Pre-Defined Quality Settings?

[kelemvor]

Howdy,

Sorry if this is in a FAQ somewhere but I coudln't find it. I'm looking at setting the Quality Setting to be used when I record TV shows and I see that there is are a few sets that seem to go together:

Fair, Good, Great, Best
DVD Extra Long Player, DVD Long Play, DVD Standard
and then there's MPEG2 Max Quality.

Main question is, what's the difference between Best, DVD Standard, and MPEG2 Max?

I'll probably eventually take my recordings and convert them to DivX for storage but I want to start out with as good of quality as I can get. But I don't see anything telling me what the difference is between those.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

[waynedunham]

That is listed right with the qualities in the V3 Beta. If I recall it used to be in there and they pulled it out somewhere in 2.x for at least a few versions.

Here's the list as it is in V3 Beta: All these are approximate and may vary a little one way or the other. They're in the format of Name:Format @ GB/hr where GB/hr = approximate Gigabytes per hour.

VCD : VCD @ 0.6 GB/hr
SVCD : Mpeg2 @ 0.7 GB/hr
SVCD Long Play : Mpeg2 @ 0.9 GB/hr
SVCD Std Play : Mpeg2 @ 1.1 GB/hr

CVD : Mpeg2 PS @ 1.3 GB/hr
Mpeg2 Max Quality : Mpeg2 PS @ 5.9 GB/hr

Fair : DVD @ 0.9 GB/hr
Good : DVD @ 1.4 GB/hr
DVD Extra Long Play : DVD @ 1.6 GB/hr
Great : DVD @ 2.0 GB/hr
DVD Long Play : DVD @ 2.4 GB/hr
Best : DVD @ 3.0 GB/hr
DVD Standard Play : DVD @ 3.2 GB/hr

I don't recall exactly what the difference is between Mpeg2 and DVD format, but I'm sure someone else with more knowledge can chime in.

[kelemvor]

Well that's a good start. I recorded a 1hr program tonight at MPEG Max and it turned out to be just over 5.5 Gigs so that's pretty close. I guess I'll try to run it through AutoGK or whatever that program is and see what I end up with.

If anyone else has more info, please let me know.

Thanks.

[dvd_maniac]

Max Mpeg-2 is 12mbit/s which is not in the DVD specifications as 9.8mbit/s is the max video bitrate. Some tuners can't record at max mpeg-2's bitrate like the Plextor TV402U and USB1 devices.
I record everything using Max mpeg-2 quality and encode to Xvid using AutoGK and I love the results. Most will say to encode at least 350MB/hr using AutoGK. I would read a little on Xvid vs. Divx as well. Since Xvid is free, updated more and people seem to like the quality better.

[Opus4]

If you are still looking for more info about the recording quality settings, here is an old thread: Recording quality - what does it mean?

The 2nd post there quotes some older info & has a link to a txt file w/more details. There might have been some changes to the default settings, but that txt file should explain what the settings do.

- Andy

[kelemvor]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

Max Mpeg-2 is 12mbit/s which is not in the DVD specifications as 9.8mbit/s is the max video bitrate. Some tuners can't record at max mpeg-2's bitrate like the Plextor TV402U and USB1 devices.
I record everything using Max mpeg-2 quality and encode to Xvid using AutoGK and I love the results. Most will say to encode at least 350MB/hr using AutoGK. I would read a little on Xvid vs. Divx as well. Since Xvid is free, updated more and people seem to like the quality better.

That was actually the other thing I was playing with was what to re-encode them to. I have AutoGK (but have only used it once) and saw the options for 1/4CD, 1/2CD, 1CD, etc in size. I'm planning on encoding the same file a couple different ways to see if I can tell the difference or not. I plan on burning the end result to DVD and watching it on TV with a DVD player that plays DVD/Xvid files.

Thanks.