should I even go there?

[archaeo]

I'm looking at using Rebuilder on a project that will result in a reduction to 36-37% of original file size :scared:
I could just go to two discs (and probably should), but I first wanted to see if others have gone down to this reduction level, and find out what type of quality they ended up with. I'm using CCE and the avg bitrate is around 2200.

[Trahald]

i have gone to that level (and below) and have been happy with the results.. 16:9 movies do alot better that low than 4:3 does. some people dont like to go below 3000.. also filtering may help (undot deen etc) its all in the eye of the beholder.. you may wanna give it a whirl just to see

[jdobbs]

It depends on the source. I've done movies at that bitrate with great results... Remember, it is VBR and that is the average bitrate, so high demand scenes might use as much as 9000Kbs when needed.

[archaeo]

Well I went ahead and ran the project, and I must say the results are very good, at least from what I can see on my 21". It's a 16:9 movie, just under 4 hours in length. Impressive that RB could do this level of reduction this well, with only a 1+2 pass encode (I have CCE Basic). Final reduction level was 35.6%, and I set quality precision low, to 4. No filters were used on this first run. The only issue I notice on the final copy is some minor horizontal color banding, noticeable in a few places. I could set the QP to a higher number to minimize this, but it might come with a cost of more edge artifacts... ?

[Rockas]

with only a 1+2 pass encode (I have CCE Basic).

Just a little correction... IF you got CCE Basic what you made was an 1+1 passes encode not 1+2...

[archaeo]

IF you got CCE Basic what you made was an 1+1 passes encode not 1+2...

Isn't it 1 VAF pass, and 2 VBR max that's allowed in CCE Basic?

[jdobbs]

Nope... one each -- but that's all that's really needed.

[archaeo]

Nope... one each -- but that's all that's really needed.

Duh. Here I was thinking I was able to do 1+2! :confused:
Only two passes for a 35% reduction level becomes even more impressive. I'm just very pleased with this program. Another donation will be coming your way jdobbs.

[jdobbs]

I don't think most people realize just what they are getting with a $58 purchase of CCE Basic. It uses the most sophisticated MPEG-2 compression engine I know of.