Instant Copy results on a difficult one

[SupaCoopa]

I've been hearing about Instant Copy a lot, so I thought give it a try. I wanted to see how it would perform on the most difficult of a situation, that being the SW II DVD. The movie is quite long (148' in PAL) and the disc is THX certified, which means video and audio quality are supposed to be near perfect. There is next to nothing more than the movie on the disc, so I chose to do a "mirror" backup without leaving anything out.

I used Hidden Settings Editor and loaded the "Recommended Options". Instant Copy said it would shrink the movie by 61% and after a couple of hours the backup disc was ready. Surely that was fast by any means. I grabbed my pop-corn and sit down to watch the clone of "The Clones", haha nice one :p

From the beggining, I noticed some pixelation, which of course I expected. The first shock came in chapter 6 were Natalie is attacked by worms while sleeping. Hey, surely this is not DivX? Then, on chapter 23 where the two lovebirds talk by the fireplace, disaster stroke again. I used to think that only VCD could macroblock this way, now I don't. To cut a long story short, every single dark-lit scene of the movie was destroyed. The bright outdoor scenes were very nicely transcoded indeed, even lightning-fast-moving ones were very close to the original. But I just couldn't bear any nightly or indoor scene, and this was only on a 28" TV. Just out of curiosity, I went through the problematic scenes checking the bitrate. I was surprised to see that it was about 1.8 - 1.9 while on the "good" scenes it was around 5.5 - 6.0 and on some cases it was topping at 9.8. This leads me to believe that Instant Copy does not "analyze" the movie in a good manner. I thought 1.8 on DVD resolution is only good for closing credits. Instant Copy disagrees and loses the game for me.

The matter is that my other clone, made with CCE Basic which costs about the same as IC, looks nicer. Sure there is some pixelation here and there, but it's not distracting. The bitrate doesn't ever go below 2.8 where it shouldn't, colourful bright scenes look fab as ever but the main difference is in dark and shady ones where CCE wins hands down. It may take a good eight hours for the same job IC does in two, but it pays. And I may have to do all the work by myself but I can eventually have a back-up that I can actually watch.

[k2]

For me it's hit or miss

Sometime the quality is great (as good as CCE) on long movies
sometimes the size is perfect


Sometimes NOT :mad:

depends on the movie.

These are some of the reasons MrBass (Doom9.org host) and others have tossed it aside.

[duartix]

What about this for a option?:

- "Hard", long movies only

That's what I use it for.

[Yannis]

IC7 is perhaps the best transcoder, but with ... 148 mins you are pushing it to its limits.

I have seen excellent quality with IC7, comparable to that of encoders (see other threads for the reasons) but I never do anything over ~115 mins with IC7. In fact very long movies, such as >140 mins, you will notice differences even with CCE & TMPGEnc encoders. Obviously, the times I gave relate to the movie content as well.

[SupaCoopa]

@ Yannis
Geia sou file. I agree that 148 mins is quite long to have decent quality on a DVD-R, since you only have one layer's capacity to use. I have seen the good results IC can achieve with normal length movies and expected a loss in quality anyway, but what I didn't like was IC's inefficiency in certain cases, that being the dark-lit no-movement scenes. The rest of the movie turned out to be quite nice, but those parts were really horrible and that's a shame. I expected a more "thoughtful" approach by IC, ie not go lower than, say, 3 Kbit in any part of the movie, especially when needed. Sure it has to drop almost half the bitrate of the original, but as IC is I think there is much room for improvement on the "analyzer" engine of the program. I think the problem lies there, if it decides it only needs so little bitrate, you can't have a good result no matter how good your encoder engine is.

@ k2
Any ideas on what makes IC a hit or miss thing? What makes IC lose it, quality or size-wise?

@ duatrix
That falls into "Everything" then, doesn't it? ;)

[Uncle Joe]

With this kind of long ( and dark) movies, I decript it first with DVD2SVCD,720x576 and 48000mhz and working, of curse,with CCE.
After that I make a DVD with Tmpdvd.

[k2]

I agree it is in the analyzing.
It seems to only sample the data of the chapter entry points of the movie. Not a large enough sampling and then predicts the rest of the movie. Which maybe right or wrong. You would think with 5 passes on the analyzing it would be better.
Yes, you can change some setting related to this in the REG but seems to have no effect.

[Feoke]

Originally posted by duartix
What about this for a option?:

- "Hard", long movies only

That's what I use it for.

Indeed! Where's this option?
How can I vote for a poll where I can't find my answer or even one that looks remotely like it?

