Finally tried DVD-RB. Something is really wrong

[Mephiston]

Well i tried it on a CSI Disk.

It made the first episode really big, like 3 gigs, and made the others tiny. 500 Megs. I guess it treated them as extras.

Is there any way around this ? I am trying again with all of the Reducing Extra's options unchecked, i am asuming it will give the same bitrate to everything. Or will it still give less bitrate to what it thinks are extras ?

Oh and one more thing, when doing other disks with Big 3, i noticed each VTS has 3 PGC's, the first 2 are for the play all, and the last one is for the Episode Selection. Doitfast chooses PGC3 as the default, how would DVD-RB know which one to choose (Or will it).

[wmansir]

You shouldn't use Steal space of half&half with eposidic discs. DVD-RB just picks the largest VTS and makes all other VTSs extras.

DVD-RB doesn't care about PGCs, it doesn't work that way.

[Mephiston]

Awesome. So basically it will do seamless-branching disks without problem. This is great.

[Skinleech]

No. It doesn't suport branching as yet. You'll need to remove the angle with another tool, then backup, or wait if you want the full disk.

[Mephiston]

Ok tried it again.

It worked fine this time, giving equal bitrate to each episode. Episodes still have lots of Macroblocks though. Will try one more time with a lower Bias setting, if that don't work then back to the Big 3 again for a bit.

I really can't wait till this app is on par with doing CCE manually, because boy is it sure convenient.

[TheSeeker]

It IS on par with doing it manually. Just need to gain some experience on when to use what settings. I would recommend using vbr bias 25 (maybe 20 if its a big encode) and qual prec of 16 that is pretty standard and shouldn't produce any macroblocks. The worst I have seen is a little grainyness but you will get that no matter what you do if you are compressing a whole lot. I encoded the Taken miniseries with DVD RB at compression ratios of 55% with no macroblocks whatsoever so Im not sure why you are getting them.

EDIT: Just curious. What are the settings your using?

[jdobbs]

Awesome. So basically it will do seamless-branching disks without problem. This is great. That's what I'm working on now. I'm planning for it to be supported in one of the next two versions (depending upon whether I release a maintenance version in the interim).

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by Mephiston
Ok tried it again.

It worked fine this time, giving equal bitrate to each episode. Episodes still have lots of Macroblocks though. Will try one more time with a lower Bias setting, if that don't work then back to the Big 3 again for a bit.

I really can't wait till this app is on par with doing CCE manually, because boy is it sure convenient. I did all of Season 1 (NTSC) with no problems.

[TheSeeker]

@jdobbs

By the way, seamless branching support will be an absolute godsend. I am waiting in anticipation, mostly because Shrink doesn't seem to handle seamless branching very well so I have to use IC8. And well that has issues of its own. So it will be nice to have a high quality solution to seamless branching titles (besides big 3 that is). Just wondering (and im not suggesting that you do this im just wondering what your plans are) what you are planning to do with seamless branching support? are you going to give the ability to remove seamless branching? Or just to support encoding of titles that use it? Either way i will be ecstatic.

[Skinleech]

Originally posted by jdobbs
That's what I'm working on now. I'm planning for it to be supported in one of the next two versions (depending upon whether I release a maintenance version in the interim).

That's great news jdobbs. Thanks again for your hard work to date.

[SansGrip]

Originally posted by jdobbs
That's what I'm working on now. I'm planning for it to be supported in one of the next two versions (depending upon whether I release a maintenance version in the interim).
You rule :).

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
@jdobbs

By the way, seamless branching support will be an absolute godsend. I am waiting in anticipation, mostly because Shrink doesn't seem to handle seamless branching very well so I have to use IC8. And well that has issues of its own. So it will be nice to have a high quality solution to seamless branching titles (besides big 3 that is). Just wondering (and im not suggesting that you do this im just wondering what your plans are) what you are planning to do with seamless branching support? are you going to give the ability to remove seamless branching? Or just to support encoding of titles that use it? Either way i will be ecstatic. The first interation will probably only recreate the DVD with the seamless branching intact. Removal is pretty simple, and will be supported at some point. But my personal preference is to keep the DVD working the way it was designed as much as possible, so that gets priority.

[TheSeeker]

Very cool. Thanks for the reply.

[Mephiston]

Ok still not getting a decent bitrate.

On CSI S1 D3, menu shrunk as far as it can go, logo's and extras removed DVD-RB gives a Max Bitrate of 2600, Average of 2500. This is horrible.

With Doitfast4u i get an average of 3000.

How can there be such a difference ? I have set the targetsectors thing in the ini file to a higher number to get close to maximum dvd size.

Also, whats with the max of 2600 for encoding ? This is gonna produce a horrible looking encode since action scenes need a lot more than this.

Am i doing something wrong ? Or does DVD-RB just encode at a lower bitrate for some reason.

[jdobbs]

I can't comment on DoItFast4U... don't know how they calculate.

DVD-RB sets the maximum bitrate to 9000 (and 8500 under some specific circumstances). If it isn't showing as 9000 in your ECL files it can only be because you have manually changed it using the parameter in the rebuilder.ini file. That is also the likely cause of your blocking problems.

