My first try was with a few small pieces (~1-2min) from a movie to see if and how it works. These first tests were all successful (tested with QuEnc, NuEnc).
Than i tried it with a whole xvid movie with following specs:
filesize: 700MB
video:
4cc codec: xvid
runtime: 1:32:54
resolution: 640x256 (2.50:1)
fps: 25
avg bitrate: 854kb/s
audio:
codec: stereo mp3 vbr
sampling rate: 48000Hz
avg bitrate: 191kb/s
I used following avi2dvd settings for conversion:
1. input:
ar: 16:9
interlaced: no
audio stream: only 1
2. output:
output type: dvd
ar: 16:9
audio bitrate: 224
size: dvd-5 (4,7GB)
make iso: yes
chapter every: 5min
3. encoder:
encoder: NuEnc
use VBR: yes
use Trellis Quant: yes
passes: 3
4. subtitles:
nothing
5. dvd menu:
nothing
Ok that's for the settings.
I run the job and NuEnc takes a lot of time to complete all three passes (~2 hours for each pass) but it all works without any error message.
And now comes the thing which worries me a bit.
The resulting dvd image is only 1.41GB in size although i set the output size to dvd-5. Ok the movie is only about 90min long, but i would expect something about >3GB as output size for it and not just double of the size it has as xvid.
The quality of the generated dvd video is quite good, that's not the problem. But when i got 4,7GB of space it would be nice if i can use most of it for even better quality.
My problem is, that i can't set anything except the output file size for the encoder to optimize the output.
I hope anyone can help me and say where the problem is.
When i bought a dvd with a ~90min movie it also has a much higher bitrate/file size on the dvd (just the movie without all the extra dvd stuff).
Thanks in advance
Fox
addition:
I tested it again with the same settings except that i used FreeEnc this time (high settings, 3-pass).
The result is worse than with NuEnc (but also the encoding time for all 3 passes was only 1:20).
The resulting dvd image is only 1.03GB and the quality has visible decreased.
Tonight i will try it with QuEnc and after that with HCEnc.
I hope that one of these encoders will produce files with a higher bitrate.
addition2:
Last night i tested it with QuEnc (all settings to high, 2-passes).
This time the result is an 2.41GB dvd image and very good quality but visual not much difference to the 3-pass NuEnc version with 1.41GB.
But i'm still curious why the result differes so much between the encoders and why the bitrate is generally too low.
addition3:
Today i tried it with HCEnc (profile best, Matrix mpeg) and it produces a 4,24GB dvd image. That's what i wanted from the beginning.
I saved all 4 resulting dvd images and compared them against each other.
Visual all four encoders produced good/very good quality but only HCEnc makes the best use of the available space on the dvd-5.
It seems that all the other three encoders doesn't recognize the fact that for a short movie like this (~90min) they can use a much higher bitrate even in simple scenes to fill most of the available space on the dvd.
The differences are quite big when i summarize the results:
FreeEnc: 1,03GB
NuEnc: 1,41GB
QuEnc: 2,40GB
HCEnc: 4,24GB
All with maximum quality settings.
That means that (at the moment) HCEnc is the encoder of my choice.
Ciao,
Fox