[MPlayer-users] mencoder: increasing bitrate doesnt increase quality or filesize...why?

[Martin Collins]

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 01:30:16 -0800
Farrell Farahbod <upgrdman at mindspring.com> wrote:

> i tried increasing the bitrate
> to even 3000, with no increased quality or file size...why? does it
> have to do with the line at the end of the compression that reports
> something to the effect of "video bitrate: 1497" (i dont recall the
> exact wording, sorry).

There is a script TOOLS/countquant.pl that will tell you what quantisers
have been used for your movie. If they are all 2 then you have maxed out
the quality and more bitrate will not help.

> i know there has to be a way to increase the quality... is
> increasing the number of keyframe with "keyint=xyz" my only option?

Reducing keyint will improve seek accuracy and increase the file size
but will likely not improve quality noticeably. If you are not happy
with the quality try using more/different lavcopts. Search the archives
and docs for suggestions on this. You should be cropping off all the
black borders. Maybe you could scale down less. You could also use the
spare capacity to increase your sound quality.

> lastly, is lavc/mpeg4 the best codec solution for compressing
> dvd-rips? is divx/xvid better?

General opinion here is that lavc is better than xvid. I know of no
better codec than mpeg4 for dvd rips.

Martin