Is there any point in going above 1000bps in x264

[Loïc Martin]

Ben Edwards wrote:
> Ive been playing around with handbrake (using the Film preset under
> 'High Profile' and changing bitrate), an excellent program for
> ripping/encoding. I have encoded 10 minutes from a DVD (In Bruges) at
> 1000, 1200 and 1800 bit-rates. I played them back on a PS3 with a
> video projector (HD 1080 compatable) and there does not seem to be a
> noticable difference.
> 
> So my question is is there any point in going above 1000. Maybe I need
> to go a lot higher?

A video projector is hardly the way to spot video defects. If you plan 
to watch your movies on that same video projector all your life, you 
might be ok with 1000kbps (I'm assuming you mean 1000kbps and not 
1000bps, since there would indeed hardly be anything to notice at 
1000bps or 1800bps).

If, on the other hand, you want to check if your encode is of good 
quality, I suggest using a high resolution PC LCD monitor (for example a 
1920x1080 one or something close to that, even though you'd spot the 
differences between 1000kbps and 1800kbps on almost any LCD).

You'd also need to check more than one scene, or make sure the scene 
you're encoding is a hard one - lot of action, noisy material (f.e. 
grain), dark... Make also sure you're not resizing the video, some bad 
encoders tend to do it by default.

As always, it also depends on the person. I've seen people tell me that 
the HQ option in Youtube produce perfect videos...

Loïc