Bit rate-to-capacity chart?

Hi all,
I'm new to making DVDs, so my apologies if this is a simple question. I have looked here and on Google but I've not found exactly I'm looking for.
Let's say I've got 2 hours of material I want to put on a DVD. What's the easiest way to calculate what setting in Compressor I need to use?
I ask because I had a 1:20:00 piece I wanted to put on DVD. I thought the MPEG-2 6.2Mbps 2-pass option would be the best. I dragged that, plus the AIFF file into a track in DSP but it was almost 5 GB. If I used the 118 MB Dolby 2.0 AC3 file instead of the 940 MB 48/16 AIFF file, it worked fine. Why is there such a large difference in the size of the sounds files? When would one use the larg AIFF file instead of the much smaller AC3 file?
Regards,
fh

Hello,
There are several ways to determine bit rate size. You could download any numerous calculator (I use Mr. Bitrate) but the best and quickest answer would be to use the property inspector calculator in Compressor.
For two hours of video, off the cuff, would be around 3.7-4 mbps ave bit rate for the video. (You can still leave 7.5 max bit rate for safe dvd player compatibility) Remember that DVDSP adds MB's on top of your pre-encoded assests after you import. In a project I am doing right now, for 161 min of video I am encoding at 2.6 mbps. This is comprised of seven individual 23 min projects that for each as an assest DVDSP adds an additional 30 mb.
You should use AC3 audio compression for better compression size and better DVD player compatibility. DVDSP also adds MB's to these pre-encoded files upon import. You can use Aiff although it can cause playback issues, but whichever you choose, pick one and stick with it to avoid some potential drop out errors that can occur when mixing the two formats in the same project.
Remember to mark thread as helpful/solved if this helped.
Good Luck,
Dustin

Similar Messages

Best Bit Rate for Better sound

I’m new to the iTunes/iPod thing. A friend told me that he re-sets the bit rate from the default of 128 kpbs to the top of 320 kbps for better quality. [He plays everything off of his computer which is wired to speakers throughout his house and does not travel or drive much so hardly uses his iPod.] I played around a tad with the various rates on the same album and found that a fairly short one used 34.9 MB at 128 kbps, 52.1 MB at 192 kbps, 60.8 MB at 224 kbps and 86.6 MB at 340 kbps. Another friend told me that he noticed a big difference when he played a song off his iPod through his several thousand dollar system if it was imported at 128 kbps. While hard disc space is cheap and I would simply opt for the higher quality setting, the iPods are not so big when one almost triples the file size.
I tried to figure out what the max bit rates in the CDs are so that could guide the max import rate, but I could not and that question may make no sense at all anyway.
What is the max that a human can notice the difference at and what have folks found to be the best balance between sound quality and storage space?
Thanks for your help.
PC Windows XP

Monty, this is really going to be up to your ears to decide. All I can tell you is my experience during the 2+ years of owning an iPod. I initially thought AAC @ 128 was satisfactory. I then started experimenting with various bitrates, but kept the AAC format. I decided that 192 was a discernible improvement over the 128. Not to go into a lot of detail, but I, quite by accident, had one album download at 256 & thought, "Wow, this is unbelievably better sound, even over inexpensive computer speakers." At that point, I started importing everything in AAC @ 256 VBR which I feel is pretty darn close to CD quality sound. I have a 60GB iPod that I'm willing to sacrifice some capacity in order to ensure the best audio quality I can. This is also why I do not buy frequently from the iTunes store as I do not feel the 128 downloads are the best quality. I buy & my own CD's, now, to insure good quality. I will by the occasional song from the store when I do not care to buy the whole CD. Hope this helps!

