CBR  VBR  Premiere CS3

I always have used VBR, never encounted playback issues on other pc's or dvd-players.

I do burn at a lower speed.

VBR is "most" usefull for fast moving scenes, such as a sports event

If you are not filming scenes with a lot of movement, you won't notice much difference

An assumption is being made about the average rate being the same.

A CBR of 3 will look terrrible. A CBR of 10 will stutter on some machines. You cannot use a decent datarate CBR (if the program is long enough) and get it on one disk: VBR there is required and will do a nice job. VBR with a decent average rate, the same max as the CBR, and not too low on the minimum datarate will not stutter any more or less, and will get better quality for a longer length video than CBR.

The issues that VBR may show is a problem of incorrect encoding choices or datarate spikes the exceed the player's ability (DVD standalone or computer based).

I think you already got the info you need from previous posts...

if you wanna explore on your own more.. using vbr you can actually set your min and max rate as the same and sorta force it to do a kinda fake cbr but get the 2 passes out of it.. is something I experimented with a while ago...but that had nothing to do with stuffing stuff onto a finite " disk" size ( byte count )...

this calculator might help , depending on what youre doing...

http://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php

i really think this info on my part is just if you wanna experiment on your own and have time for that.

If your quality is good, especially in areas with motion (either subject, or camera), then there is no real reason to deviate.

However, if you need to "squeeze" a bit more Duration, or are seeing issues in areas of motion, do not hesitate to explore VBR.

Hollywood uses extreme VBR, with encoding programs, that might do up to 15 passes, that are run by experts, who do nothing else, all day long.

Still, so long as you, and your clients are happy with CBR, it will be quicker, and takes less experimenting.

Good luck,

Hunt

datarate spikes the exceed the player's ability

That is simply not possible.  Encore will not allow you to burn a disk with a data rate that exceeds DVD specs.  And ALL players with the DVD logo will handle DVDs within spec.

Jim,

A slight correction. All DVD logo players will play all replicated DVD's. Most will play burned DVD's, but especially some older players, have problems with most burned discs, even when in spec.

Hunt