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Ideal CBR for compatibility with DVD players?
Hi
Just rendered a 55 minute segment from SVP10 using the DVDA PAL template and default CBR of 9,500,000. When I brought the file into DVDA 5.2 and went to Make DVD, I got an informational warning that the video bit rate might be too high for some DVD players.
What is a good CBR to use in SVP10 when one is not bit constrained to ensure maximum player compatibility? 8,000,000 seems to be the figure I come across when searching these posts, but I have seen older posts here from John Rofrano and other moderators that suggest just leaving it at 9,500,000, which DVDA now suggests is too high.
My source material is HDV 1080/50i.
Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (X64), Vista x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S 4.1
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14 Replies
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My rule of thumb (as taught to me by folks with a LOT more experience doing this) is to never go over 8,000,000 for either CBR or VBR.
This is done to ensure compatibility with both old and new (as well as expensive and cheap) DVD players.
Don’t cheap out on the media either.
My personal preference is Taiyo-Yuden with Verbatim coming a close second.
BTW, some users say that the value should never exceed 6,500,000 but I’ve never had any returns with the higher number. -
Personally, I’ve always maxed it out for the best looking vid. I have yet to get a call saying the DVD will not work. However, I can attest to the media issue… Three years ago when I found my self distributing a movie, I went cheap, discount DVD’s called ‘PLAYO’
Bulk purchase from Office Depot…WOW! Who would have thought, 100% failure rate!
Name brand from then on, no issues…Verbatum, Memorex, & Sony for me.
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I always target 8,500,000 and whaen the content goes over 1:40:00 I switch to VBR 2-pass. Most of my DVD’s have subtitles and some have secondary audio. So a good bit-rate calculator come in handy. I never burn a master faster than 4x, that could have helped raise the failure rate on the PLAYO DVD’s.
Jeff
http://www.narrowroadmedia.com
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“Name brand from then on, no issues…Verbatum, Memorex, & Sony for me.”
Who Really Makes the Disc?
Realize that most media is produced by a relatively small number of factories, located in several different places. These factories are mostly present in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, China and India. There are more, but those are the largest ones. The best media generally comes from Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. The worst typically comes from China and Malaysia.
Understand that the blank disc brand means almost nothing. Apple is a great brand, but they do not make their own discs, instead outsourcing to a company like Mitsubishi Chemicals. Common companies like Memorex, Maxell and Imation all outsource to media vendors.
It is the media ID that is important, as it reveals the disc manufacturer. Unfortunately, this is not written on packaging or anywhere else. Companies want consumers to be oblivious to this sort of behind-the-scenes information.
I recommend the freeware “DVD Identifier” available from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/cd_dvd/dvd_tools/dvd_identifier.cfmSteve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I generally stick to Verbatim matte and AquaAce inkjet printables. The AquaAce’s cost triple that of a standard DVD blank, but the glossy inket printable surface is fantastic and adds a very professional touch.
I have had some returns with Sony’s, but none with TDK.
Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (X64), Vista x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S 4.1
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Run DvdIdentifier on your prized media. Odds are that the name on the box is not the name of the manufacturer. I’ve found TDK discs in Verbatim boxes.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I checked out the DVD identifier program. Thanks for the tip. Here is what I got from a Sony DVD-R disk. It appears that Sony then makes there own disks. Am I interpreting this right? What do you see for other brands?
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Unique Disc Identifier : [DVD-R:SONY16D1]
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Disc & Book Type : [DVD-R] – [DVD-R]
Manufacturer Name : [Sony Recording Media Co.]
Manufacturer ID : [SONY16D1]
Blank Disc Capacity : [2,298,496 Sectors = 4.71 GB (4.38 GiB)]
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[ DVD Identifier V5.2.0 – https://DVD.Identifier.CDfreaks.com ]
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“I never burn a master faster than 4x”
Jeff, my DVD burner is capable of burning at 18X. The Sony DVDs that I have say 16X on them. When I have burned my daughter’s hockey games, I have generally done so at 16X since that is what the disk is rated at. Is it preferable to do so at a lower rate?
-Mark
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[Mark Prebonich] “Is it preferable to do so at a lower rate?”
Yes it is.
The rule of thumb for burning speed is no more than half of what the media is rated at.
This applies to audio CDs as well.
The main reason for this is to ensure maximum compatibility across a wide range of players and blank media. -
Technically speaking, you have exactly 9,800,000 bits/second available for both audio and video. If you’re encoding multi-angle video, reduce this to 8,000,000 bits/second per view.
It’s been historically true that some DVD players had a problem playing videos encoded near the peak bitrate, particularly (at least the stories go) from DVD-R. Of course, it may also be the simply fact that commercially encoded DVDs never reach peak.
A professionally mastered DVD usually has an average bitrate of around 4-5Mb/s, with peaks up to 8Mb/s or so. Some of the supposedly higher quality encodings (“SuperBit”, etc). move the average up as high as 6Mb/s, and probably include a second DVD for everything but the film. Of course, a pro-quality DVD is mastered by an MPEG-2 mastering engineer, who manually tweaks the variable bit rate encoder, global low-pass filtering of the main video, etc. to deliver the most visually appealing final result that will fit within the 8,500,000,000 bytes available on a dual-layer disc.
Top quality is nearly always VBR, not CBR. If you have no space constraints, you might go to CBR for encoding speed, but that’s about the only reason.
-Dave
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