This has probably been covered some ware but I can't find it. I remember reading a few years back that its best to set bit rates to a number that’s divisible by 32 (it was probably 8 or 16 in the early days). I don't know if its still applicable, but a guy in our building and I were discussing bit rates today and it came up. Is this another famous myth or is there any validity to it?

Bit rates??? No. Frame sizes.. yes. But not by 32. Generally by 8 or by 4. Why on earth would bit rate need to be divisible by anything? With VBR it's essentially impossible anyway.

Sounds like myth. VBR is a great point. Glade I asked though, I didn't know about the "Frame Size" aspect of things.

Thanks,

MPEG-1 dimensions need to be divisible by 8, but not bitrate.

Even if the codec doesn't require it, making frame dimensions divisible by 8 will help make encoding more efficient (even if just slightly).