Bit Rate Calculators

[Jason Dunn]

In a video project, sometimes you'll end up with a lot of footage, and you need to cram it all onto one disc. This requires you to encode it at a specific bit rate (quality) in order to make it all fit. The question is, how do you know what bit rate you need to use? That's where bit rate calculators come in: you punch in the values that you do know, like the length of the video in minutes and the storage medium (CD, DVD), and the bit rate calculator does the rest. Here are a few that I've found that you might find useful:

• DVDRHelp has a very powerful bit rate calculator (http://www.dvdrhelp.com/calc.htm), but it requires Java. <bleh>
• Digital Video Information's Javascript-based bit rate calculator. (http://www.digvid.info/digitalvideo/bitrate_calc.php)
• Need DivX only? Here's a Javascript-based (http://www.csgnetwork.com/divxspeedcalc.html) one.
• Looking for an offline program to do bit rate calculations on DivX files? There's a free one from Digital Digest. (http://www.divx-digest.com/software/advanced_bc.html)

The most powerful browser-based one I've found though is at DVD-HQ. Their bit rate calculator (http://dvd-hq.info/Calculator.html) goes far deeper than most of the others, and includes some definitions for terms like Rate Control and GOP Structure that still elude me after reading them over twice. 8O Any other good bit rate calculators that I missed, such as a stand-alone EXE file for local use?

[backpackerx]

Clonead.co.uk (http://www.clonead.co.uk/) has a bitrate tool called cladbrc.net that works well and is stand alone. Just go to their download page. As normal with .NET apps you need the Microsoft .NET framework installed on your computer which is free from Microsoft or this site if you don't have it. I know 2000 and down need it but not sure if XP has it built in.

Also, this is by FAR the best site I've found for ripping DVD's and transferring them to Divx or VCD. The program cladDVD rips one large VOB file (or each chapter if you choose) and a mod to the popular VirtualDub by Avery Lee called VirtualDubMod will convert straight .VOBs to Dixv. All in all it takes about 5 minutes of user imput to convert your DVD to Divx once you get the hang of it and 2 to 10 hours of CPU time (pretty standard) depending on your system.