How much higher does a bitrate have to be to make a difference?

[liquidsoap89]

Hi everyone,

I just got the recent Friday the 13th boxset, and there something that stands out to me that I'm curious about. I already owned Freddy vs. Jason, so I thought I'd look at the difference between the two versions. It looks like the video bitrate for the old version is 20,568kbps (that's the average I assume?), while the new version is 25,954kbps (new version is about 5,500kbps higher). Now, the audio is basically reversed, with the old version having an audio bitrate of 4059kbps, and the new version is 1810kbps (old version is about 2,250kbps higher).

I was wondering if it'd be worth taking the audio from the old version, and combining it with the video from the new version using MKVToolNix.

Here's a screenshot. New file on the left, old on the right (I've attached the image as well if I can't figure out how to add a hyperlink):

[dcoke22]

If you look at the movies in mediainfo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaInfo) you'll be able to see the various codecs being used. That could change the data rates you see.

2020 release: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Freddy-v ... ay/272865/

2009 release: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Freddy-v ... -ray/5575/

2009 is VC-1 encoded, but the 2020 version is AVC. They both seem to have TrueHD 5.1 audio but the 2009 also seems to have a DD 5.1 EX track. Since TrueHD is lossless, I don't think there's a reason to try to swap audio tracks between the films.

[liquidsoap89]

Interesting. Thanks for the suggestion about MediaInfo. I like adding new tools to my server!

It looks like my original version uses the AVC codec, and has a DTS-HS Master Audio track, while the new version uses the VC-1 codec, and has a Dolby TrueHD audio track. If both of those audio tracks are lossless am I to assume there'd be little to gain from mixing and matching them (I believe my receiver supports both formats so compatibility isn't an issue)?

I know very little about how the different codecs work, but a quick search online leads me to believe that either one should be adequate. And it's not like I desperately need the best version of the movie anyways, I'm mostly just curious about how they're different.

[dcoke22]

I wouldn't mess with trying to switch the audio around. I generally can't tell a difference between TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio.

Wikipedia has decent articles about AVC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding) and VC-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1).