Video Frame Rate and Conversion to DVD

[Jeffrey604]

Hello,

I am relatively new to video editing and to VS10+. So far I really like the program, but there are a few things I do not understand.

First, I "captured" my mini-DV tapes from my camera through firewire. The video and audio seem like good quality, but when I right click on a video clip within VS10+ and choose properties, the file data rate appears as 3512.11 kbps. Is this related to the video bitrate? If so, this seems low for a DV AVI file. If I open the same file in Windows Movie Maker and select file properties, the file bitrate shows up as 29795 kbps, with the video portion being 28771 kbps. Can anyone explain what I am seeing in VS10+ vs Windows Move Maker?

Second, I created a video project from roughly 45 minutes of AVI files, since I read elsewhere that the best quality DVDs are those an hour or less in length. However, when I follow the post on this forum through the "Create Video File" section (see RECOMMENDED PROCEDURE sticky post), my video renders to roughly 2.5GB in size, which indicates to me that I am losing the benefit of the increased quality (I could fit almost twice the video on a 4.7GB DVD). Am I missing something that would render a larger file with better quality?

Third, when I create titles in my project, the text appears clean and crisp. However, when I preview the video, they become blurry. Is there a way to preserve the better quality text?

I am trying create the highest quality DVD video to archive and preserve my family home videos. Any input, advice, or assistance would be greatly appreciated! If you have recommended DVD media brands for best archival quality/life, I would love to hear about that too.

Thank you!

[Ron P.]

Hi Jeff, welcome to the forums,

First the data rate for your DV clips are correct. I'm not sure why WMM and VS shows them differently. I just checked several of mine and they are identical to yours.

One hour of MPEG2 video is going to be a smaller file size then that of the same time of DV, MPEG2 is compressed. However what bitrate are you using when you render (Share>Create Video File)? Since you only captured 45 minutes of video, I would use a bitrate of 8000, and if your are in NTSC land, LPCM audio (it is uncompressed). You could also use another video clip or 2 to fill out your DVD.

Previewing is going to be a degraded view of your project, since VS has to throw everything together on the fly. The text should be nice and crisp in your finished product.

[Jeffrey604]

Thanks for the reply vidoman!

The video bitrate on the rendered files is 8000 (variable). For audio, I have used MPEG Audio Layer 2 and Dolby Digital audio compression, which both yield roughly the same total file size (~2.35GB).

Is there a benefit to Variable vs Constant bitrate to get the desired highest quality? Does two-pass encoding make a difference? Again, I would like the best quality DVD and do not really care if that means I am limited to only one hour (fine) vs two hours (SP) per DVD. I apologize if these answers are posted elsewhere, but I am still a little confused as to what will give me the best results.

Thanks, again!

[Ron P.]

Yes the variable bit rate works best with 2-pass encoding and can provide better quality, however it leans more toward quantity. The VBR is for video that has both still or static shots, where there is very little motion, and shots where there is fast motion. It uses the low bitrates for the still areas, and the high bitrate for the fast motion. The 2-Pass comes into play, by analyzing the video on the first pass to determine where these areas are, where to best use the high and low bitrates. Then on the 2nd pass the video is encoded.

There's another trick to squeezing more out of your video, it requires setting the GOP (Group of Pictures) to a lower setting, and also using the Half-Pel search. This is accessed in the Advanced options. Terry Stetler wrote about this HERE

Also if you are in the NTSC area, I would not use the MPEG audio layer, as it does not meet the DVD specs for NTSC, just LPCM and Dolby.

The way that Hollywood gets outstanding quality is they use up to 20 pass encoding which literally takes days to complete on encoders that cost around 50-100K. You could do it too if you can afford the equipment to do it.

[heinz-oz]

CBR vs VBR has been an ongoing argument here and there are different opinion camps. Personally, based on my own experience, I agree with the remarks made by vidoman but would want to clarify it a bit more.

If you only have 45 minutes of video to burn to DVD, use 8000 kbps CBR, single pass. That's the quickest and best quality approach. You will end up with a file (mpeg2) that may be slightly bigger than it has to be for the same quality. Since file size is not an issue, go for it.

If you have, like I often do, around 1 hour 20 min video, consisting of slow panning landscape shots but also having faster motion in it, 8000 CBR gives me a file size that doesn't fit. To me, time is not an issue because I don't do this for a living . I would render this video, dual pass, VBR at 8000 kbps max. More often than not, this fits nicely on a SL DVD and I don't see a diminished quality. In some cases, the result still did not quite fit a SL DVD. I used DVDShrink to reduce it to fit and the quality is still excellent.

If file size is not an issue because your video is less than an hour, use CBR single pass. Dual pass VBR takes longer to render but gives you a smaller file size at equal picture quality.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Variable bit rate was developed to allow more footage to be burnt to disc. And still maintain quality, apparently.

If you do not have a size problem then I would use Constant.
In fact I use Constant for all my work

8000kbps constant for one hour will fit on a standard disc.

Trevor

[blplhp]

Hi Ron and heinz-oz,

I must confess, I have never seen this "MPEG Output Settings" dialog box before in VS10+. How or where do you access it? I'd like to try some of Terry's tips for adjusting the GOP and the I-frame count, in order to squeeze better video quality out of my DVD productions.

For as long as I have had VS10+, I have always created my video files, whether short or 1 hour+, using variable bit rate at 8000 kbps, single pass. Sounds like I need to change that to constant bit rate at 8000 for anything less than 60 minutes and probably use variable 8000 dual pass for anything between 60 minutes and 80 minutes. Agreed?

[GeorgeW]

For up to 80 minutes, I'd probably go with CBR 7000kbps, and move that slider to quality of about 95/100. I'd also use Dolby Digital audio instead of LPCM audio to make the dvd more compatible with dvd players. The higher bitrates might cause problems with some dvd players (even though you are within the spec limit).

I usually reserve 2-pass for when I am forced to use a lower bitrate for my video...

Regards,
George

[Jeffrey604]

I just wanted to thank everyone for the helpful posts!