IDVD 4 Best Performance bit rate

I've read on these forums that using best performance, iDVD encodes video at a 7.3Mbps bit rate.
Is that including audio, or is that just video?
In other words is it 7.3 + 1.5 (audio) = 8.8 Mbps?
or is it
5.8 + 1.5 (audio) = 7.3 Mbps?
Thanks!

where did you get that information about the 7.3 bit rate?
I used the Bitrate Viewer ($0 or $30, it runs OK in Virtual PC) for the ~7404 kb/s = 7.2 Mb/s value (that was the average from 15, 30 and 60 minute content lengths but the original values were very near each other).
http://www.tecoltd.com/bitratev.htm
I got the 7.3 Mb/s value by extracting a 1 minute .m2v segment (i.e. just video, no audio there) from the longer VOBs: it was always 54.6 MB/min or an average of 57282275 B/min = 7.28 Mb/s.
I have also used Digigami MegaPEG.X but not with those iDVD files. I vaguely remember comparing some Bitrate Viewer's results to those from Digigami MegaPEG.X. AFAIR the results weren't exactly the same but they were similar.
to analyze some mp2's
You mean "to analyze some MPEG2's", right?
average bit rate = 2.559-4.144 Mb/s
Really? That sounds VERY low! Can it be true?
DVD's video bitrate is up to 10036 kb/s (=9.8 Mb/s) and usually it is about 4-6-8 Mb/s. 4 Mb/s is already quite low for high quality output (SVCD is 2,4 Mb/s).
How long were your test clips? My iDVD 4.0.1 test clips were 15, 30, 60, 70, 75, 90, 105 and 120 minutes.

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Best average bit rate & max bit rate for DVDs playing on laptops...

I encode and burn many DVDs for use in regular DVD players....usually in the half hour range and have been encoding with Compressor 3 using these specs:
6.6 average bit rate
7.8 max bit rate
Those same DVDs, which play flawlessly in the DVD players, can occasionally hiccup when played from a laptop. Should I change the max bit rate from 7.8 to 7.7. or lower? Is that the biggest part of the equasion that may affect a laptop's ability to play without choking?
Many thanks,
John

Thanks for all your help, David S, but the point is
that I have tried many different bit rates, from 4.0
to 7.0, and I don't have time to waste all day trying
different bit rates for an 8-minute project.
My main question is: Why would it work fine on all
of my other short projects, including the 8-minute
one, and then when I cut out 20 seconds of that same
project, it starts screwing up!?!
I am going to try trashing my preferences. It is
starting to seem like a corrupt pref file to me.
It turned out to be a corrupt pref file, as I thought. Thanks for your many, many questions, David S.

Boosting Bit Rate for Higher Quality

In Two Pass VBR Best DVD (bit rate defaults to 6.2mbps), if I pump up the bit rate to 9mpbs or higher, will my DVD quality increase? File size is not an issue -- it's a 15-20 minute video.
David A.

In theory, yes.
However - +and this is key+ - increasing the bit rate past a certain point will reduce compatibility with many set-top players. For the most part, so long as you're using Dolby Digital audio, you can make due with increasing the average to, say, 6.5 mbps. I personally would not advise going higher than 6.5 mbps unless you're only using the DVD for playback on systems you know you can control (your home or you mac).
Also, there is a certain point of diminishing returns with encoding. The 90 preset (6.2 & 7.7) is already at the high end of things.

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!

What are the best data and bit rate setting for uploading from final cut express to Youtube?

Can anyone suggest the best data rate and bit rate presets for uploading footage from final cut express 4 to Youtube? What settings will provide the best resolution, quality, and match the current youtube requirements?
Thank you in advance for your help,
Susan Kayne

It depends on whether you are using aspect ratios of 4:3 or 16:9.
Below is some simple guidance that will provide good quality with reasonably small file sizes.
The first part is for 4:3 video:-
1. File>Export Using QT Conversion.
2. The "Format" window should say, "QT Movie".
3. In "Use" select "LAN/Intranet" from the dropdown menu.
4. Click "Save" and when it has finished encoding, upload it to YouTube.
If you are making 16:9 video (Standard or High Definition) do steps 1 to 3 above.
Then when you have selected "LAN/Intranet" press the "Options" button and in the new
window that opens press the "Size" button and change the "640x480" to "853x480"
To do this you will have to click on the 640x480 and a dropdown menu appears.
Select "Custom" from the bottom of the menu and in the window that opens
you will see 2 boxes.
Put 853 in the first box and 480 in the second.
Click OK.
Then Save it.

