[Daniel_l]

What method did you choose for the upgrade?

i.e archive and install

https://www.macworld.com/2005/04/features/takecontroltigerupgrade/index.php

[Daniel_l]

Nothing, as far as I’m concerned.

The video quality not as good as WMV, (but both Real player and WMP are foul)and I think it’s safe to say that it’s better quality than Sorenson but not H.264, in QT .

If find it amazing that the likes of the BBC still use it.

[Daniel_l]

Not eating my hat yet – Autodesk have been promising a Mac version of Combustion 4 for months and nothing’s appeared.
It’s also cheeky that they are charging for what is basically a maintainance update not an upgrade, wow – three new ‘features’ for 6.5, wow!

DL

[Daniel_l]

“VBR will not assign a higher bit rate than set for difficult scenes, and apply a lower one for easy ones”

That’s exactly what it’s designed to do within the confines of your Min, Ave and Max settings

“Overall less visual quality”

Wrong.

“Great for getting lots on a disc”

Agreed, but not the only reason to use it.

“But if all scenes (easy and hard) are encoded at say 7 mbs, then the overall image has to be better, or am I missing something”

Yes you are: What happens one of those harder scenes requires, say for example, 8.0Mb/s?
A m-pass VBR encode would adjust the bit rate to cope with the extra complexity, the CBR encode would simply drop off in quality.

[Daniel_l]

“Ive disscussed this with Barry and he aggrees it depends on what kind of encoder your using and your content.”

Obviously. Nothing is more important than the content, and the (quality of your) encoder.

“ive seen first hand what CBR can do to compatibilty efforts”

I’ve seen first hand what multi pass VBR encodes can do for profit and repeat business, never having had a disc returned because of incompatibility.

“Now “high end” is a different story…but most people here don’t use high end encoders.”

By high end I meant important, relating to the content and the client.

[Daniel_l]

You chaps really should read this – especially from about page 38 – 43.

https://users.design.ucla.edu/~badgerow/dvd_primer.pdf

It may help a little with your understanding of the encoding process, but I’m guessing some of you will still quibble.

[Daniel_l]

With over 10 years being a professional encoder and 20 years as beta tester, author, consultant and trainer in the video industry , I have never delivered a high end job without using multi pass VBR.

To quote Ben Waggoner:
“No quality-concious encoder would ever put content on spinning disc without using 2-pass”

To Quote a Videosystems MPEG encoder shootout wtitten by Barry Braverman, a veteran DVD author and designer.

“……VBR encoding produces a much higher overall quality than CBR at the same target rate……”

https://videosystems.primediabusiness.com/ar/video_mpeg_encoder_shootout/#sidebar

Obviously your mileage varies.

DL

[Daniel_l]

Dave,

Just to clear up any misunderstandings, I was referring to a multi-pass VBR encode, not single pass, as I think you are.

DL

[Daniel_l]

You could say that a VBR encode with an average bitrate of 4Mbps and a peak of 8mbps will be equal in quality to a CBR encode of 8mbps. However the VBR file will be more efficient.
You could also say that if you did a VBR encode with an average bitrate of 2mbps and a peak of 4mbps that it will be of higher quality than a CBR encode at 3.9mbps.

Both VBR encodes will usually result in smaller file size.

CBR has the potential to waste bits
VBR makes a better use of bits

Apart from the datarate the only things that make it ‘better’ are the source and the encoding application and CODEC.

[Daniel_l]

Variable bit rate (VBR) encoding will generally give you higher quality for a smaller final file size. Usually takes much longer to encode than CBR as generall VBR requires 2 passes for the encode and CBR usually does this in one pass (although some tools allow 2 pass CBR)