Adjust bit rate on movie replay

When I go to YouTube to view videos on my PB G4, I can adjust the streaming bit rate from 480 to 360 to 240. I need to play at 240 on my unit in order to keep the video clip streaming without halting, probably due to my limited RAM capacity of 1.25 mb.
When I view videos on other sites, I cannot find a bit rate adjustment in the video box, and most of the time, the video playback is halting and stuttering. Is it possible to adjust the bit rate on my computer screen another way?
Thank you

This is very interesting isn't it !
I have had a similar problem in porting audio between STP & Pyramix, a PC based DAW - often files that I have exported from STP will be recognised as 32 bit files in Pyramix, resulting in gross distortion, and a totally unusable file. This is most frustrating.
I really have no idea what is happening, but believe it must be to do with the way STP handles audio. Another observation is that if you look at a .STAP file in windows explorer, you will see some interesting things - mainly that it is not a "file" more of a directory, containing for example:
a) the audio file
b) an effect file (if you've got some effect on it, or have spliced it etc)
c) a Metadata file
d) and a render file
Perhaps this has something to do with STP wanting to change the wordlength of the audio that it is handling ???
Anyone ???

Using the "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC" feature...

I recently discovered the "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC" feature and used it to copy my entire 70 GB music library to my 64GB iPad. The music library now occupies only 45 GB. Awesome!!!
Unfortunately, the whole process took well over 24++ hours on my quad core Windows 7 computer (takes about 6 seconds per track). Questions:
1. Is it possible to speed up the process? Even though I am using iTunes 64-bit version, it seems that at no point is more than a single core being used at 33%. Seems to me like overall 8% of the CPU (33% / 4) capacity is being used for the conversion and 92% is being left idle. Is this just bad programming or is there anything I can do to speed up the process? Others see similar problems?
2. Now I have already started dreading the day, I need to restore my iPad (e.g., when OS version 4 becomes available). I would hate to have to do this process all over again. Should I need to restore my iPad, is there anyway I can force iTunes to back up the 128-bit AAC versions on my computer and restore it up from there?
Any insights into both these questions will be deeply appreciated.
Cheers,

ed2345 wrote:
malus_domestica wrote:
Thanks for the response.
So, I am wondering why iTunes uses only 8% of the processor power in converting the songs.
Possible reasons not to grab more of the CPU power (1) maybe the process is I/O bound due to all the writing, and is not processor limited? (2) since conversion is almost always a background program, and the user will typically have other things going on, maybe it intentionally limits CPU use?
I ran a few quick experiments (out of curiosity) and think the answer is #2. No apparent technical reason but potentially a limitation introduced by Apple's engineers to maintain a good user experience (for some people at least). I fired up 4 instances of dbpoweramp and ran multiple conversions and found that the process goes faster than what iTunes can do by an order of magnitude. With luck, someday Apple will have an option for users to select how much of processor bandwidth to be allocated for the conversion.

What are the Bit Rates of the Music Store and Podcasts?

What is the bit rate quality and format of a song downloaded in the Music Store? And podcasts? Are they perfect, Apple Lossless quality or what...?