IDVD 5 project, 26 chapters, burns Best Performance not Best Quality

My iDVD project WILL burn with 26 chapter headings at "Best Performance", but the same project will NOT burn at "Best Quality". The same file will burn at "Best Quality" without the chapter headings. I have retried multiple times. Each time Best Performance will burn, Best Quality will not.
As a rule I use Best Quality. The last project finished a couple of months ago. (So, probably earlier than 10.4.7) Best Quality usually works for me, just not on this project.
Note, I have filed a bug report but thought I should also share this with discussions.
(All the usual remedies, with resetting cache plist repairing permissions performed between each attempt, and attempts to burn from a new user. The video file has no transitions)
iDVD 5.0.1 (626), Quicktime Pro 7.1.3, 10.4.7
Mac G5 Quicksilver 867 MHz, 2MB L3 cache, memory 1.5 gig.
Entire video length is 00:45:58.
My user set chapter markers are at [00:01:19.2637] [00:03:18.1194] [00:04:06.2638] [00:05:45.2235] [00:07:07.2781] [00:08:16.0988] [00:09:53.0879] [00:12:22.2126] [00:13:04.0552] [00:15:30.2190]
[00:16:15.2725] [00:17:13.0799] [00:18:26.2418] [00:20:02.1206] [00:22:48.1704]
[00:27:03.1369] [00:27:59.0637] [00:29:56.1588] [00:31:27.1161] [00:34:26.1298]
[00:34:59.0097] [00:38:54.1302] [00:41:12.1516] [00:42:02.2966] [00:43:34.1742]
[00:45:09.1127]
So the first chapter marker is over one minute into the video and the last is 49 seconds before the end of the video.
It took me a couple of weeks of futile attempts at Best Quality to figure this out. I am exhausted and don't have the energy to start deleting chapter markers one at a time to see if and when it will burn at Best Quality.
Any thoughts?

Hello Robert,
I'm not really able to provide a solution - maybe some of the more knowledgeable users on this board will chime in - but can only offer a guess.
There hav been several reports of compatibility issues between Tiger/QT 7 and iMovie/iDVD 5, so maybe that's your "bug".
Recommended is:
• OS X 10.3.9/QT 6.5.2/iLife 5
• OS X 10.4.x/QT 7.1.x/iLife 6
I would also try to create a new iDVD project for your movie after deleting iDVD prefs and repairing permissions. Then try to create a disk image (if you didn't try that already)
hope this helps
mish

The best Bit rate for a 1 hour film

Hi all
Just a quick question does anyone know the best bit rate to use to compress a 1 hour film. I want the best quality possible
Any advice would be gratfully recieved
Thanks

If you're using Compressor and it's a one hour encode then use the CBR setting with a bit rate of 6 or 6.5. Also encode your audio to the industry standard .ac3 file format. The combination of audio and video bitrate is always a compromise between quality and having consumer DVD players stalling or choking because the combined birate is too high.
However, the media content you're encoding will always determine how you should encode: video with lots of fast action needs the VBR setting, whereas the CBR setting can be used when there is little action. But generally, the CBR setting in Compressor will do an okay job with project durations of one hour or less, regardless of the action in your video.
Hope this helps.
- Don

***Best Bit Rate To Use For The Zen V Plus 8GB

I've got the zen v plus (8gb) and I was just wondering what is the best bit rate to use, I've currently got ,32 tracks at "64kbps wma" on my zen micro(6gb) and I'm getting a bit tempted to enhance the quality of the tracks (to maybe 96kbps wma), but I don't want the space on my 8gb v plus to be consumed quickly.
Thanx if anyone could give me any ideas

96 kbps? If you want good sound and are using high quality headphones I would suggest using 256 kb
ps.
I use 256 kbps mp3 on my mp3 player. I tried 320 kbps and could not hear a difference between it and 256 kbps on my mp3 player. I could hear the difference between 92 kbps and 256 kb
ps.
I don't use WMA since WMA uses more battery power and gives you less run time per charge. It isn't a contest to see how many songs can be crammed into the player, but it is instead about enjoying the music. What good is having hundreds of hours of music crammed into a player if the battery life is 5 hours or less?

Burning iTunes Plus and other 256 bit rate material to get best quality?

I understand that iTunes Plus and most songs on Amazon are provided at a higher bit rate than non-Plus iTunes songs in order to provide higher audio quality on playback. But, does this quality differential come through when burning a song to disc from within iTunes?
I ask because of an experiment I just conducted. I downloaded the same song from iTunes (not a Plus version) and from Amazon. The Amazon version takes up twice as much file space as the iTunes version. (The ACC file at 128kbps was 5MB while the MPEG file at 256 kbps was 11.6MB.) However, when I burned both songs to a CD, those files where identical in size. Further, when played on a near-audiophile stereo system, I could hear no discernible difference between the two.
So the question: Does whatever extra information and hence sound quality contained in the Plus or other 256 kbps material get lost in the conversion to audio CD format? Are there settings in iTunes I'm missing? Are there alternative software or file formats available that would burn audio CDs without this loss?
(I realize that whatever difference there is in sound quality would not be detectable on most equipment. What I'm looking for is to preserve quality differences that can be heard on high-end equipment. As it is, I'm able to tell the difference between well-recorded and produced commercial CDs and the same material bought through iTunes.)

