Movie Encoding question about mpeg1
 

Hi,

After testing wm9, xvid and mpeg1 on low bitrate (500kb/sec) small res movies (320x240) there did not seem to be a huge difference in quality.

On the larger res movies with higher bit rates the wmv9 were clearly better quality.

I was using tmpeg express 4.

I also ran another test using virtual dub to encode with wm9 but output in an avi format. With similar results.


Is Mpeg1 vbr actually not too bad at these low bitrate small res movies, or do i need to try another encoder, or in some way optimise the encoding settings i'm using to see a very large difference between mpeg1 and wm9?

When i tried using Mpeg2 the results were good on the large bitrate higher res videos, but seemed to be a little worse than mpeg1 on the low res low bitrate videos. However there was not vbr option for mpeg2 on the encoding software i was using.

The surfers love mpeg1 it streams well,even broken downloads can still play and nearly all machines can play this format. So if the difference in quality is minimal i will go with mpeg1....just wanted to hear back from other people who encode small res low bitrate video and see if i need to rethink before going mpeg1.

just 1 bump for this..

I encode to mpeg1 for the galleries

Smaller files will always look better than larger ones. I wouldn't worry about the perceived difference between the two formats at the low quality end of the scale, I would just try and make any of the formats you need better at the size and bitrates you want.

500 Kb for video is a pretty low bitrate. I like to use a very slight sharpen and brightening filter on most of my wmv and other encodes in Cleaner XL for example. It makes the end product quite a bit more pleasing to the eye.

ok cheers for the replies. :)

I always go for mpg because not all people used to be able to see wmvs,
now I think 99% can so maybe wmvs are better because of the smaller file size