[snidely]

I know IC is a popular program around here, but I'll go against the grain anyway. :)

I find it basically good for nothing.

I don't like to use compression at all, so if the backup does not fit onto a single disc, then the first things to go are the menus and the extras, so I have no need for a 1:1 copier. On movies requiring very little compression (like 15% or less), just about any of the transcoders will give you satisfying results (I'm trying to stay politically correct here by not directly comparing them), and IC takes too long to be used as a "fast" transcoder. On such movies why anyone would waste 2 hours+ when they can get comparable results in 15-20 minutes is beyond me.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we have the movie that takes up almost all of the available 9 gigs, in which case I still do not use any compression and merely split the movie onto two DVD-Rs, and in most cases I can even keep the menus and extras if I want to.

So now we have the movies that fall in between these two categories - too big to process through one of the "fast" compressors but too small to bother wasting two discs on. Now I know someone is going to say "Aha, here is where IC7 really shines", but actually, here is where I use CCE. Since both CCE and IC7 both work in the realm of "hours" instead of "minutes", I consider them both to be long processes, and if I am going to run a long process, I'll stick with CCE.

Other problems with IC7:

Unfriendly and clumsy interface
Unpredictable output target size
Proprietary ISO output
Requires the use of 3rd party apps to make it even usable
Has plenty of bugs and quirks when working on particular titles

Who needs this aggravation? CCE always works perfectly, DVDShrink makes for a great "fast" (and free :) ) compressor with some simple, yet pretty nifty reauthoring features, and IfoEdit can take of any problems that these two programs can't fix on their own.

I know that a lot of people think that IC7 is wonderful, so for those who continue to use it, I am happy for you and I wish you the best. I only offer these opinions as an alternative, and hopefully some people will try out CCE (for simplicity just use DVD2DVD-R/CCE), DVDShrink, and IfoEdit. Once you do, I doubt that many will go back to IC7.

[Yannis]

2 hours vs. 20 mins...correct!
...well, since i do less than 12 disks every day (actually it is < 1! per day), waiting a bit more is not an issue. I am setting the process to low priority and do anything else I need to.

As it has been explained by 0xdeadbeef in some other threads, IC7 does a variable coefficient elimination in the DCT domain. All other transcoders use constant, i.e. they remove the same data from all frames. This can be bad for some motion scenes, but it is a personal preference of the perception of quality and there is no "correct" answer as such :D

For long movies, IC7 will fail and for longer movies TMPGEnc/CCE will do as well. Then splitting is a must :D

[Ton80]

I must say I have been pleased with IC7's results.
I dont know if it is just becase I have it analyze a greater % of the disk or blind luck, but My 'backup' of Stare Wars II suffers none of the problems mentioned above. The "Worm" scene is very well rendered and almost no artifatcs at all. In fact if it wasnt for my trying to see them I wouldn't even notice them. I didnt analyze the bitrate so cant say what was used. The Fireplace scene was also well encoded and not far from the original's quality (NTSC version not PAL)

As far as output size I have had good luck.
2% reserve space and 4.35GB disk size setting with anlyzing 20-50% and 200 MB min analyzed has almost always yielded a disk between 4.30 and 4.38 GB. Just did 'Holy Grail' yesterday and came out 13MB below a full disk. It doesn't get much closer then that.

The one major complaint I have is that 100% setting seems to recode the video rather then just copy. The resulting file is larger then the original and that doesnt make sense! For Charlie's Angels where I tried to leave the movie at 100% and keep the extras shrunk to 35%. Result was 4.8GB. Did it again with the movie at 99.25% and everything else the same and the result was 4.36GB.
The downside of these settings is added time. Over 3.5 hours on my P4 2.4GH with 512MB RAM instead of the ~2.25 hours with the default settings(this is with the current 7.11 patch). I am more then willing to give up 1 hour for better results.

In response to the person that said that it needs 3rd party apps - Dont they all? Isnt DVDXcopy&XcopyXpress the only ones that dont need a seperate ripping tool? The only 3rd party app I use is DVDDycryptor which does the RIP and the Burn phases. I dont let IC7 do the burning since DVDDecryptor does it better.

[snidely]

In response to the person that said that it needs 3rd party apps - Dont they all?

Sorry if I wasn't clear on my meaning. What I am talking about are things like the various PDI tools that are needed due to the use of a proprietary ISO format (I can't for the life of me understand what Pinnacle was thinking here). I like to view and test my rips before burning to make sure that everything went as planned, rather than just burn them blindly. In fact, I don't like to use ISO format at all, and would much rather deal with the files directly, especially if I want to manipulate the rip further. Oh, and let's not forget the registry editors and shells that need to be used if you want to get the best out of IC7. These are the third party apps I was talking about, not ripping and burning tools.

