[MacDV] How does one increase quality of final encoding?

[Mark M. Florida]

Brett Conlon wrote:
> So to clarify, would I get a different (ie. better) result if I encoded:
> 
> VBR (min:8/ max:8)
> Dual pass
> Motion:Best

Yes, the quality would be better.  And you'd probably not notice a 
difference if you set the min. to 6 Mb -- that would allow the scenes 
with low motion to use a lower bitrate to save some space.
> 
> ...compared wit:
> 
>  CBR:8?
> 
> Does it spend more time cleaning up the images or setting the motion 
> properly under VBR compared with CBR? I thought the motion setting was 
> just to help DVDSPro determine whether the user wants it to use a higher 
> bitrate at these times depending on what min/max rates were set.

Yes -- dual-pass encoding as well as setting Motion to "Best" allows for 
greater quality -- the first pass scans for motion and the second pass 
compresses it according to the amount of motion in a scene (I'm pretty 
sure that's how it works -- if anyone else wants to chime in here, feel 
free).
> 
> If it is technically the same then from a "time" point of view I'm better 
> off using CBR 8 - when I have the disc space of course.

Encoding time will be longer with two-pass encoding and a higher motion 
quality setting, but the results will be better.  And you could 
potentially save space on your DVD with no noticeable loss in quality if 
you set the min. bitrate to 6 Mb.
> 
> I believe 9mbps is getting too high for some players to cope with. Does 
> anyone encode with 9 or higher?

I've never gone over 8Mb personally.  9 Mb is probably too high for some 
players.

Hope that helps.

- Mark