Any Point in Encoding at a Higher Bitrate than the Original AVI?

Hi,

I have a number of Avi's to convert to DVD format, I'm trying to work out how many I can fit to a DVD-5 before the quailty starts reducing.

The original Avi's are around [bold]1011kbps[/bold] 608x336 23.97fps.

When I convert to 720x576 25fps DivxtoDVD says the average bitrate will be [bold]1794kbps[/bold]. Seems a bit low (it's about 4hrs of video!) but is there any point in the bitrate being higher than the original?

Thanks!

 

It depends on the codec's capability. DVD are in MPEG-2, AVI usually use the DivX or Xvid codecs. A 700 kbps AVI file is much much better that a 700 kbps MPV file (let's ignore the audio bitrate).

Therefore: it is not sure that a 1794 kbps DVD movie used too much bitrate. It depends on the movie's type (a fast-acion movie needs a higher bitrate than a bohemian, romantic, drama)

What you can be sure of is that making MPEG-2 VBR (4000-8000 kbps, average = 6000 kbps) is much better than making a 6000 kbps CBR movie.