Will a MPEG-2 high bit rate cause playability problems?
 

Not sure if I phrased this correctly. I'm trying to render to MPEG-2 for a DVD I'm producing. I'm wondering how to get the highest quality, but wondering if DVD players will choke on a 12M or 15M CBR bit rate?

Also, will 32-bit color make a significant improvement in quality? If so, at what cost.

I'm not worried about DVD capacity, just playability issues. What settings would you recommend for high quality DVD?

Thanks

Paul, from my limited understanding of the issue of bit rates, using higher bitrates than the default values will cause issues in DVD players. I don't know the why of this, but I have experienced it and it has been explained in this forum by others more knowledgeable than I.

On the 32 bit issue, (Others will jump in on this that know more), it can improve color but not necesarily on all projects. I believe it can also make the resulting mpeg less compatible later on on the DVD but I very well be mistaken on this point.

What I do know for certain is the rendering time is much greater with 32 bit. I have used it once or twice, but only on select projects. It did give the projects I used it on a richer look than 8 bit.

Try a a search for each of these topics. You will find TONS of info on the 32 bit thing, particularly in one thread in which the topic was broken down very well.

Hi Paul,

Players aren't designed to read faster than 9800kbs total. Putting a higher bit rate on a disc would be counter productive.

Bit rate and quality go hand-in-hand, but more than that, the quality of the encoder you use. Vegas has a good one, and picking AC3 audio at a middling 224kbits is a good compromise.

The amount of improvement in quality that you will actually get is truly minuscule after a certain point, hoever. That's tough point to understand for some folks when trying to understand MPEG/JPEG compression. Typically keep you content down to under 2 hours on a standard DVD and your bit rate no higher than 4800kbits.

Use this calculator located at Bitrate Calculator

Color depth is a huge topic in itself. The reason for the render is the amount of math involved - 32-bit color is millions times millions over the millions in 8-bit. Only you can decide whether it is worth it to wait for the render.

My best,

Mike

Paul, because the DVDs we make are burned and not replicated (pressed), the usual recommendation is to not exceed a CBR of 8M, primarily to avoid playback problems.
VBR can (and some Vegas templates do) go up to around 9.5M but, as this is a temporary spike, it's OK.
I used a bitrate calculator to help me create several templates for videos over 75 min. long (in 15 min. steps).
I have ones for CBR settings and VBR settings.
I'll use CBR if the screen content is primarily static (i.e. talking heads) and VBR if there's a lot of movement (i.e. stage performances).
If the video has a lot of movement as well as scenes that vary in light levels, I'll add a 2-pass to the mix.

The one thing I started doing a long time ago was, when using VBR, to chanbe the default Min. from 192,000 to 2,000,000.

Not knowing anything about the limitations of DVD players, I encoded at 12M CBR. I played it through my PS3 and it looked fantastic, Bluray-like even. However, it appeared to play in slow motion. Becasue I negelected to include audio, I couldn't know for certain.

Why include options for 12M and 15M if they can't be used?

I have mostly static content, and mostly VO with some occasional music. What would you recommend? I will be replicating (burning) my DVDs.

Thanks for all the particpation. The Vegas forum here is filled with really helpful people.

Personally, I typically do not go over 8,000,000 but it's really dependent on the length of the video. So I use whatever is necessary for the length of the video but not over 8,000,000 average as my general rule. Remember that audio also takes bandwidth which gets added on top of the video. I use AC-3 audio.

sorry if this is a little off topic, but relevant, I think
BD/mpeg2 also has an allowable bitrate of 40k. in reality, if i exceed 30k, the playback begins to stutter.

Those settings are for HDV or Blu-Ray.
If you're only burning to SD DVD, then stick to the recommendations made here.

The 15mb setting is also perfect to create masters for broadcast that can be uploaded to FTP sites. Many cable companies now accept digital files that are re-compressed for their servers and insertion into the program stream. As a producer of commercials, this has been a great way to maintain quality without having to submit a BetaSP master, which is then re-compressed. A 30 second spot ends up at about a 57-58MB file size. Easy to upload with a fast internet connection.
Ken

One more use for 12 and 15MbPS MPEG-2 is that such video can be pretty compatible with PC/MAC playback through DVD playback software. Usually, the computer's cd/dvd drive will handle those playback rates, as will the software, and a modern processor will keep up with the decode. Good looking, cross-platform codec, standardized data structure on the disk...

I've been doing that for about 2 years now but the server for my local cable company is still limited to 8 megs.
Needless to say, the quality of my material takes a hit :-(

Paul,

I've done a few projects with 32bit and IMHO it isn't worth the slight gain in quality. The differences are noticeable but there are a lot of issues to be aware of. Your gamma changes drastically if you use the 1.000 linear setting. If you use the 2.222 video setting it will change also but not as much. You're rendering times will go up drastically.

For the projects I've been working on the added time and headaches were not worth it.

Glenn Chan gives a really good explaination in one of the 32bit processing post threads.

I'd say give it a try on a small file and see if you feel it is worth it.

Do I understand correctly, that the 32-bit option doesn't actually change the output file size/depth, that it's still 8-bit, but only effects how "carefully" the footage is interpreted?