This might be true, but you won't experience any improvement in sound quality. Here's some info on bit rates:
This was originally posted by the incredible Sparky the wUnderdog
"As a general principle, you can fit more CDs on your iPod if you encode at lower bitrates (making smaller files), but at the cost of audio quality. Lossless promises to capture all the data on the original CD (thus preserving quality) but coded so the file takes half the space. MP3 and AAC (an implementation of variable bit rate MP4) both eliminate some of the information on the CD in order to compress the digital recording into ever smaller files--the lower the bitrate, the smaller the file, but smaller files mean more information lost and consequent poorer sound quality.
iTunes's MP3 encoder is so-so; the LAME encoder is better at preserving sound fidelity to the original. AAC files ripped in iTunes certainly sound better than its MP3s, with audio quality close to the best LAME MP3s at higher bitrates. With the type of music I listen to most often, sound quality declines substantially as bitrates fall below 256kbps, but LAME or AAC @ 256kbps sounds pretty darned good, and at 320kbps LAME alt-preset-insane is amazingly faithful to the original. However many users claim that with the music they listen to they can't hear the difference between 192 or even 128 kbps files and the original CD source, so they naturally choose higher compression rates to fit more "songs" on their iPods.
CDs take approximately 10MB per minute of music; Apple lossless takes 5MB/minute; LAME insane takes 2.5MB/min; AAC or MP3 at 256kbps take 2MB/min; and iTunes Store files (AAC@128kbps) take 1MB/min. At these rates, a 20GB iPod (really 18.6GB) can hold anywhere from 30 hours to over 300 hours of music. (iPod marketers express this potential playback capacity as "songs," figuring 4 minutes per song--thus 300 hours at 128kbps = 4500 "songs.") You will need to listen to samples ripped with different bitrates and codecs to determine the optimum tradeoff point for you between quality & quantity. It's worth taking some time to do this at the start as it sure beats reripping everything in your collection 2 or 3 times to get it right later.
So far as convenience goes, nothing beats iTunes's one-step process. To change bitrate as you import from CD, go to the iTunes menu > Edit > Preferences, select the Importing tab, choose AAC or MP3 encoder in the "import using" selection box, then choose "Custom" in the "setting" box, and the window permitting bitrate selection will pop up. If you choose iTunes MP3 encoder, at least use VBR (variable bit rate) to maximize the sound quality. (VBR increases sample size as data complexity increases.)
If you would prefer LAME MP3s, fear not, for the easy-to-use CDex ripping software is a free download and requires only one simple extra step to get the files into iTunes for transfer to your iPod. Now if AAC sound quality is comparable to LAME MP3, you might wonder why you should even consider LAME: Because of portability to other devices. At present, hardly anything but iPods can read AACs or Apple Lossless, but almost everything reads MP3s. So if you plan to burn CDs of your compressed files for playback on your home or car CD player (for instance), it would be wise to choose MP3.
One other consideration specific to the iPod: It has a 32MB cache. If you choose a compression rate that results in large files (i.e. lossless), then the cache won't hold very much 'music' and the hard drive will have to spin up frequently to fill it, and that will shorten your battery life somewhat."
JC

What does convert higher bit rates songs to 128 kbps mean

what does convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps mean?

pattyfromsyracuse wrote:
what does convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps mean?
Some people, myself included, import their music from original audio CDs. When doing so I choose to import using Apple Lossless format so as to keep the full original quality of the audio CDs (this is after all why it is called Apple Lossless format in that you are not losing any quality).
The drawback of doing this is that the music files take a lot more disk space than a lossy format like MP3 or AAC. This is these days not a problem on a computer as hard disk space is now cheap an plentiful but it can be a problem on a flash memory based music player like the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, or iPhone as these have far less capacity.
Therefore Apple now let you turn on this option to automatically convert from Apple Lossless to AAC when syncing to one of these music players. As a result on your computer the music is still kept in the full lossless high quality format, but is converted and transferred as a much smaller but slightly lower quality for use on these music players. As with an iPod you are not listening in a quiet room with high quality speakers you will not really notice the difference in quality.

Any way to limit bit rate like the Shuffle G2?

I didn't find this in searching, so I'm asking if anyone knows of a way to limit the bit-rate of the song, like the iPod Shuffle G2 can (limits songs to 128 bit AAC if that option is checked). That would be greatly appreciated with such limited capacity.
I also miss the ability to drag a bunch of songs to the iPhone as you can with the G2 Shuffle. Having to create playlists should be the option, not the rule; so PC to have to do the playlist thing.

At this time that is not a feature included with iPhone. It will match the bit rate of the songs in itunes.
If this is something you would like to see be sure to submit your feedback on that. Customers feedback influences changes.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Convert higher bit rate songs?

This is an option on the device screen every tme I sync my iPod touch - now at OS v6.
Should I click on it and convert? And if so, to which kbps setting?

