[MPlayer-users] Is it possible to specify colour depth ofMPEG-IIfiles using

[John Brown]

>Date: On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 16:47:28 -0500, Jeff Clagg  wrote:
>
>On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 10:32:25AM -0400, John Brown wrote:
> > >On Sun, 16 Apr 2006 22:53:18 -0500, Jeff Clagg wrote:
> > >
> > >Those values are completely meaningless. The bpp field in the avi 
>header
> > >only makes sense for some lossless codecs. For other codecs, some
> > >applications have chosen to write 24bpp in the header while some write
> > >12bpp. Either way it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.
> > >
> > I see. I take it that that's a no, then? I saw something about formats 
>in
> > mplayer -vf format=fmt=help
> > and I tried one or two, but I got errors.
>
>-vf format has nothing to do with it. Just to be more clear, the "bpp"
>field in these particular avi's doesn't say anything about their
>quality.

I understood.
>
>I assumed you were asking about this because you're interested
>in video quality, but maybe you have some other goal in mind? If so,
>what is it?
>
I was just thinking that if my input had less than 16 million colours, then 
I should not waste bits by converting it to 24-bit colour if I did not have 
to. However, you say that my input (which can be anything but is usually 
DivX or RealMedia) does not really have 16-bit or 12-bit colour.

Anyway, it might suit me to convert to 16-bit colour if I can. My goal is to 
put Japanese cartoons on DVD. I recently put 23 episodes (average length 23 
min 5 sec = 8 h4 50 min total) with vbitrate = 1161 and abitrate = 96 on a 
4.7 GB DVD. The target audience does not really care, but I would prefer 
dithered colours if it meant less blocking.

While it seems that it MPEG-II supports 24-bit colour, I am not sure whether 
I could use fewer colours if I wanted. I have not really researched the 
matter thoroughly; I thought that I would just ask. So back to the original 
question (which you still have not answered):

Does the MPEG-II standard compel me to use 24-bit colour? If not, how would 
I choose the colour depth with MEncoder?