# What Bitrate to use to record from PVR 508 to DVD?



## gxshiem (May 24, 2003)

I'm trying to figure out what the best AV quality would be to record things off of my PVR 508 to my DVD burner (Toshiba XS32). The DVD burner has the option of 1.4 to 9.2 Mbps for video and 192 kpbs or 384 kbps or L-PCM for audio.

Thanks.


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## retiredTech (Oct 27, 2003)

I use 3meg to 5meg bitrate with 48khz audio (mpeg2) for my 721 and have very good results.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

I would concur with that. I make SVCDs with a recorded rate of 2-3.5 Mbps that fit ~40-45 minutes of video that fit on a 700 MB CDR. The resultant video looks as good as the original recording off my 510.


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## enforcer (Jun 27, 2003)

How are you taking recorded events of a 508 and burning them??? I would love to archive some of my recorded shows. Thanks


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

I either record live into my TV capture card (Hauppage WinPVR250), or I play back the recorded event, like you would do with a VCR tape...


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## gxshiem (May 24, 2003)

Thanks, I think I have an idea now what bitrate to use.
I have a DVD recorder hooked up to my PVR 508 through S-Video.


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

gxshiem said:


> Thanks, I think I have an idea now what bitrate to use.
> I have a DVD recorder hooked up to my PVR 508 through S-Video.


Why wouldn't you be using the highest bitrate for the length of the show that you are recording? The toshiba gives lots of flexibility in setting these but the lower the bitrate, the worse the quality. Unless you are trying to fit a number of programs on one DVD or RW...


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

There's no point to recording more bits than you're getting from Dish - so IMHO its best to use a VBR rate of 2Mbps - 3.5 Mbps - very few (if any) DBS programs (besides HDTV) are shown at a data rate above that.


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## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

ggw2000 said:


> Why wouldn't you be using the highest bitrate for the length of the show that you are recording? The toshiba gives lots of flexibility in setting these but the lower the bitrate, the worse the quality. Unless you are trying to fit a number of programs on one DVD or RW...


I agree with gg. Use the highest bit rate for the length of the show. I have ran numurous tests and figured out that the highest bit rate is still the best no matter what bit rate Dish uses. The colors look cleaner and the PQ is virtually identical to the original. Besides, blank DVD's are getting cheap so there really is no reason to try and squeeze so much on one disc.

When I create DVD's, the lowest bit rate I will use is 6 Mbps which yields me about 100 minutes per DVD with good quality and Dolby Digital sound. Most of the time though, I try and use 8 Mbps when space is not an issue.

Trust me, you will be thanking yourself a few years from now when you slap that DVD up on your 70" plasma.


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## gxshiem (May 24, 2003)

Hmm, I'm recording a 101 minute program off of my PVR at 5.2 Mbps video and 384 kbps audio(is 192 kbps also sufficient?). This setting will allow for 103 minutes of recording. 6 Mbps will allow 90 minutes and 8 Mbps will allow 69 minutes of recording. I'm editing it on the hard drive first (also 5.2 Mbps video) and then burning it on DVD. I'll hope that will be sufficient.


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## Guest (May 3, 2004)

scooper said:


> There's no point to recording more bits than you're getting from Dish - so IMHO its best to use a VBR rate of 2Mbps - 3.5 Mbps - very few (if any) DBS programs (besides HDTV) are shown at a data rate above that.


There are some factors you're not considering:

1) The realtime encoder in your recorder is not as good as what Echostar users.

2) You are recompressing something that has already been compressed/decompressed. So you're dealing with additional artificats.

You need to be a little higher that what Dish is encoding at. How much higer depends on your recorder.

I rip the files directly off my 501's hard drive, so here's what echostar is compressing at: (all files ripped last month)

CBS-W (joan of arcadia)

Video: 1644kb/s average, 5452kb/s max
Audio: 192kb/s mp2

NBC (Las Vegas)

Video 2443kb/s average, 6821kb/s max
Audio: 192kb/s mp2

SciFI(tripping the rift)

VIdeo: 2147kb/s average, 5785kbps max
Audio: 192kb/s mp2

TechTV (nerd nation)

Video: 2319kb/s average, 5869kb/s max
Audio: 192kb/s mp2

TVLand (Macgyver)

Video: 2427kb/s average, 6073kb/s max
Audio: 192kb/s mp2

Ouch, they really have the compression turned up.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

I didn't realize they went that high ! Any readings on Enterprise ? That's what I've been burning to SVCD with 2 - 3.5 Mbps - and my captures have been (if I say so) pretty damn good from DBS of my local UPN.