On-the-fly conversion is only available on the iPod shuffle. The iPod shuffle (probably because of it's limited capacity) has the option to "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC". This option is not available for any other model iPod. Syncing anything larger than a shuffle and converting in the process would be a very slow process. For the larger iPods the files have to be converted in iTunes first or indeed have to have been imported in a compressed format prior to transfer.
There are a couple of ways to handle this, one is to convert the songs in your library and put them in a playlist to sync the iPod from, the other is to have a second library of compressed songs and sync the iPod from there:
iPod - Syncing Music
Using multiple iTunes libraries -Mac

Encode at a lower bit rate when uploading to iPod nano 2nd gen

There is a feature that I liked when I used to put my music on my Motorola SLVR. When I synced my phone with iTunes I had the option to re-encode my files at a lower bit rate (I believe it was aac 128). I there a way to enable this feature for the iPod nano 2nd gen?

On-the-fly conversion is only available on the iPod shuffle. The iPod shuffle (probably because of it's limited capacity) has the option to "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC". This option is not available for any other model iPod. For the larger iPods the files have to be converted in iTunes first or indeed have to have been imported in a compressed format prior to transfer

My iPod Nano 6th Gen, Crashes whilst performing "Convert Higher Bit Rate to 128 AAC" in iTunes.

Hi Guys,
I have a 6 week old iPod Nano 16Gb.
I have about 2500 songs, which would be coming up to 18Gb, so instead of selecting which albums I want, I've taken the lazy approach and ticked the "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 AAC".
As you all know, it does the coversion on the fly, roughly about 8 sec on average per song. Being a slow Core Duo T2500, it takes its time and I have to leave it over night whilst it does it.
Come back in the morning and the watch had the 'White Screen of Death', displaying on the screen like the Apple IIe days of "OK to disconnect"
Then it goes blank and then it says iTunes (picture of a plug), under that, connect to restore.
Plug it into iTunes and it does a full restore with nothing in it.
I hope I explained it ok.
Im kinda think its not the Nano, as I've filled it up with music and photos to its capacity and works fine.
Would it be something to do with "Enable disk use", to stop it from connecting and disconnecting after syncing?
Any ideas?
Thanks Guys.

I have the same problem and can't seem to figure out what the problem is. I rebuilt my iTunes library and still my 6G nano crahes whenever I load an AAC tune onto it. MP3s and podcasts all work fine, it's just the AACs...
Just *loading* an AAC song will cause the Nano 6G to reboot as soon as it disconnects from Itunes. It will then reboot a few times and then go into recovery mode. :-(
Karen

Problem with bit rate ?

Hi there,
Using FCP7.
After compressing a FCP project with Compressor and burning DVDSP with DVDSP, I realized that scenes containing objects or people in rapid movement where showing jerked images.
The slow motion scenes are fine.
I checked the following
settings for DVDSP burning: VBR two pass;
averageBit rate 4,0,
max rate 7,0
1) the self-contained QT that I started with is not showing this problem.
2) the m2v file obtained from compressor (I use preset setting for high quality compression) does not show this problem when I view it with MPEG streamclip
3) I tried to burn directly the QT file with Toast 10 …get same problem if not worse !.
settings for Toast
automatic re-encoding
average rate 4,0 Mbps
max bit rate 8,0 Mbps
MPEG-2
I guess my problem comes from the bit rate I used ?
I am now confused and I am not sure I understood the impact of the bit rate setting on the quality of the resulting DVD, and I believe that using a high bit rate in DVDSP might result in problems for some clients to play the DVD on their player ?
Could it be something else ?
could someone please give me advice ?
Many thanks in advance
Ivan

I can only think of two possibilities based on the info available:
1. Old DVD player (choking on the bitrate spike)
2. You need to set some compression markers around the scenes while in FCP. This would flag Compressor to pay extra attention to that area. After you output the new clip, I suggest you use the standard High Quality preset (in Compressor) for your program duration e.g., "Highest Quality 90 minute". Don't get creative with the encoding set-up. And ALWAYS used AC-3 audio.