I have never complained about IC7's video quality (though I still believe that CCE is better) - It's just everything else about the program that sucks. Hey, but to each his own, and if you enjoy putting up with all these quirks and recoding twice or more to get the output file size right, then by all means have fun!

[Ton80]

I will agree to the fact that a PDI instead of an .iso is VERY annoying. Why they did that is a mystery to me as well and maybe they can get a clue and switch to using standard .iso format instead. In the mean time maybe Daemon tools will decide to support .pdi's like dvddycryptor has.

As far as the need to make registry settings(either drect or with a 3rd party gui) it is not mandatory and newbie users will never know the option exists and still get good results, just not quite as good. This is the type of compromise I would expect from a 1st tier software vendor. They do not want to put these type of advanced options in the main GUI because then they would have to deal with the clueless enduser who messes around and breaks the program. I am just glad(and impressed) that they were willing to publish information about these registry settings at all. Smaller SW companies and freeware products are not as concerned about support becuse these "Average Joe's" are not their main concern. They realize they will have a more tech savey client base then a product sold at Best Buy.

I must admit I am tempted to try DVD2DVD-R/CCE, but the simplicity and quality results of IC7 have not made this a 'must do now' thing. For the novice IC7 is relatively simple. For the average user IC7's clunky interface is acceptable. For the tech user DVD2DVD-R/CCE is probably better and even though I usually would put myself in this group I have just been too lazy to try it yet. Maybe if I had the problems others seemed to have had with IC in the past I would have, but the only 2 thing that are must fix issues for me are the 100% quirk and the addition of track removal/remastering of the ifo. Track removal is not a real feature yet even though it can be tried.

The quality comments in my post were more aimed at the originator of this thread - sorry for the confusion there.

Oh by the way... the movie i did last night
Original 6.77GB
IC7 - 4.36GB With the exception of the 100% glitch I have yet to go over 4.38GB or under 4.31GB Guess I am lucky.

[snidely]

I must admit I am tempted to try DVD2DVD-R/CCE, but the simplicity and quality results of IC7 have not made this a 'must do now' thing. For the novice IC7 is relatively simple. For the average user IC7's clunky interface is acceptable. For the tech user DVD2DVD-R/CCE is probably better and even though I usually would put myself in this group I have just been too lazy to try it yet.

Actually DVD2DVD-R/CCE is easier to use than IC7. I would advise beginners to stay clear of IC7 due to the reasons I have already mentioned, and at the same time I would not hesitate to recommend DVD2DVD-R/CCE to even a total novice, especially those in PAL land. For NTSC users, the process is very slightly more complicated and will require the use of Scenarist, so the "one click" method turns out to be more like "three clicks" instead. The use of the DOITFAST series of programs and CCE would be more for the techie types and/or the real perfectionists.

Although I haven't yet reached any solid conclusions, the new Nero Recode beta 0.90 has a lot of promise, though I don't know how it will fare against the likes of CCE as yet. It's still too soon to tell. :)

[Yannis]

I will have to agree with snidely about dvd2dvd-r/cce. It is so bloody simple, a starter cannot wish for anything simpler than that: just the movie in a couple of clicks... I wish this tool existed when I started over a year ago.... but then... I would have missed all the fun!!! :D :D :D

As for IC7, I quite like it a lot for its quality, but we have to bear in mind that we all expect the new version to rid all the well known issues. After that it could be recommended to a novice truly easily.

[The Belgain]

I'd have said Attack of the Clones was a fairly easy movie to compress: although it is long, it is such a clean source (due to the digital filming) that it is really compressible. I've produced a good 1CD DivX rip very easily.

I'm doing Saving Private Ryan with all extras onto one DVD and that's proving quite challenging. As well as runtime being 163 mins, it is very grainy (deliberately) and therefore very incompressible. So far I've used only Recode, and the result was very blocky in parts.

edit: the IC7 transcode has just finished and it looks considerably worse than the one I did with Recode. In addition to this it took 3 hours rather than 1. Looks like I'll have to be moving on to CCE instead eh?

[MackemX]

My comparision

Link (http://www.deano.dsl.pipex.com/temp/quality.png)

some of you will know what I mean :cool:

[quinn]

DVD2DVD-R only does the movie - if you want the extras, it's no longer simple. In the cases where you actually want the extras, IC is easier...