevermind, it's late ;) I'll get a beer now.

Waldok:cool:

[auenf]

you wont find a multidisc player that supports minidvd either ;)

Enf...