Hello, I was just wondering what settings you guys use when encoding mpegs from avi files to make high quality MPEG files that arent going to be used as Video cds. I simply want to make large MPEG files to be played with Windows Media player and want to fit about an hours worth of video on a cd. I want the Mpegs to be the best quality possible for this amount of time. What bitrates are good for this? 2500 or 3000 or what? I know someone out there has had to have played with these settings. I have the Panasonic and the LSX 3.0 encoders. Please feel free to elaborate on your settings in these encoders. I capture in MJPEG format at 704 X 480 and will encode these down to whatever gets suggested. Thanks in advance, Buddy Stark

-- Buddy Stark (b-sstark@terraworld.net), March 21, 2000

Answers

i just work with mpegs, but for arguments sake. a 2100bitrate was still too high for a 50min cd. 1180 fit 50mins ok. Now also i dont know if doing it as a data cd would change things a bit. But i did do a 3000 bit data cd and it was only able to fit roughly 22-25mins on it. these are based on 74min cdrs. 80 mins obviously fits a little more

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), March 22, 2000.

For a 60 minute cd you need to stick to the standard 1150

-- Al McCraw (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), March 22, 2000.

Buddy, use this formula for maximum bitrate according to the time you want to fit in a CD:

V = 90000/T - A

where: V=video kbps, A=audio kbps, T=time to fit in minutes). This is valid for a Data CD only. If you wish to know for a VideoCD just multiply 90000 x 1.13 and proceed the same way.

-- Matias (mpetrel@fi.uba.ar), March 22, 2000.

Buddy

I would seriously consider dropping your time requirement to something like 35 minutes per CD and doing a SVCD encode in Mpeg2, that takes about 20M a minute. The advantage of that is if you every wanted to author a VCD you have a master archive that Panasonic will handle and give a very good quality VCD product. The bbMPEG encoder will encode in SVCD.

The down side is that Windows media player will never play it or any other VCD file correctly full screen and you would need a proper Mpg2 capable player like the Cyberlink DVD or Wizard, not just media player with the LSX plugin applied. Media player will only play it in the square proportions from the 480 x 480 encode (ntsc). But if you had the RealMagic decoder then thats a totally different story for playback ......

I think if you do the sums as Matias suggests all higher rates than the normal are going to require a lot less time on the CD, so take full advantage with the SVCD encode never mind equivalent times and data rates in Mpeg-1.

However there is another option: encode a variable bit rate MPEG-1 file so that you take full advantage of the selected average data rate and you will squeeze more time into a CD with a better quality.

Since you only wish to play on the computer then to play full screen in Mpg2 is a lot better and leads to other high quality options.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 22, 2000.

Ross, just a quote: When we regularly speak about the Windows Media Player we refer to version 6.4 (not included in Windows) which indeed does a resize in VCD's .dat files and display them in 4:3 aspect ratio in the full screen mode. The interface is poor and the extra capabilities are close to none but if we speak of quality, the full screen of MP gives me far better image than, say, XING player.

-- Matias (mpetrel@fi.uba.ar), March 24, 2000.