TMGEnc Bitrate

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **Bushido Philosopher** » Fri Jun 28, 2002 4:36 pm

Since the old forum was deleted I guess I have to ask again...

What is the best bitrate for 2-pass VBR? Because ErMac's guide says to put it to 2000 average and 3000 max, when I output it doesn't seem be that all great.

So for those of you who know what bitrate to set it at please respond. Thanks.

grayplague · Post by **grayplague** » Fri Jun 28, 2002 6:59 pm

When I compress to MPEG1 using TMPGenc, when using 2-pass VBR, I usually set the max at 3000, average at 2000, and the min at 300. You should probably use a resolution of 352x240. Anything bigger will cause a loss in quality unless the bitrate is also increased.

If you think it doesn't look good enough you could deinterlace the video and even perform a 3:2 pulldown. Since the bitrate is set per second, reducing the number of frames will increase the quality.

And of course, make sure you source is good quality. Without a good quality source the resulting mpeg will never look 'great', regardless of bitrate ^_^

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 12:18 am

What do you mean when it "doesn't look good enough"? Remember you are shrinking it down to 352x240... if the picture isn't sharp enough the bitrate won't help any, you need higher resolution, and you can't do that very easily unless you have a lot of experience working with interlaced video or your video is Progressive scan to begin with.

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **Bushido Philosopher** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 2:04 am

Okay ErMaC, then can you tell me what bitrate to set for 720x480. I do know how to work interlaced video. I aint no newbie.

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 2:13 am

Ko Oh Yoku wrote:Okay ErMaC, then can you tell me what bitrate to set for 720x480. I do know how to work interlaced video. I aint no newbie.

A non-newbie who doesn't know how to experiment to find the optimal bitrate?

Well, anyhoo, I'm not ErMaC, but I use VBR with 4Mbps average/8Mbps max/1Mbps minimum when I encode 720x480 video.

grayplague · Post by **grayplague** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 9:29 am

Ko Oh Yoku wrote:Okay ErMaC, then can you tell me what bitrate to set for 720x480. I do know how to work interlaced video. I aint no newbie.

I sure hope your not talking about encoding with MPEG1 at 720x480. Thats just ridiculous. If you want it to have that large of a resolution, use MPEG2 instead.

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 11:33 am

[quote="grayplagueI sure hope your not talking about encoding with MPEG1 at 720x480. Thats just ridiculous. If you want it to have that large of a resolution, use MPEG2 instead.

[/quote]

Why's that ridiculous? I've done it, and it works. Granted, you'll get better results if you use MPEG-2, but not everyone is capable of playing back MPEG-2, and at a high enough bitrate MPEG-1 doesn't look bad at 720x480.

grayplague · Post by **grayplague** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 11:48 am

Well thats just my opinion of course. You can go ahead an use MPEG1 at 720x480.

I'm just simply saying that I wouldn't.

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 7:29 pm

MPEG1 at 720x480 is just silly. First off, MPEG1 does not handle interlaced video so if you've got interlaced video at that resolution it'll look like crap. MPEG1 does not scale in terms of bitrate vs. resolution - one of the reasons they developed MPEG2. MPEG1 was made to do VCD sized video, not full NTSC quality.

If you're encoding at that kind of resolution, I don't know why on earth you'd even THINK of distributing it online, therefore the issue of people not being able to playback MPEG2 video is moot. At 720x480 you'd need such a high bitrate that distro online would be prohibitive due to filesize. Perhaps if your video is short you could do this, but I wouldn't recommend doing this.

Unless your video is a bunch of stills, the bitrate required to make your video look good would give you a filesize that I would never distro online, so my recommendation is to just go with MPEG2 since you're trying to archive the stuff at that point. If your video is interlaced, you can use MPEG2's interlaced-awareness to your advantage and just leave it interlaced. MPEG1 won't give you that option.

To answer your original question, if you're looking for good quality, I'd use TMPGEnc's Constant Quality option. Set the CQ to 90% or 95%, or if that's too big try 85% or keep going down in increments of 5% until you have acceptable filesize or your video starts looking like someone's innards after falling out of a hatchet wound.

grayplague · Post by **grayplague** » Sat Jun 29, 2002 7:42 pm

ErMaC wrote:...or your video starts looking like someone's innards after falling out of a hatchet wound.

nice analogy

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TMGEnc Bitrate

TMGEnc Bitrate

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