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## garypen (Feb 1, 2004)

gxshiem said:


> I'm editing it on the hard drive first (also 5.2 Mbps video) and then burning it on DVD. I'll hope that will be sufficient.


Are you saying you are editing on the DVR?


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## gxshiem (May 24, 2003)

The DVD recorder has a hard drive. I'm recording the programs from my PVR 508 to the hard drive of my DVD recorder at 5.4 Mbps video (384 kbps audio, which now I know is too high). I then edit out/in stuff on the hard drive and then burn it onto a DVD.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

scooper said:


> There's no point to recording more bits than you're getting from Dish - so IMHO its best to use a VBR rate of 2Mbps - 3.5 Mbps - very few (if any) DBS programs (besides HDTV) are shown at a data rate above that.


On the contrary, there are very good arguments for recording at a higher rate. As Evilman points out, peak rates for DBS sometimes reach well over 6Mbps. VBR in a consumer unit will not track that.

Even if it could, the bit rate used by DBS is irrelevant because the signal you are recording (on DVDR) has already been reconverted to analog. What IS relevant is the amount of compression needed to encode that resultant analog signal without introducing significant artifacts, which is dependent primarily on two things...the amount of changing video in the program, and the amount of analog noise in the signal (which is also perceived by the encoder as changing video).

Also, re-encoding video at a low rate when the original encoding was at a low rate will yield a final product with significant generational error. Re-encoding video at a low rate when the original recording was encoded at a high rate will not be that much better, and will certainly be worse than the DBS signal. Re-encoding video at a high rate that was originally encoded at a low rate will be only very slightly worse than the original encoding, and re-encoding video at a high rate that was originally encoded at a high rate can yield a final product that is nearly indistinguishable from the analog original.

Encoding at 2.5-3 originally and re-encoding at the same rate falls pretty much in the medium-low to medium-low category, which would suffer significantly. Typically you will need a bit rate of at least 4.5-6 to encode good quality DBS (analog output) to a level that does not suffer noticeable degradation (once again, depending upon the amount of changing video in the source).


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## Roger Tee (Feb 22, 2004)

Maybe this is the way to go.

Go to www.dvdrhelp.com, look on the left side of the screen for Tools. then search for bitrate calculator.

Once you know the run time and the target size (DVD = 4.37Gb) then it'll tell you the bitrate to use.

for example 90 minutes and 384kbits audio and 4.37 Gb disk equals 6384 kbits for encoding.

changing it to 60 minutes bumps the bitrate upto 9406kbits. 1 hour 59 minutes = 4732kbits.

That's how I choose a bitrate for captures that I encode on the computer. Of course I always pad a couple of minutes into the runtime for a safety margin.

Hope this helps?

Cheers


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## TEXMIKE (Dec 19, 2002)

Chris Blount said:


> .....lowest bit rate I will use is 6 Mbps which yields me about 100 minutes per DVD with good quality and Dolby Digital sound. Most of the time though, I try and use 8 Mbps when space is not an issue.
> 
> Trust me, you will be thanking yourself a few years from now when you slap that DVD up on your 70" plasma.


Is it possible to record on any desktop DVD recorders and preserve the 5.1 audio from the original PVR recording on a 721?


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## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

TEXMIKE said:


> Is it possible to record on any desktop DVD recorders and preserve the 5.1 audio from the original PVR recording on a 721?


I don't think there is a way right now but I haven't really researched the possibilities.


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## TEXMIKE (Dec 19, 2002)

Thanks for the reply. I didn't think so, yet. It's too bad. They should put an optical input on the DVD recorders for the audio.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

If by "Desktop" you mean Stand-Alone, Philips is coming out with two models with a 5.1 inputs. One even has HDMI out and a Faroudja scaler.

http://hiddenwires.co.uk/resourcesnews2004/news20040119-02.html


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## TEXMIKE (Dec 19, 2002)

I did mean "stand alone", and, thanks, I will keep my eye out for it.


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