[MacDV] Re: Did it. (Encoding iDVDs at a lower bitrate)

[Erica Sadun]

At 12:58 PM -0700 6/18/03, Jim Heid wrote:
>  > From: "Mark O'Brien" <rmobrien at mac.com>
>>  Message-ID: <BB1633CC.987F1%rmobrien at mac.com>
>>
>>  On 6/18/03 2:50 PM, "Erica Sadun" <erica at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  So, out of curiousity, I decided to take a break from
>>>  writing and see if I could make iDVD encode at the
>>>  bitrate I desired.
>>  What's the bottom line? Could you put more than 90 minutes of content on a
>>  DVD with iDVD using this process?
>
>Whatever the bottom line, I'll bet the quality would be atrocious.
>
>iDVD's lower bitrate -- the one you get when you have more than 60 minutes
>of video -- is 5Mbps, and that's at the low end of the acceptable-quality
>level for iDVD's MPEG encoder. Indeed, IMO, the quality is unacceptable for
>anything but rank-amateur work.

I'd recommend you take a look at some actual samples.
I've run through a few different bitrates now and
the encoder does much better than I'd expected at
the lower bitrates.

Don't forget: in many cases, it's not the final Mbps
but the encoder that makes the visual difference.

-- Erica
p.s. And what's wrong with amateur work? A lot of
list members are hobbyists.
p.p.s. With regard to the 90 minute limit, I haven't
yet found a way around it but there are plenty of third
party programs that can take the encoded data and
produce a DVD.