MPEG2 Broadcast and Distrubution

[PhantomVideo]

Hi Everyone,

I have a few questions if anyone could help me out that would be awesome,

Just a bit of background, our production house has prepared 4 weeks of broadcast programes (around 3 1/2 hours a week) which are currently in
AVI DV format we don't have a lot of space so i need to arcihve them, i am dumping them all back to Mini DV but our station (Currently accepting DV for programes) is soon changing to MPEG2 i would like to perform a batch render of the invidual files, to an MPEG2 standard acceptable to Author to DVD for Distribution but also acceptable for Broadcast servers.

1)
Is there a difference between MPEG2 for DVD and MPEG2 for broadcast ?

2)
Is there a common Bitrate for MPEG2 Broadcast Servers?

3)
Is there a program the performs batch renders (Like unattened) to MPEG2? eg individual DVAVI files go in inviddual MPEG2 files come out

FYI
Cutting on an AVID Liquid 7
Shooting with HVX202EN on SD

Thanks Everyone
this site rock heaps of Top info

Ashley McKenzie
Camera Operator/Online Editor

[Demistate]

You'll have to ask the TV station what is the maximum bitrate for their mpeg streams, and if it supports VBR.

However, just to spit out numbers for you:

DVD standard has 9.9MegaBits per second as the maximum bitrate possible. However most encoding software will cap you at 9.5 because some DVD players will throw a hissy fit if they get close to the 9.9 maximum.

Audio can be PCM (uncompressed) or Dolby Digital AC3 up to 664KiloBits, you must figure this into your total 9.9MegaBits scheme, if you go over you are outside the spec and most DVD players will ignore your file

Authoring SD material at 9Mbps VBR (9 peak, 6 low) and 664KBPS AC3 will give you a good quality file that wont degrade (too much) from your original DV AVI (assuming your material is progressive scan. If it's interlaced you'll see artifacts if you look close enough)

Just to let you know, my comcast SD channels broadcast anywhere from 1.5MegaBits to 6MegaBits. So if your station is Comcastic! then you might be in for a surprise at just how much quality will be lost.

Long answer short : You need to ask an engineer there for specifics.