Correct Bit Rate To Fit 2 Hr DV Movie To DVD

Hello Board,
Is there a set bit rate number one can use to be able to fit a 2-hr DV movie (29:97) onto a standard DVD-R while maintaining a decent level of quality?
Thanks,
CR

Can you detail what is leading you to ask this question? I mean, has the Compressor 2 preset for 120 minutes (DVD: Best Quality 120 Minutes - 4:3) not worked well for you? If you have gone that route, can you mention what you unhappy about in terms of the encoding quality?
Also, can you mention the exact method of getting to Compressor? That is, are you sending directly from FCP (File > Export > Using Compressor) or are you exporting a QuickTime Movie?
Finally, at this stage in the game, are you working off of a single, complete QT movie, or is your timeline composed of the original cuts? (it does matter)

Similar Messages

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.

Menu Bit Rate

I'm using DVD Studio 2 and I have an m2v file and AC3 audio for my menu with titles over it. Very basic. But my bit rate is way too high. When I check my menu bit rate a bit rate viewer it says my nominal bit rate is 8 MB per sec, but I have my settings in DVD SP set to 5.5 max and target. The original m2v file I'm using was encoded with ProCoder and had a nominal bit rate of 6.2. What can I do to make sure I don't have such a high bit rate. For when we duplicate the master DVD we have shudders and pixelation in the menu, even though the master plays just fine. I need it to be lower for our duplicator.

Wow, so it is the titles then. Yeah, I wondered because I have made other DVDs with DVD SP 2 before, but never actually added titles to it, Just menu and play buttons. So the buttons don't really affect the Bit rate too much, but the titles do. Man, thanks so much. I think I have a really good idea on how to fix that then. Like you said, go put those titles in using Final Cut or Avid. Nice, thanks.

How Can I Make Encore Create a Bluray Image that uses a Bit Rate that Really Fills The Disc?

I have searched and browsed but have not seen this specific issue.
I realize that if you leave the bit rate alone, Encore will use the best bitrate. In my experience, it doesnt. I have also found that the Disc Info on the Build tab is never correct. The final transcoded size of the ISO is always very different from what is shown.
With the current disc I am making, I am encoding 4 HD m2t video files that total 20 GB on disk. The total running time is about 1hr 50m. Leaving everything set to defaults, the final size of the ISO file is 12 GB. I would like the final size to be around 20GB. I would expect that Encore would do this automatically. Changing bitrate in the project settings and re-transcoding does not change the final size. If I manually set the encoding, the size does change but since the Disc Info is unusable, it is excruciating trial and error. You have to pick settings that you think will work, wait hours for it to transcode, then it is way to big or way to small. I cant figure out how to get it to my target size.
Also, when I transcode the files, Encore never lists the bit rates of the transcoded files. The field is always blank.
It may also be note worthy that I have to first transcode the files, then build the disc. If I dont do that, the transcoding will hang. Even when I do separate the steps, sometimes when I build the disc from the transcoded files, the build of the disc still hangs.
I am running a 3 GHz Quad CPU with 4 GB of Ram in 32 bit XP Pro. I have 5 physical drives of 500 GB each. I also use separate physical drives for the source files vs the target ISO. Disk space is not an issue.
Also, is there any timeframe for when Adobe is going to release a new update? I have also run into other problems on this forum like the wonderful error 6 and the hanging transcoding, although my solutions to both problems were different than what was posted. It is all hit or miss.
Does anyone know if Adobe going to add a feature like on other disc authoring programs where you click a Fit to disc button and it then calculates the best bit rate for the specified disc size? That would make me very happy.
I would appreciate any help here.

Encore does have a fit-to-disc feature, called "automatic transcoding", which chooses the bit rate based upon how much media there is to encode, how much room is currently on the disc, and applying format-legal restrictions (minimum and maximum bit rates allowable by the format).
So for instance, 30 minutes of video will never fill a disc because the required bit rate to do so would be higher than allowable by the format.

How do I change the conversion to 128Kbps option to a higher bit rate?

I have a lossless music library spanning 160 GB. Of course this will not fit into an iPhone, so I want to convert it to a lossy format for the time being.
I also want to keep my lossless library in iTunes. So the only option that I see for these two conditions to coexist is the "Convert to 128Kbps when syncing" option.
However, I find 128Kbps VBR too low quality. Is there any way to increase the bit rate (perhaps to V1 or V0) without manually re-incoding my music library?