The quality of compressed audio is not always linked to file size. I believe it is possible for a 128 kbps AAC file to sound as good as a 256 kbps MP3 file. MP3 is not the best audio compression format but it is by far the most commonplace. A 128 kbps AAC file isn't as good as a 192 kbps AAC file, however.
When your audio files were uncompressed for burning to audio CD they naturally became the same size because there no longer was any compression.
If your objective is to have audio CDs that sound best on high-end equipment then you should continue buying audio CDs rather than purchasing on-line music. That way there is no loss in audio quality from compression. I'm not aware of a source that is selling lossless on-line music downloads.

Best bit rate for blu rays with Toast 11

I'm burning a ProRes422 (uncompressed @ 18GB) movie to blu-ray using Toast 11 Titanium. The maximum bit rate is 9.0 Mbps. Is this sufficient? It seems very low...
Compressor has never worked properly with burning a blu-ray (I know there are more custom settings). I would use this but have had no luck, the blu-ray never burns properly only had luck with Toast.

Thanks for the info, somehow I've had to pay extra for the blu-ray plug in to burn a blu-ray at 26Mbps.
Now I need to figure out why the audio now is 'cracking' on the deeper parts of the soundtrack. The audio is set to PCM 96kHz 24 bit just like the original Pro Res file. In the original it does not 'peak' or 'distort' on the deeper parts of the soundtrack when playing in Quicktime, not sure what is happening to the audio after being burned to blu-ray. I might have to post in Soundtrack to get some feedback, any suggestions?

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

DVD Disk Space Requirements - Best Performance vs. Quality

I put together an iDVD 8 project that has about 135 minutes of content. When I go to burn the DVD using the Best Performance setting, is says it takes about 7gb (and I need to use DL). When I switch to the Professional Quality setting the disk space requirements are about half (almost to the point I can use a single-layer DVD). It seems it should be the exact opposite where more detailed, less compressed images should take more disk space.
Can someone explain this apparent contradiction? Thanks.

Google and learn about MPEG2 compression.... this is the backbone to iDVD. In general you have three encoding options:
CBR: Constant Bit-Rate
Single Pass VBR (variable bit-rate)
Two-pass VBR
CBR keeps the bit rate constant and therefore is the fasted way of encoding.
VBR will vary the bit rate. Scenes with a lot of motion get a higher bit rate, static scenes a lower bit rate.
Two pass VBR will analyze the entire sequence on the first pass to determine where and how high or low to go with the bit rate and then on the second pass, do the actual encoding. The two pass method may determine that you can go with a much lower average bit rate thus saving precious disc space. This method also takes twice as long!
But, that is just the math. Some sequences look better via CBR while others look better with two-pass VBR. Unfortunately, there isn't really a way to determine this prior to the lengthy encoding process. The best thing one can do is keep content as short as possible. If I had 135 minutes of material and I was using iDVD, I would want to create 2 DVDs instead of one. But that's me.
Mike

Encoding: Best Performance vs. Best Quality

So I have a project that if I select Best Performance it shows that the DVD will be 3.4GB, and if I select Best Quality it shows the DVD will be 2.0GB.
So my question is: isn't that contrary to logic? Why wouldn't Best Quality be the largest size? Is Best Quality going to give me the best possible video quality?

Since you have posted to the iDVD 6 forum, I asssume that is what you have.
iDVD 6 has two encoding modes: 'Best Performance' and 'Best Quality'. iDVD '08 adds: 'Professional Quality'.
People misunderstand the names and I wish Apple had used different names for all three modes.
The below applies to a single layer disc (double the times for a double layer disc):
'Best Performance' uses a fixed video encoding bit-rate that produces a DVD with a data playback bit-rate just about as high as a set-top DVD player can handle. This limits content to 60 minutes or less.
'Best Quality' uses a fixed video encoding bit-rate that is BASED ON THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF CONTENT BEING COMPRESSED and is best suited for content between 60 and 120 minutes. Note that all the content is encoded at the same bit-rate so that it can fit on a single layer disc. (Apple calls this single-pass variable bit-rate encoding because 120 minutes of content gets compressed more than 60 minutes of content.)
The new 'Professional Quality' uses a variable video encoding bit-rate that is BASED ON THE INFORMATION IN THE CONTENT BEING COMPRESSED. It uses a two-pass process to first evaluate the content and then encode it based on the motion/detail of individual clips. It is best suited for content between 60 and 120 minutes. Note that not all the content is encoded at the same bit-rate BUT the maximum data bit-rate on playback can not exceed the playback capability of a set-top DVD player. (This is two-pass, variable bit-rate encoding.) This means the BEST encoded quality should be about what is obtained with 'Best Performance' for content under 60 minutes.
If your content is under 60 minutes, use 'Best Performance'. If your content is between 60 minutes and 120 minutes, use 'Professional Quality' if your processor is fast enough and you don't mind waiting about twice the time required for 'Best Quality'.
About the only thing Apple can do to further improve the quality of DVD encoded video is to offer compressed audio instead of just the present uncompressed PCM audio because the audio 'eats up' part of the playback bit-rate a set-top DVD player can handle. Compressed audio would make more of the maximum playback bit-rate available for video.
In your case, with iDVD 6, use 'Best Performance' for content under 60 minutes and 'Best Quality' for content over 60 minutes. Remember that your menu content counts against the total time limit.
F Shippey

