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DVD/BluRay resolutions and bitrates

Baterka

What are resolutions, codecs and bitrates (video and audio) on DVD and BluRays?

What is equivalent quality when I rip my DVD/BluRay into h264/h265 file?

I am getting mixed answers byt searching so I am asking here if someone can define it one for all for me :D

 

Thanks :)

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Video and audio on DVDs and BluRays are compressed with lossy codecs. When you reencode lossy content, you lose quality even if you use a higher bitrate than the previous generation.

 

If your goal is to preserve the quality of the original, do a remux rip, which does not reencode. There are transparent reencodes, which are visually identical to the original, but this is not the same as having the same quality. Additionally, the settings required to do a transparent encode are different for each source, just like each BluRay source has a different bitrate.

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Why ask us when you can see for yourself...

 

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo

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DVD-Video discs have a raw bitrate of 11.08 Mbit/s, with a 1.0 Mbit/s overhead, leaving a payload bitrate of 10.08 Mbit/s. Of this, up to 3.36 Mbit/s can be used for subtitles, a maximum of 10.08 Mbit/s can be split amongst audio and video, and a maximum of 9.80 Mbit/s can be used for video alone.

 

Assume up to around 1.2 MB/s (10 mbps) for DVDs, if kept in their original form.

You can get a DVD smaller by throwing out secondary audio tracks, or leaving just one format (some use 5.1 AC3 and same audio track as mp2 stereo for backwards compatibility, so you can remove the stereo track). If you want you can also remove commentary tracks, though at 128-320 kbps they don't take much space.

Software like DVDFab can rip a DVD and you can unselect non-essential stuff.

 

Blurays ...

 

For users recording digital television programming, the recordable Blu-ray Disc standard's initial data rate of 36 Mbit/s is more than adequate to record high-definition broadcasts from any source (IPTV, cable/satellite, or terrestrial). BD Video movies have a maximum data transfer rate of 54 Mbit/s, a maximum AV bitrate of 48 Mbit/s (for both audio and video data), and a maximum video bit rate of 40 Mbit/s. This compares to HD DVD movies, which have a maximum data transfer rate of 36 Mbit/s, a maximum AV bitrate of 30.24 Mbit/s, and a maximum video bitrate of 29.4 Mbit/s.[151]

 

so around 5-6 MB/s for bluray in original form

 

If you recompress using h264 or hevc , around 3-4 mbps for DVDs and around 10-15 mbps for Bluray are reasonable values.

 

I would no longer recompress DVDs, I would just recompress audio if needed (from lossless pcm to ac3, aac or opus) and leave the video untouched. Hard drives are cheap these days, it's not worth butchering already debatable quality by recompressing video.

 

// ps both big paragraphs are copy paste from wikipedia

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19 minutes ago, mariushm said:

DVD-Video discs have a raw bitrate of 11.08 Mbit/s, with a 1.0 Mbit/s overhead, leaving a payload bitrate of 10.08 Mbit/s. Of this, up to 3.36 Mbit/s can be used for subtitles, a maximum of 10.08 Mbit/s can be split amongst audio and video, and a maximum of 9.80 Mbit/s can be used for video alone.

 

Assume up to around 1.2 MB/s (10 mbps) for DVDs, if kept in their original form.

You can get a DVD smaller by throwing out secondary audio tracks, or leaving just one format (some use 5.1 AC3 and same audio track as mp2 stereo for backwards compatibility, so you can remove the stereo track). If you want you can also remove commentary tracks, though at 128-320 kbps they don't take much space.

Software like DVDFab can rip a DVD and you can unselect non-essential stuff.

 

Blurays ...

 

For users recording digital television programming, the recordable Blu-ray Disc standard's initial data rate of 36 Mbit/s is more than adequate to record high-definition broadcasts from any source (IPTV, cable/satellite, or terrestrial). BD Video movies have a maximum data transfer rate of 54 Mbit/s, a maximum AV bitrate of 48 Mbit/s (for both audio and video data), and a maximum video bit rate of 40 Mbit/s. This compares to HD DVD movies, which have a maximum data transfer rate of 36 Mbit/s, a maximum AV bitrate of 30.24 Mbit/s, and a maximum video bitrate of 29.4 Mbit/s.[151]

 

so around 5-6 MB/s for bluray in original form

 

If you recompress using h264 or hevc , around 3-4 mbps for DVDs and around 10-15 mbps for Bluray are reasonable values.

 

I would no longer recompress DVDs, I would just recompress audio if needed (from lossless pcm to ac3, aac or opus) and leave the video untouched. Hard drives are cheap these days, it's not worth butchering already debatable quality by recompressing video.

 

// ps both big paragraphs are copy paste from wikipedia

You answered prety much everything except the resolution of DVD and BD :D I read those on Wiki too, but there is nothing abour actual resolution.

Website programmer & Electrician & PC HW lover!

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what's to say?

DVD is 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC)

Bluray is up to 4K though the most common is 1920x1080 ... some are upconverted to 1080p, for example Farscape (they lost the original film and the special effects were made in SD quality so they just resized SD to 1080p)

 

for re-encoding purposes it depends on you... i personally am satisfied with 720p - i'd rather see 720p 6-8 mbps instead of 1080 10 mbps - if the source is high bitrate you'll retain more quality in 720p 6-8mbps compared to 1080p 10mbps

But i would use software encoder (x264) instead of video card's encoder ... it's several times slower but the end result is higher quality.