Prodo123 wrote:
Is there any way to increase the bit rate
not in iTunes. however, you can use this script:
Lossless to AAC Workflow v2.2
Two scripts assist with importing/managing Apple Lossless or AIFF audio files and sending converted AAC copies to a mounted iPod set to "manually manage songs and videos".
Lossless to AAC Workflow (CD->iPod):
Imports each enabled CD track as an Apple Lossless or AIFF file Makes a converted AAC copy of each imported file Adds the AAC file to iPod, deleting the original AAC from iTunes.
Lossless to AAC Workflow (iTunes->iPod):
Makes a converted AAC copy of each Apple Lossless or AIFF track selected in iTunes Adds the AAC file to iPod, deleting the original AAC from iTunes. In this way you can keep archived lossless files on your hard drive, and manageable AAC files on your iPod.
Yes, iTunes 9.1 will auto-encode tracks to iPod, but only 128 kbps AAC; these scripts enable use of your Custom AAC encoder setting.

When is the h.264 bit rate issue going to be fixed?

If you export a project in After Effects using the H.264 codec the file you export does not have the correct bitrate. Meaning if you export a video at 1mbps compression rate you will not get a video that has 1mbps bitrate. This has been an issue since day one along with header issues in the .mp4 file. Please do not tell me not to use AE to create H.264, this is what we used and works fine in CS4. The same issues arrises when you use Adobe Media Encoder CS5.
Does anyone have a solution or anyone from Adobe have any suggestions?

Thanks but that didn't help.
I believe I have found out the actual issue. CS5 will not render a project above the lowest bitrate of the source video for H.264. So if you have a video file at 300kbps it cannot be rendered above that point. This is a problem when you understand how bitrates\codecs work. Not all codecs need an extremely high bitrate in order for the quality of the content to look good. We use the TechSmith screen capture codec a lot. This codec is create for screen capturing, it provides a low bitrate file which is small in size and easy to handle. We have been using this combination with the CS package since before it was CS. The videos we procude look great in CS4 but awful in CS5. When using mediainfo to check out a video file compressed in CS5 it gives us a Bit Rate and a Normal Bit Rate. Normal bit rate is what is requested, say 1mbps and the actual Bit Rate is what the source material was.
In any case the video files look like crap because a 250kbps .mp4 looks awful compaired to a 250kbps video using the TSCC codec. So yeah, not using CS5 and most likely won't be doing any more upgrades in a while. I'm responsible for purchasing over 10 licenses. Just wanted to let Adobe know they won't be getting that money again for a while until they figure out there compression issues.

How can I reduce the bit rate of songs in my Music Library to enable me to

At the moment i can only fit about 1300 songs on my iphone and also have used up half the space on my 120gb Classic with 7000 songs which is a lot less than what i was told would fit on. so............
How can I reduce the bit rate of songs in my Music Library to enable me to fit more songs onto my iPhone or iPod Classic.. and what is the minimum rate that i should stick to in order to retain good sound quality.

For existing tracks, see:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1550
For CDs you import in the future, change the Import settings in the iTunes -> General preferences.
As to what will be a good bit rate, that's going to be up to you and what quality you find acceptable, but many people find that 128 kbps AAC is the optimum balance between small file size and quality.

ITunes & Constant Bit Rate

Hi. Okay this is my first time posting here. Up till now I've been decently satisfied with my iPhone. However right now I'm trying to import some songs from a CD that I own onto my computer and into my iTunes Library.
Okay so I watched the tutorial video. I did a little research online and I found the way to change the import settings.
I want a HIGH QUALITY music file in the .aac format at a CONSTANT BIT RATE.
Following me so far? With that in mind when it came to the 1st screen I selected "Custom" and I choose
Stereo Bit Rate: 320
Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
Channels: Auto
Within this window the option "Use Variable Bit Rate" was SELECTED.
I unchecked/deselected it because I want a CBR (Constant Bit Rate).
And then I hit "Okay" thinking that I had done everything correct and perfectly.
Then I was back at the Main Pain. I hit Import CD hoping it would use the custom settings. However when I went to the folder to my shock and surprise it was giving me music files with a varying bit rate.
Some files were 325. Others were 321 and a few 319. This is NOT what I wanted and not what I expected from iTunes. I tell it to not use VBR it should be doing CBR right?
So that's why I'm hear. What do I need to do to get this to WORK the way I want it to? Or should I just give up and use another program like Windows Media Player to rip my songs into .mp3? I'd rather use .aac since I hear it's better quality and it's the evolution of mp3.
Any help would be greatly appreciated....
Message was edited by: TheLionOfAzzalle

It's still NOT working.
I've done exactly the way you suggested. I've also tried it with "use error correction" and it still doesn't give me what I want.
The only thing that sorta produces what I want is when I put it to mono and start the importing process the files all come out at the same bitrate.
However the highest bitrate I can get with that is 160. And that's not what I want.
I'm about to just give up. On top of iTunes being ridiculous slow on all Windows computers I now find that importing songs is a complete hassle.

