[MEncoder-users] mencoder apparently not obeying video bitrate settings

[RC]

On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:21:58 -0600
"Eric A" <erpo41 at gmail.com> wrote:

> the full file would have been around 2300MB, far too small considering
> the video bitrate was set to 8000kbps.

You're upscaling a tiny, low-bitrate video, and trying to encode it with
a huge bitrate (the maximum acceptible for DVD).  What do you expect
MEncoder to do with the extra bits after it's reached the point
where it has encoded the video perfectly(*)? Pad the file with zeros?

(*) Well... up to the maximum quality possible, given lavc's quant
settings as well as the user options specified.  You can encode a
video with vqscale=2, and then look at the bitrate used, to see if this
is in fact the case.

Secondly, single-pass isn't really guaranteed to maintain a given
bitrate. You should use 2-pass encoding if you care about that.