Controlling output video bit rate in FCPX

I ran into a problem: I created a mp4 file with Share/Export File… (settings: Computer, H.264 Faster Encode, 1920x1080 - edited from an HD camera): its video always freezes at a definite point when played on my BD Player connected to my HDTV through HDMI (audio instead continues on the frozen image).
It seem that the issue is a sudden video bit rate pick of almost 50 Mbps while its average is around 20-30 Mbps. It is not clear to me if this freeze is caused by the BD Player or by the HDTV not being able to handle such pick.
As a test I used Compressor to control the output bit rate (settings: average 20 Mbps and pick 25 Mbps) and this seems to fix the problem. To be more certain I should do more tests, but I'm confident I found a possible solution.
I'd like to know if there is a way in FCPX to control such picks (without using Compressor), either in the Share commands (but it seems to me that they don't provide enough setting controls) or in the timeline. By watching the Video Scopes I can see a quite strong signal in the area where the output file has the bit rate pick. But I don't know any way to have a measure useful to identify them before sharing and avoid a trial and error approach...
Piero
Below the critical point...

Tried to upload a PDF instead of PNG, but no luck. The picture shows a quite standard (I'd say...) image but with highly dense graphic of Y' component in the Y'CbCr Parade (in the limits of 0-100 IRE): much more dense than most images in the rest of the movie. So I assume this might mean a higher bit rate... but it's just an assumption.
Let me summarize my tests:
1st test: FCPX: Share/Export File.. (settings: Computer, H.264 Faster Encode, 1920x1080)
- copied the .mp4 file to USB drive
- USB drive into a BD player connected to HDTV through HDMI >> freezing effect
2nd test: FCPX: Send to Compressor - Compressor: Create Blu-Ray Disk (on Hard Drive) and Video Job with standard Video settings (Automatically select bit rates = ON)
- Played the .img disk with "Mac Blu-Ray Player" on my iMac >> same freezing effect in same position as before on HDTV
3rd test: FCPX: Send to Compressor - Compressor: Create Blu-Ray Disk (on Hard Drive) and Video Job with customized Video settings: Automatically select bit rates = OFF - Average = 20 Mbps - Maximum = 25 Mbps
- Played the .img disk with "Mac Blu-Ray Player" on my iMac >> NO MORE freezing effect (and smaller file by 30%)
I might do more tests (mainly on my HDTV) but I believe the point is the bit rate... and the only way to control it is by using Compressor.
So now my question: is there a color setting that helps in controlling such situation ? e.g. lower saturation, or lower exposure, maybe in mid tones or highlights, or what ?
Thanks so much for your help
Piero