What is "Total bit rate"?

I have a reasonable idea of what bit rates are, measured in MB/sec or Kb/sec, but whenever I use "Get Info" on a video clip I get something like . . . . "Total bit rate: 26,571" . . . . just that - nothing else.
What exactly is it?
It's too low to be b/sec.
I am sure it is too high to be Kb/sec ?
What do they mean by "Total"?
I understand "Average" and "Maximum" but what is "Total"?

I can't tell you how many people use my studio and compress their video to fit exactly on a DVD-5, and then go over because they can't fit their audio or menu graphics, or subtitles, or anything else. They go over literally by about 1-2 MB, and don't understand that you can't just stuff it in there… One byte over is too big. That's a tough one for a lot of people to grasp, but always funny when they ask if there's anything they can do to make it fit without recompressing it. I just tell them to hit it with the hairdryer.

DL DVD with 2 features at diff. bit rates?

I'm making a dual layer DVD with 2 movies; one is 2.5 hours long and one is 1 hour long. I found a layer break point and made the disc no problem. However the quality is not as good as I would have hoped. I created both movies in FCP and simply exported them as Current Settings Quicktime Movies. I set the DVD SP settings just about as high as I could.
I was considering re-exporting both movies through compressor, making the 2.5 hour movie a higher quality than the other, since the longer one is the more important one. However, the idea of working out the math to figure out what bit rates to make them each makes my head hurt. Am I correct in thinking that doing this would be one **** of a difficult task full of trial and error, hours of frustration and copious tears?

There are a bunch of ways I can think of.
1) Set the iPods to sync only "selected" playlists. For each playlist, add the songs with the proper bitrate. You can use Smart Playlists to use the bitrate of the songs.
2) Use separate libraries. 700 songs doesn't take very long to load.

Common video dimensions and bit rates for dynamic streaming?

I'm going to be converting my videos to flv and am trying to decide what to use for video dimensions and bit rates. Some of my users have slow computers and connections so I'm thinking 150 on the low end.
Is there a common practice? What has worked well for you in the past?

Hello MrWizzer
I am not sure what FMS version you are currently using.
Well, if you look at the sampe vod folder that ships with FMS4.5, it has files encoded @ 150kbps, 500 kbps, 700 kbps, 1000 kbps, 1500 kbps.
I am sure that all of these files stream perfectly fine given the correct bandwidth environment.
Its totally depend upon the FMS hosting service provider depending upon the user base of a particular provider.
You need to judge what kind of BW is available to your viewers and put the files encoded at appropriate bitrates.
You may also look at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/beginning-fms45-pt06.html for refrences.
Regards,
Shiraz Anwar

Export Settings - Minimum Bit Rate Question (MPEG2-DVD)

Hi,
Curious...just came over recently from FCP and I don't remember Compressor giving me an option to adjust the MINIMUM bit rate when exporting HD projects for DVD. I figured I'd just leave it where the preset has it (at 2.8mbps minimum)...BUT...then I hovered over it and saw an interesting popup/explanation of what it does which kind of confuses me. It says:
Higher values set a higher minimum quality, but reduce quality of more difficult scenes.
The first part makes sense so I figured I'd raise it...but then the second part makes me think I should keep it low. Sort of confuses me. Any thoughts??? FYI: My projects are Weddings with a fair amount of action, etc.
Normally, these are my settings depending unless I can't fit the project onto the disc in which case I adjust:
DVD
CBR at 7.5mbps
...or...
VBR 2pass
Target Bit Rate: About 6.8 or 7mbps
Max Bit Rate: Usually 8mbps
BLURAY
VBR 2pass
Target Bit Rate: 25mbps
Max Bit Rate: 30mbps
Unless someone tells me that I should raise these settings higher for better quality output (if the project size allows of course) these are what I've been using to get maximum quality out of my videos without jepordizing playback due to bit rate max for each media (which I think I read was 10mb and 40 or 50mbps respectively. I was just thrown by the minimum bit rate description above.
Thank you in advance for your help!

