I decided that I would try a little something last night.

After reading the VCD Standard set by Phillips and Sony back in the 90's, I set up an encode with the following settings.

With TMPEG Encoder 2.51, I set up an Encode of a 3 1/2 hour movie into VCD 352x240 Format (2.35:1 Aspect Ratio). With 1.85:1 or 1.33:1 use quality 80-90.

I used CQ - 1150 max - 300 min - 100quality
128K Audio. Muxed as Non-Standard VideoCD

The video Quality is near perfect, and I can get almost 180minutes with audio per CD.

The VCD Standard is 1150kbps, but that's a Maximum, it can go as low as 300kbps. And with the KVCD Notch Matrix, compression is a beautiful thing.

Give it a whirl and check out your findings.

__________________
Well if it's not a wolf, then it's a damn big dog.
- Rabbit, from "The Fable"

Over 90 there is no quality change ...
What was Your script? What was the movie?

Found that out this last encode. All you see in the difference between 90 and 100 is extra wasted disc space... funny how that CQ thing works isn't it?

One little catch is, if the Movie's aspect ratio is larger than 2.35:1, you can't get as much on the disc, but I think everyone here knows that.

I was encoding Fellowship of the Ring Extended DVD Edition.

Went back and did it at 90 instead, and came up with almost 190 minutes on one disc.

The trial continues right now at 85, 80, 75, and 70. I'll keep everyone posted.

__________________
Well if it's not a wolf, then it's a damn big dog.
- Rabbit, from "The Fable"

Hi Shibblet,

The problem is that "You were lucky" with that movie
What you did, I (been there, done that) tried it over 2 years ago, and it will work *ONLY* if your movie is a low action movie.
Just give it a try on a movie like "Back to the future", "Star Wars" or something similar, and I assure you that the file size will be close to ~1GB

-kwag

I thought about that, and ripped "Fight Club" - Umm you were right, high motion didn't work that well at all.

__________________
Well if it's not a wolf, then it's a damn big dog.
- Rabbit, from "The Fable"

Exactly
It saturates the encoder quantisizer, and encodes all (most) parts of activity at or over 1,150Kbps, thus creating almost a CBR output stream.

-kwag

So, then that being the case, how can I get 120minutes on one CD using a VBR of 300-2500?

__________________
Well if it's not a wolf, then it's a damn big dog.
- Rabbit, from "The Fable"

By doing "file size prediction"
Check the "CQMatic" area in the forum.

-kwag