Optimal video bitrate for MPEG2 analog SDTV recording?

[badboyz]

Hi!

May I know what's the optimal video bitrate for MPEG2 analog SDTV recording?

I used to record at 15MB/s for a few months.
Then changed to 12MB/s.

After reading from a website saying 8MB/s is the optimal video bitrate for MPEG2 analog recording, anything higher won't result in better quality. I dropped my recording to 9MB/s which is 1MB more than the suggested 8MB/s.

Recently, saw someone mentioned that it is not useful to use higher bitrate than 6Mb/s, due to the limitation of the analog channels bandwidth (<6MHz).

Any comments or suggestions?
Thanks in advance!

[pBS]

that sounds about right, but i keep a little overhead available for when it has high action, which ups the bitrate....
so i'm using 6000-12000 variable....mostly just sits at 6000 till there's a lot of motion [like sports etc]

it's not true that 6000 is a 'max' when it comes to mpeg2 re-encoding sd, as it doesn't take into account the pre-encoded ringing that actually gets more bandwidth when re-encoded a second time...

it's just that after 6000 there's a big dropoff of diminishing returns...not 'much' extra quality for the extra bits, but it does look better slightly...
past 9000 and there's almost no gain..