Best DVD Transcoder?

[Bassphine]

I was reading the dvd transcoder guides here at doom9 and it was mentioned that the Pinnacle Instant Copy Transcoder produced the best results. It also metions that the new versions however no longer offer 2 pass quality check. The version in the guide is 8, so can I assume that it is the previous versions that include the 2 pass check and therefore offer the best quality? Does anyone know what the last version that included this feature was? Also have there been improvements to the other transcoders since the articles were writting and if so what is the transcoder with the best quality now?
I am looking to get the best quality possible as I am trying to fit the movies into 1/4 dvd5 size so like 1.13 gigs apiece, or smaller. In essence I'm trying to fit multiple movies from a series on to as few dvd as possible, for example I own 9 Star Trek movies (1-9) and would like to fit them onto 3 dvds (1/3 dvd ea.). I know at those bitrates playing them on a standalone dvd player is probably useless but I have a digital projector I use for gaming with my computer 102'' screen ;) .
Any help in resolving this matter would be well appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Bassphine

[rpboy]

I am looking to get the best quality possible as I am trying to fit the movies into 1/4 dvd5 size so like 1.13 gigs apiece, or smaller. In essence I'm trying to fit multiple movies from a series on to as few dvd as possible, for example I own 9 Star Trek movies (1-9) and would like to fit them onto 3 dvds (1/3 dvd ea.). I know at those bitrates playing them on a standalone dvd player is probably useless but I have a digital projector I use for gaming with my computer 102'' screen .
I sure hope you're kidding.

You want to put 5 hours and 50 minutes of video on a DVD-5 disc and then you want to display the picture on a 102" screen?

I think its safe to say that there is no transcoder (or encoder for that matter, I'd wager) that could deliver quality that people would consider good.

Maybe if you encode them as DivX and play them from your PC to the 102" screen, it might not be that awful.

[nwg]

Why bother putting more than one on a DVD. Media is so cheap now. Use one blank for each DVD.

I have a 80" screen and will not go below 20% compression (most of the time) in software such as DVD Shrink.

PS. Asking "best of" questions is against forum rules.

[Bassphine]

Sorry didn't know asking what people thought of as the best trancoding program was, was against the rules. Wont happen again :-)
I know media is cheap but I like to push the boundries of technology just a lil past what it's supposed to do. Also as mentioned above by rpboy theres always divx, xvid, vp7 and others to encode movies with to achieve the same results. However whenever I try to encode the movies into any of those formats they come out looking like crap. So far only vp7 seems to be able to achieve any decent results and thats at the loss of detail, which only would be magnified on the screen.
I've tried putting a 2 hr 11 min. 56 sec. vid onto 2 700mb cd's (1400mb) w/mp3 audio @ 96 cbr. The results were horrible any motion was blocky, still scenes tended to go mushy, and details were rare at best. This was with XviD and DivX codecs with default settings as well as using recommended settings from the doom9 guides. This is the wrong forum for mpeg4 I know but I just wanted to throw that out there so ppl would know why I wanna use the mpeg2 transcoder solution.

[setarip_old]

I've tried putting a 2 hr 11 min. 56 sec. vid onto 2 700mb cd's (1400mb) w/mp3 audio @ 96 cbr. The results were horrible any motion was blocky, still scenes tended to go mushy, and details were rare at best. This was with XviD and DivX codecs
Since you raised the topic, just as an experiment, you might want to try the following:

Use MPEGMediator (or MPEGMediator Special Edition) in conjunction with the DivX v.3.11alpha codec. Set the DivX codec to 3,000Kbps and select .MP3 audio at stereo, CBR, 48,000Hz,160Kbps. I believe you'll find the results to be far more satisfactory than those you've described...

P.S. You'll find a link for MPEGMediator in the "signature" portion of posts by "SeeMoreDigital"

[battscrew]

Why bother putting more than one on a DVD. Media is so cheap now. Use one blank for each DVD.

I have a 80" screen and will not go below 20% compression (most of the time) in software such as DVD Shrink.

PS. Asking "best of" questions is against forum rules.


I have a 47" screen and would go below 10% using shrink, I agree with above just split it over a number of DVDs

[Bassphine]

Thanks for the tip setarip_old I will try that when I can get some time in. Battscrew like I was saying in my original post I know I can span multiple dvd's but the whole point of my asking was because I don't want to have to change disks when I host a trilogy, quadrilogy or however many movies there are in a particular series for my cosplay parties. Lol it takes from the fun when Frodo, Kirk, Jason, or Freedy Kruger have to stop acting and or making fun of a film just to change disks.
Before anyone asks I know I could just rip the movies to HD and play them from there, however in my case I can control the DVD drive from my computer with my remote control while my roommate or girlfriend use the computer for work. It's a sweet setup but like everything good there are drawbacks. This is why I am looking for a DVD setup as opposed to mpeg4. Perhaps this is a dead subject and I should start looking for another type of solution? Anyone else ever try what I am trying to do? I came across a site a long time ago where there were profiles listed for tmpeg that claimed to fit as much as 4-10 hrs onto a single DVD5 disk, I can't seem to fint it again, anyone else heard of this?
Again much appreciation for those of you that have repliad to this thread, hopefully a solution can be found or an alternative discovered.

Much Thanks
Bassphine

[castellanos]

Originally posted by Bassphine:
Also as mentioned above by rpboy theres always divx, xvid, vp7 and others to encode movies with to achieve the same results. However whenever I try to encode the movies into any of those formats they come out looking like crap.
Do you think you are going to have better results transcoding almost 6 hours on a DVD-5?
I do agree with rpboy, not even DVD Rebuilder/CCE encoding at 10 passes is going to give you a good video quality... (I mean, if you are not even satisfied with DivX or XviD, you can not pretend to have better quality on a mpeg2 at so low bitrates... :rolleyes: )
I think, from my point of view, the best solution would be as nwg suggested: Use more DVDs...
Or try again with DivX or XviD or another mp4 encoder at better bitrates.
Greetings! :sly: