Blu-ray Bit Rate Sweet Spot

gamecaptor

Hello all,

Iâm starting to play around with Blu-ray rips now, specifically generic.mkv.h264.audiocopy with 2-pass and crop set to automatic. Iâm still looking for the sweet spot for the Bit Rate. In DVDs the consensus is anywhere from 1500 to about 2000 depending on who you ask. From what I can tell, with Blu-ray it seems to be around 4000 to 5000, but I am really curious what the community thought on this is.

I will continue to do my diligence, but I would love to hear what others are using for their rips.

Regards.

IPopov50

[QUOTE=gamecaptor;63467]Hello all,

Iâm starting to play around with Blu-ray rips now, specifically generic.mkv.h264.audiocopy with 2-pass and crop set to automatic. Iâm still looking for the sweet spot for the Bit Rate. In DVDs the consensus is anywhere from 1500 to about 2000 depending on who you ask. From what I can tell, with Blu-ray it seems to be around 4000 to 5000, but I am really curious what the community thought on this is.

I will continue to do my diligence, but I would love to hear what others are using for their rips.

Regards.[/QUOTE]

gamecaptor,
I assume, optimal quality is your true concern. In this case, bitrate is only one side of muli-fold issue. What you really should look for is bit/pixel ratio. This ratio will change with resolution and bitrate adjustments. In simple terms, you will find quality of your picture satisfactory if you will keep bit/pixel ratio in 0.2 - 0.3 range. If your video is a slow, mellow content or low detailed (e.g. animation, panoramic video, etc.), ratio of 0.2 is plenty. And you may want to move your ratio even beyond 0.3 with fast-moving content (e.g. fast-moving sport event, concert, etc.). Otherwise, please experiment with it and find your own "sweet spot". After all, everyone of us has own view of what good quality video should be looks like.
In example, my good friend GregiBoy thinks 2000 Kbps content looks perfect on his 42" plasma, while I think 5000 Kbps 1080 content on my 56" LCD looks terrible - go figure. And believe me, things are far more complicated (in terms of a video quality) than just a bitrate adjustment.

gamecaptor

Hi IPopov50,

you are right, quality is at the top of my list. Funny you should mention the Bit/Pixel ratio, as Iâve been reading more into that and from what Iâm reading, that is exactly what people are saying. With DVDs ripped at 2000 kpbs it will lead to about .3 Bits/Pixel ratio (which is what I currently rip all my DVDs at). To achieve similar ratio for Blu-rayâs I have to go to about 15000 kpbs which makes some very large files. Iâm thinking since Blu-ray tends to be a cleaner source I could go down to .2 Bits/Pixel which is about 10000 kpbs (but still a rather large file output). It is very tricky to find the right balance with this.

Iâm waiting for GregiBoy to chime in here :)

I would love to throw another (non-format specific) question into the mix. I always let DVDFab do the automatic cropping. There are two settings that can be played with in regards to this, âKeep Aspect Ratioâ and âHow to process âblack barsâ?â. If you are cropping the movie, how can you keep the same aspect ratio? Technically arenât you messing with the aspect ratio since you are removing the black bars from the source? And this leads to the second settings, I donât see any difference between Letterbox and Pan & Scan, but I assume there is some reason for that slider to be there.

Thank you for input. It is very much appreciated.

IPopov50

[QUOTE=gamecaptor;63529]
I would love to throw another (non-format specific) question into the mix. I always let DVDFab do the automatic cropping. There are two settings that can be played with in regards to this, âKeep Aspect Ratioâ and âHow to process âblack barsâ?â. If you are cropping the movie, how can you keep the same aspect ratio? Technically arenât you messing with the aspect ratio since you are removing the black bars from the source? And this leads to the second settings, I donât see any difference between Letterbox and Pan & Scan, but I assume there is some reason for that slider to be there.[/QUOTE]

I have to tell you that for last couple of years I hardly process any DVDs at all. DVD to me is obsolete format, a dinosaur. In BD however, I do let DVDFab to propose crop. I then correct it if I want to using "customize" option. This happens very rarely, mostly with non-standard content or non-compliant content. In severe cases I use different programs.

gamecaptor

So then if you "let DVDFab to propose crop", that means you leave it at defaults, which would be crop set to Automatic and NO check in the "Keep Aspect Ratioâ box and the slider is all the way to letterbox for the âHow to process âblack barsâ?â. Is that accurate?

And I agree with you about DVDs. I'm slowly moving my way over to Blu-ray, just trying to get my "formula" down before I embark on it.