About bitrates

Captain Dynamite · Post by **Captain Dynamite** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 8:49 am

Does it matter how low or high a bitrate (in terms of video and audio) is? If it does, which is best? Higher or lower?

Keeper of Hellfire · Post by **Keeper of Hellfire** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:03 am

Simply said - higher bitrates = higher quality and bigger filesize. But it depends also on the codec. Newer codecs provide better quality at low bitrates than old codecs at high bitrates. And for the question how high or low a bitrate should be - like always, find the golden middle, in this case between quality and filesize.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 5:31 pm

It should also be said that, beyond a certain point (different for every video), increasing the bitrate will not result in any noticeable increase in quality. This is why EADFAG recommends you use Q2 as your minimum quantizer in XviD, rather than Q1 -- while Q1 does provide more exact results, the difference is so slight to the human eye as to be not worth the difference in filesize.

Shazzy · Post by **Shazzy** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 9:13 pm

Scintilla wrote:while Q1 does provide more exact results, the difference is so slight to the human eye as to be not worth the difference in filesize.

Q1 = cleaning every inch of a room with a toothbrush