Too VBR - how can I avoid playback stuttering with encoding?

[aLu]

I have considerabe stuttering in playback, and neither changing screen res/color depth/player/computer&graphic card changes this, while the CPU load is quite low. The stuttering is very fast and occurs even in quite dark motion scenes, when the bitrate shouldn't be that high (average throughout the movie: 105 k). It must be the rapid bitrate changes that cause this (the curve looked quite alive while encoding in Flask).

My question is what's the best encoding configuration to avoid this, maintaining quality, keeping the bitrate flexible enough but the changes not too fast ("curve smoothing"). I'll test this myself, of course, but any suggestions would be welcome.

Encoding settings are now:
Movie size: 624*352
Global settings:
Motion search precision: 6(Ultra high)
I-frame interval: 75
Quantization: H.263;
FourCC: DivX;
Lumi masking enabled;
Quantization: 1:31
Two-Pass tab:
I-frame boost: 20, min. interval: 6
Curve compression high/low: 25%:10%, payback delay: 240 (with bias)
Alt Curse tab (not used)


Choices (some maybe stupid):

* Redistribute the bits used for fast-/low motion scenes (curve compression)
** Edit the quantization matrix (from 1:31 to 2:12 like DivX, for instance)
*** Use alternate curve agression and set it to "LOW" without changing anything else (Alt curve tab)
**** Reduce motion search precision (requires re-encoding all passes)
***** Re-encoding the movie at a smaller scale (is out of competition by now)

[khp]

Re: Too VBR - how can I avoid playback stuttering with encoding?

Originally posted by aLu
(average throughout the movie: 105 k)

105 kbps at 640*352, is wayyyyyyy too low.

[aLu]

105 KiloBYTE, not BIT

Aha, smart ... maybe you have noticed that VirtualDub and others display the video rate in KiloBYTE while Codecs are configured with kiloBIT values.

[SHADO\\']

Which player are you using. I've had this problem with Windows Media Player before.