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5 minutes ago, mariushm said:

what's to say?

DVD is 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC)

Bluray is up to 4K though the most common is 1920x1080 ... some are upconverted to 1080p, for example Farscape (they lost the original film and the special effects were made in SD quality so they just resized SD to 1080p)

 

for re-encoding purposes it depends on you... i personally am satisfied with 720p - i'd rather see 720p 6-8 mbps instead of 1080 10 mbps - if the source is high bitrate you'll retain more quality in 720p 6-8mbps compared to 1080p 10mbps

But i would use software encoder (x264) instead of video card's encoder ... it's several times slower but the end result is higher quality.

So when I buy for example Lego Movie 2 (2019) as DVD I am getting maximmum 9.8Mbit/s 546p video right?

 

What you mean by "software encoder"? h265 (non HEVC) is video card's encoder too?

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When you buy a DVD, you're getting either 720 x 576  or 720x480.

 

If the DVD is NTSC, you're getting whatever aspect ratio the movie has squeezed into 720x480 ... for example if movie is 16:9, the video player automatically resizes the image to 860x480 but the video itself on the disc is encoded as 720x480, up to 9.8 mbps. Usually, less because most DVDs have at least two audio tracks so more than ~0.28 mbps is reserved for audio (10.08 mbps - 9.8 mbps = 0.28 mbps ... but a single 5.1 ac3 track is 448 kbps or something like that... that's 0.4 mbps)

 

You can compress a movie either using software that relies on just the processor in your computer to compress the movie. x264.exe , x265 are such video compressors. They're highly configurable and you can easily adjust the amount of effort versus time used to compress the video. So for example, you could compress a 1h movie in 20 minutes by adjusting some settings for SPEED in the detriment of image quality, or you could compress the same video in 3-5 hours by adjusting settings to let the software encoder analyze the movie and preserve as much image quality as possible in the amount of bitrate you allow it.

 

You can also compress movies using the hardware encoders built into the video cards (nVIdia's nvEnc , AMD's AMF, Intel's Quicksync)  but these hardware encoders are not designed for highest quality - some options are either locked to some values or the values you can set for those options are limited. Some options may not even be configurable.

The reason for that is because the hardware decoder is limited to a certain area of the chip (and the more area used the more expensive a chip is) so there's a limited number of transistors so some things are simplified in order to use less transistors in the chip. Also, the encoders are optimized for real time encoding (think Twitch/Youtube streaming) where your aim is not really to squeeze as much quality in a small amount of space, you mostly care about the card streaming 60fps without hiccups and squeeze whatever's possible in what Twitch or Youtube allows, let's say 10-20 mbps

The hardware decoder is also limited in how much memory on the video card can use, so for example the hardware encoder may only use up to 2-3 consecutive images to improve quality.

 

A software encoder could look at 10 consecutive images and figure out that a car or something moves from left to right advancing a few pixels on each picture, so knowing this it can compress this information better and use less bitrate - so the saved bitrate can be used in other areas to improve overall quality of the video.

In contrast, the hardware encoder, being limited in how many pictures it can look up in advance (especially if real time streaming)... it will use more bitrate for the same information so other areas of the picture may suffer.  It will always be worse at making decisions regarding image quality - a hardware encoder will always need higher bitrate compared to a software encoder.

 

A software encoder can also use 2 passes ... for example you can run a first pass with some fast settings, just for the encoder to get an idea about the movie, and then you can do a 2nd final pass where the encoder can make smarter decisions, knowing what to expect.

 

For example, imagine a 10 second video that you want encoded at 1 MB/s, to get a final video size of 10 MB. Let's say the first 6 seconds are images of a camera moving slowly from left to right, and at the 6th second you start to see a waterfall.

Now for the first 6 seconds, the slow pan over a forest is very easy to compress because there's very little change between frames and you get super quality in that 1 MB/s.

But, once the encoder sees the waterfall, each frame in those 4 seconds will be quite different and it will be harder to retain quality in just 1 MB/s.. so the image quality will be significantly lower in those 4 seconds.

 

So, if you use 2 pass encoding, in the first pass the software encoder can see that first 6 seconds are low motion, and the last 4 seconds are high motion, harder to compress.

On the 2nd pass, the encoder can make a decision:

 

Even though i have a 1MB/s budget for the first 6 seconds, I'll only use 0.8 MB/s and make the image quality a bit worse, but this means I'll save 6 seconds x 0.2MB/s = 1.2 MB which I can add up to the budget for the 4 seconds and improve quality there. So for the final 4 seconds I can increase the budget to (4x1MB/s + 1.2MB ) / 4 seconds = 1.3 MB/s and with this 1.3 MB/s the waterfall will be compressed using higher quality.

Overall, the person watching this 10s sequence will have a better impression when viewing it.

 

Software encoders can also work in CFR mode (constant quality), which basically is like saving each second at a level of quality (like JPEG 90% quality), ignoring how much disk space is used. So one second could use 1 MB of disk space, and the next second could use 1.5 MB... you get consistent quality but you can't predict the final size of the video.

 

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