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Taken from a post on the Creative Cow forum...
I have a friend who authors full-time on a
Mac with DVD-Studio pro, and a $100,000+ Sonic Solutions system. He has given me
lots of general advice that seems to be true, no matter what system you use, for
ultimate playback compatibility.
1: He claims, for set-top players, a maximum bitrate of 7 seems to take care of
almost all players. Use PCM audio or AC-3 (AC-3 isn't available in 5.5, but it
is in 6).
2: For viewing your DVDs on a computer, especially laptops, he suggests a
maximum bitrate of 6.0. Again, PCM or AC-3. He actually claims that AC-3 is
easier on the players, therefore more compatible, than PCM. He only uses PCM for
a music intensive track that is not in surround, and he rarely encodes at higher
than 6.
3: He also, by preference only, only uses CBR, unless he is really trying to
cram a lot on the disc.
4: He tries to encode no lower than 5 on the bitrate, however he just did 13
DVDs for us at 4.8 and 1 at 4.3. I'm very impressed with the quality that he
gets, considering the bitrates are lower than you typically think they should
be. His stuff does encode at a higher quality than LE 5.5 though. Hopefully, 6.0
will be better.
5: The outer portion of all DVDs is always the hardest part to decompress for
the player. Since it is the last part to be written, just choose a low enough
bitrate, so that all of the disc isn't used. That way, the outer rim of the disc
isn't even written on and there will be no issues with that. I have noticed this
with rental DVD's, and an old JVC DVD player I used to have. We often would get
80% through a long movie and it would start to sputter, or worse.
The quality you get, not only depends on the bitrate, but also the type of
footage you are encoding. If you are encoding a fast-paced sporting event, or
music video, it will require a higher bitrate than a talking heads interview,
for the same quality. I recently got 3 hours of video on a single DVD with LE
5.5 at a VBR setting of 3 and a max of 5. I was very impressed with the quality.
It was 3 hours of video, but only about 10% of the screen actually was ever
changing. It was poorly shot, and was very wide and locked down. It was a single
camera and I did no editing. It was a 3 hour play that my nephew was in. If it
had been a 3 hour baseball game, with 3 cameras, edited with dissolves and other
transitions, it would have looked horrible at those settings.
I have not delved into all the different presets that come with LE when
exporting to DVD. I have found, through the forums and trial that DVD Image 1 (CBR)
and DVD Image 2 (VBR) work flawlessly for me. I just choose "DVD Image 1" or
"2", then change the audio to PCM, unless you are really trying to cram a lot on
a disc, then change the IPB settings, using the guidelines above, then burn the
disc. If I need more copies, I use Nero to burn the rest.
Thanks to Gary from Ohio, on Creative Cow
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Labels I've used in the past.
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Recently, before the mass duplication of my training DVD, I switched to Ritek printable blank DVD's, and using my new printer, printed directly on the disk, looks the very best, and you save money not buying the labels.
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