The whole notion of a minimum bitrate is crazy unless you have specific broadcast requirements that require you to pad out video to keep the connection alive.
If the encoder can express the image with zero loss in less than the minimum bitrate why would you pad it with zeros to get the bitrate high enough to meet the min?
The idea of a nominal/average bitrate is easy to understand.
The Maximum bitrate is often misunderstood though.
On some encoders the max rate sets the wiggle room (max - average) that can be used if there is a burst of required information.
On other encoders it sets the maximum rate at which the video buffer is allowed to fill as per the specifications. eg Blu-ray is capped at 40Mbps. The Video encode itself MAY EXCEED THAT 40Mbps for a split second but will only LOAD into the video buffer at up to 40Mbps.
For example, if you set constant bitrate at 20Mbps and no Maximum rate when the video first starts loading from the blu-ray disc to the video buffer it loads faster than the blu-ray maximum of 40Mbps. Thus you MUST have a maximum rate defined (for blu-ray compliance) even though it's a constant bitrate. Some encoders do this for you but some leave it up to the user to get right (and thus should provide a max slider and constant slider to set both).
Jeff- absolutely agree. It's very rare that you need to use all 40Mbps available to you. 20 and 30 can look great (depending on the detail in the sceen and how much motion there is).
VBR 2-pass does have value if you're trying to get down to lower rates like 10Mbps to fit a long title on a disc. If you don't action shots with sceen cuts will leave artifacts as they are bit starved.
I'm actually a big fan of Constant _Quality_ (CQ) vs CBR or VBR. You then know what quality you're going to get on every frame and from experience will know how big it will come out to be. CQ is also considerably faster to render because you have no rate control computations to do. x264pro has a CQ option for this very reason.
hope that helps.

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

Sample & bit rate

I have a two part question:
1) I have a Presonus Firebox that allows me to record up to 24 bit/96k. I am wonder if I should take advantage of this and use those settings in audio midi setup for when I record into GrarageBand? Is it worth the extra file size? Is there a noticeable quality gain? Will 96k work with GB?
2) I know GB is only 16 bit and that CD's that it will be mixed to are at 16 bit/44.1 kHz. But what about if I record a song in GB at 24 bit/96k, mix down to iTunes, and put it on my ipod as an AIFF will the increased quality show up there? What about on an Audio DVD made from itunes with iDVD.
Thanks for any info and/or opinions,
Paul

Not that it's relevant in the context of GarageBand, but it might be useful to clarify the effect of sample rate and bit depth.
The sample rate affects the frequency response. it is mathematically impossible for a sampling system to correctly render any frequency at or above half the sampling rate (trying to do so produces false frequencies - 'birdies ' - known as aliasing). 44.1kHz effectively limits your frequency response to about 21 kHz, 48kHz to about 23 kHz, and so on.
The bit depth affects the noise floor: 16-bit gives a theoretical noise floor of about -90dB below peak: 24-bit gives a theoretical noise floor of about -138dB below peak. -90 is pretty well inaudible: but remember that when adding tracks together the noise, being random, is added (3dB per track if they are the same level when mixed - of course the peak level increases too). The digital noise, if it becomes audible, is far more annoying in its sound than good old-fashioned tape hiss.
In practice, GB's restriction to 44.1/16-bit isn't really that much of a problem: of course 96/24 would be better, but you gets what you paid for!
Incidentally, don't confuse bit depth with bit-rate, which is a combination of the sampling rate and the bit depth, and is fixed for uncompressed files: but of course as you compress files with MP3 or similar you reduce the bit-rate by leaving out information, even though the sampling rate is the same.

Bit rate preference

Do you prefer keeping your music at a specific bit rate? I use to keep all mine at 128kbps so I could fit more onto my iPod, but I soon found out that when I played those files on my stereo (loudly, of course) that there was a fair bit of distortion.
Since then if I am ripping CDs i rip them to 160kbps and I will allow files up to 256kpbs into my library, on the rare occasion I was have some that are 320kbps.
What bitrate and/or file type do you use or recommend to other users?

You might find this article interesting, you'll get an extensive comparison of the AAC and MP3 formats and bit rates benchmarked against CD format: Planet of Sound - Quality of AAC audio and MP3

Correct Bit Rate To Fit 2 Hr DV Movie To DVD

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