PROBLEM with 24/96 bit-rate USB DAC that worked fine until I plugged in two

I'm using a late 2008 15" Macbook Pro that I bought Jan 2009 right before the SD card models came out. Mac OSX 10.6.4 and iTunes 9.2 are installed. I have a Nuforce Icon HDP and a CEntrance DACport 24/96 bit-rate USB DAC (external sound cards) that still work great right now. Note - 16 bit/44 Khz is CD quality, and these 24/96 files are hi-resolution downloads that are closer to SACD or DVD audio.
I have been evaluating a new third 24/96 USB DAC plugged directly into the Macbook USB port (no hub) which has been working fine for over 2 weeks with 24/96 bit-rate lossless music files in iTunes. Audio Midi Setup is set for 24/96 to match the music file's resolution. After making suggestions to the manufacturer they made some improvements and sent me a new version to listen for the differences.
I listened to the new one for a day and it worked fine, but when I plugged in the original test sample into the second USB port at the same time as the new one in order to compare them, the sound became garbled and noisy. This never happened when either one was plugged in by itself. Note, if I make changes to the DAC's bit-rate in Audio Midi Setup I usually close iTunes first and then re-open it when I am done.
Upon hearing this new problem I unplugged both of the new USB DACs and plugged just one of them back in, but now it causes iTunes music playback to pause when one is plugged in and set for 24/96 in audio midi setup. Prior to plugging in both at the same time, either one worked just fine by itself. There is no reason when unplugging one or the other that they shouldn't start working again. But now I can't play any 24/96 music through either one anymore. In quicktime player the songs don't pause like with iTunes, but there is no sound coming through even with just one DAC plugged in at a time. Then I discovered that if I go into Audio Midi Setup application and lower the bit rate to 24/48 then iTunes will resume playing again and I can hear the music fine with iTunes or Quicktime player.
Basically, my Macbook Pro has now lost the ability to play 24/96 bit rate with either of these new USB DACs, when they both worked fine before I plugged them in at the same time. More confusing is that they use the same USB receiver chip as in one of the DACs that I mentioned above in the first paragraph, and both the HDP and DACport still work fine at 24/96 bit-rate. It's only these two new USB DAC that require me to lower the bit rate in Audio Midi Setup to 24/48 in order to listen through them, and this wasn't a problem as recently as yesterday!
The computer is acting like some setting needs to be wiped out - it's DEFINITELY NOT the USB DAC's that are faulty because they still both work fine at 24/96 on my wife's iMac (I'm afraid to try plugging in both at the same time to the iMac in case I screw that Mac up too).
I have reset the PRAM a few times, and this doesn't fix the problem. I thought maybe the com.apple.audiomidisetup.plist file could be corrupted and deleted it, but that didn't help. I don't know what to try next to get the Macbook to start fresh when trying to use these devices, short of having to re-install OSX.
Please, does anyone have a suggestion of how I can make the Macbook forget it ever saw these two USB DACs, and let me start fresh so they start working normally again? I do dozens of reviews for Head-fi.org and I can't afford to have my Macbook Pro compromised like this, which could prevent me from doing some reviews or evaluating new products.

UPDATE:
As noted in the first post, both of these newer USB DAC work fine at 24/96 on my wife's iMac, so it's clear that they didn't both become defective when I connected them to the Macbook Pro at the same time.
Resetting the Macbook Pro PRAM didn't help, so I removed the hard shell laptop case to get to the battery and remove it, then reset the SMC. After that I could use the original DAC at 24/96 again, but only IF it was plugged into the rear USB port. If I plugged it into the front USB port then the sound was garbled and filled with noise. This was a vast improvement over no sound at all.
Then I switched to the replacement/updated DAC, but I got no sound at all from either USB port at any bit-rate. And returning to the original DAC again now results in no sound again.
Sigh... I will reset the PRAM and SMC again, and see how far I can get with this. I'd still love some help. Thanks!

HT4914 I have an iTunes library of some 18k tracks. If I subscribe to iTunes Match, can I delete my library from the pc hard drive and then download my entire collection back at the higher bit rate of 256?

I would like to improve the quality of my iTunes library, most of which were ripped at the old 'higher quality' setting and not lossless.
I would consider subscribing to the iTunes Match programme if I would later be able to download my music back on to my PC at the improved higher bit rate stated.
Is there a problem with this?

In iPhoto, Select All the Photos you want to move... Then goto > File > Export >
Choose the settings as seen here
Click Export and select your External Drive
Best to create a Folder to put them in... and away you go...

HT204406 how do I download higher bit rate songs from itunes match to replace the lower bit rate I have on my itunes library?

I have itunes match and I have about 500 songs that were ripped at 128kbps. I have been tolf that I can replace them via itunes match to improve them to 256 or 320?
I have put them into a playlist in my itunes library and I want to know how I can upgrade their bit rate via itunes match. Can anyone help me?

Sid,
With the device connected, click the Summary tab and you will see the "Convert higher bit rate..." option. Set it to 128. See picture below:

Bit rate-to-capacity chart?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for