I noticed in the release notes for the new beta of Fab Platinum it says this: "Updated A/V codecs for "DVD to Mobile"

What exactly does that mean? A simple version update? Or was there actual improvement made on the codecs' abilities? I love the program, but the mobile mode has always had a couple of annoyances for me:

1. Fab refuses to hit the target size exactly or even closely on the higher-res settings.

2. It seems to have some type of bitrate limiting thing applied. It doesn't apply the full amount of chosen bitrate. I can copy a movie once at 2500kbs and then again at 5000kbs in generic mode and get only a slight difference in file size. Not to sound rude guys, but I find this a bit unacceptable. This is probably part of the reason for the file size discrepancies.

3. I've noticed several instances of distortion such as a slight green tinting on really dark scenes (early episodes of The X-Files for example), and over pixelation on some material.

I love Fab's functions for DVD to DVD to death, and I don't expect the program to be perfect. However, when I'm going for awesome quality and type in 800mb into the file size box for an hour-long tv episode, I don't like getting around only 600mb used in the final product.

There are serious problems with DVD to iPod as well, there was a major rewrite apparently sometime after v3.0.9.8 of all the DVD to mobile code. I find that it never hits the file size target and videos tend to be out of synch. Hope to see a fix soon! :-)

Ting answered what you mentioned in item 2 in a post a few weeks ago. He said in effect that bitrate allowance that the encoder doesn't need or can't use is discarded. I have my defaults for my Archos set to 2400 mb/s and have never gotten an output file with a bitrate higher than 1800 or so. My file sizes are also smaller than the estimate because all of the bitrate setting is not being used. I use MP3 audio and have no sync issues; just tried the new Harry Potter with v4.0.1.6, worked great. Have not noticed the tinting thing you mentioned.

Hi,

The bitrate is limited by output resolution, for ipod output, 2500Kbps is almost the limit.

If you want better quality, you should use 2-pass encoding, it will improve a lot.

Best Regards,
Fengtao