Accuracy of DVD player bit rate meters?

Anyone know why different DVD players would display drastically different bit rates as a DVD is playing?
I have a 90-minute project (81 min. film and about 8 mins. of extras) authored w/ DVD Studio Pro to DVD-R, with the main film itself compressed using Compressor's "90 minute Best Quality" preset (average video bit rate of 6.2 Mbps and a maximum bit rate of 7.7 Mbps). However, when playing the burned DVD-R back on my home Pioneer tabletop DVD player (which displays bit-rate info superimposed on the TV screen), it shows the bit rate at the above levels but with occassional spikes as high as 8.8 Mbps (these spikes only last about a quarter second). So it sound like Compressor's "maximum" 7.7 setting really isn't maximum, unless the Pioneer's meter is wrong.
Now, really weird: when I play the very same disc on an older Toshiba DVD player which also has a bit rate meter, it shows average bit rates in the 8.5-9.8 range, with spikes as high as 10.0. I've tried playing the film back twice on the Toshiba and it has frozen twice, at different parts of the movie (and not during chapter breaks or markers). I've read that the max. bit rate for all DVD content (video, audio, subtitles, etc). is 10.08, and the max. for video is 9.8. The film I'm playing has no subtitle or other extra streams, just the single video and audio files.
I've played the film fine on 5 other DVD players, so maybe it's just the Toshiba. But the bit rate differences are puzzling.
My concern is that this disc play well on multiple players. As is, it fills 4.29 GB on the disc. Should I recompress the film at Compressor's 120 min. Best Quality setting to lower the bit rate?
Thanks.
Mike

Mike Boedicker wrote:
Anyone know why different DVD players would display drastically different
bit rates as a DVD is playing?
Any system measuring real-time performance is probably doing an estimate.
Doing an accurate measurement would take so much processing power that
the performance itself would be affected. So it's quite possible that
the numbers you're seeing are somewhat inaccurate.
That said, you seem to be pushing the limits of your test systems,
so maybe you should back off on your Compressor settings.
Check out hanumang's advice and silal's links here:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5157012

Revisit: Best Quality vs Best Performance

This earlier thread was marked "answered" but there still seems to be some confusion over these project settings. Here's what Ken Stone says at his idvd6 authoring site:
"These encoder settings control the quality of the encode, the speed of the encoding process and when the encoding will take place. The Best Performance setting is restricted to 60 minutes of video or less. When used, encoding will happen quickly and you have the option of selecting 'Enable background encoding'. With background encoding, iDVD will start encoding as soon as you place your video assets into the iDVD interface. You can continue to work on your project, add art work, background images and audio, create buttons, additional menus and build slideshows, all the while iDVD will be encoding your video. This is the fastest way to encode, but quality takes a bit of a hit. If you want higher quality, then you want the next encoding option.
If you choose 'Best Quality' you will notice that the 'Enable background encoding' is grayed out and you will not be able to encode as you work on your project. Encoding will have to wait until you have finished your project and click the Burn button. There is a reason for this. iDVD will automatically select the best quality possible for the total amount of video you have in your iDVD project. As quality will be determined by the length of your video, iDVD must wait until you have completed your project so it will know how much video it needs to encode and can make the appropriate choices. iDVD uses the same encoding engine found in Compressor, which ships with FC Studio and DVD Studio Pro."
. . . . so Best Performance is for speed but "quality takes a bit of a hit" according to Stone. Not necessarily what I've been reading here on forum.

What Mr Stone leaves out is that 'Best Quality' is for projects of between 61 and 120 minutes.
If you project is longer than 60 minutes you don't have a choice but to use 'best quality'.
IMO it takes an extremely eagle eye to notice the theoretical quality loss.

IDVD 4 Best Performance bit rate

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