From time to time I convert videos to H264. When I do this I want to get the best quality out of a give filesize. This means I create VBR videos. The question here is, how big the target video file shall be.
After searching around a little bit in the net I found a formula which is supposed to give a hint about the target filesize. Naturally this depends on the encoder (or even the encoder-version), the encoder settings and even the video.
The formula is at least a good hint for my use, so I wrote a script which calculates several filesize values for a given video (based upon the output of mediainfo, which the scripts expects in a file with the filename as an argument to the script). It calculates a CBR and a VBR value for a given video based upon the width, height and duration. It should work on all system with a POSIX compatible shell.
Example output for a video from my HD-ready cam, original filesize 1.8 GB:
Width: 1280, Height: 720, FPS: 50.000, Time: 1424, Motion: 2
Per second: 6451200.000 bps / 6300 Kibps
Total CBR: 1148313600 bytes / 1121400 KiB / 1095 MiB
Total VBR: 861235200 bytes / 841050 KiB / 821 MiB
Width: 1280, Height: 720, FPS: 50.000, Time: 1424, Motion: 3
Per second: 9676800.000 bps / 9450 Kibps
Total CBR: 1722470400 bytes / 1682100 KiB / 1642 MiB
Total VBR: 1291852800 bytes / 1261575 KiB / 1232 MiB
Width: 1280, Height: 720, FPS: 50.000, Time: 1424, Motion: 4
Per second: 12902400.000 bps / 12600 Kibps
Total CBR: 2296627200 bytes / 2242800 KiB / 2190 MiB
Total VBR: 1722470400 bytes / 1682100 KiB / 1642 MiB
There are 3 sections, the difference is the “motion” value. It is a kind of multiplicator depending on the amount of motion in the video. For the videos I made myself (family videos, and even some videos of volley ball games), the first section seems to be just fine. So I reduced the original MP4 file to about 50% (not visible here is the audio size, normally I copy the original audio unmodified).
For the curious ones, the formula is
width_in_pixels * height_in_pixels * fps * motion_value * 0.07
for the bps value. The CBR value is
bps * playtime_in_seconds / 8
and the VBR value is
3 / 4 * CBR_value.