[robot1]

Originally posted by Mephiston
Ok still not getting a decent bitrate.

On CSI S1 D3, menu shrunk as far as it can go, logo's and extras removed DVD-RB gives a Max Bitrate of 2600, Average of 2500. This is horrible.
These are average bitrate. 2500 is the average bitrate of the full disk, while 2600 is the maximum average bitrate of a single cell. Max Bitrate is 9000 (or less, but not so low).

[Mephiston]

Why would doitfast & cce be able to pull an extra 500 Average bitrate though ??

Is it because Rebuilder does all PGC's (Even duplicates) but Big 3 you can choose which ones, and in this case i only do 1 for episode select (Lose the Play All Button this way).

Can't see how it would make any difference though, as all 3 PGC's are identical Length/Size. Just one is for Episode Select, 1 is for Play All.

I did go through with a backup with DVD-RB at 2500, looks prety good, definately better than shrink or any other transcoder, but still not as good as Big3 and Telecide/Decimating the movie.

[TheSeeker]

It may be that the big 3 can produce higher quality just because of the ability to customize and get rid of absolutely everything not needed (although i personally havent noticed any huge quality difference). But I think the biggest attraction of Rebuilder is that you get really good encoding (as opposed to transcoding) with CCE (and avs filter functionality), and its about 5 million times easier to use than big 3 on a good day. Not to mention you dont need 85 different programs and 2000 dollar sonic scenarist.

[Mephiston]

Big 3 is a pain at times, but once you get the hang of it, it ain't that bad at all.

DVD-RB is really easy and convenient though. I'm gonna keep working with it for a bit, hopefully i can figure out these couple little quirks.

[jdobbs]

If Big 3 is giving a higher bitrate, it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. It's a scientific fact that you can only fit 10 pounds of sh*t in a 10 pound bag. Something is being removed if you are getting 500Kbs more...

[Mephiston]

Ya i imagine it's because DVD-RB basically does a Demux by VOB (I'm sure thats not what it does, but thats what would be the Doitfast equiv.) and that always reduces bitrate in Doitfast as well. I guess it isn't a problem unless the disk is huge.

Overall after trying another disk i must say DVD-RB is an excellent program, very easy to use. I still think Big3 gives slightly better results, but 90% of the time wouldn't be worth the trouble.

Thanks for a great program!

[jdobbs]

Nope, it doesn't demux at all. It does organize by cell, however. But the bitrate isn't related to that at all. It is determined by the size of the original and the size available for output. I wouldn't agree that the Big 3 gives better results... I would in fact argue that on mixed interlaced/telecined sources it does worse.

One thing that might affect the bitrate would be the fact that DVD-RB doesn't redo the menus. So if you have some exceptionally large menus it might make a difference. They'd have to be very large, though, to make a 500Kbs difference.

[erdoke]

Originally posted by Mephiston
Why would doitfast & cce be able to pull an extra 500 Average bitrate though ??

Is it because Rebuilder does all PGC's (Even duplicates) but Big 3 you can choose which ones, and in this case i only do 1 for episode select (Lose the Play All Button this way).

Can't see how it would make any difference though, as all 3 PGC's are identical Length/Size. Just one is for Episode Select, 1 is for Play All.

I did go through with a backup with DVD-RB at 2500, looks prety good, definately better than shrink or any other transcoder, but still not as good as Big3 and Telecide/Decimating the movie.

Average bitrate of the main movie should be exactly the same if everything else on the DVD is the same as well. If you have more space with RB dedicated to extras and menus for example, sure you get lower bitrate for the main movie. In the end it is 4,37 GB for both method.

You can lower the bitrate of extras and menus (though the latter is usually not a wise decision) by using RB-Opt. Thus you are able to maintain higher average bitrate for the movie itself.
Or just get rid of extras if you do not want to split it to two disks and unpleased with the quality of low bitrate.;)

[quantum]

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, since it's overflowing with broken logic and improperly drawn conclusions, but I'll just say listen to jdobbs. He's right.

Don't draw conclusions until you have enough experience and knowledge to justify them.

[erdoke]

Originally posted by quantum
I wasn't going to comment on this thread, since it's overflowing with broken logic and improperly drawn conclusions, but I'll just say listen to jdobbs. He's right.

Don't draw conclusions until you have enough experience and knowledge to justify them.

If the logic is broken in my post, comments would be even more useful from experienced users...
And yes I think I am listening to jdobbs. I agree, he's right.

[quantum]

@erdoke: my post wasn't intended to be a reply to yours, but to the posts in the thread suggesting b3 gives better results than Rebuilder.

[erdoke]

Originally posted by quantum
@erdoke: my post wasn't intended to be a reply to yours, but to the posts in the thread suggesting b3 gives better results than Rebuilder.

Oh, sorry then, there were no signs who you answered to. I thought it was me beacuse yours was just after my post.:)

[smlong426]

I have used Rebuilder on quite a few movies now, and use pretty much the default settings (usually using half d1/half space for extras) and I have never seen a macro block in my output.

[erdoke]

Originally posted by smlong426
I have used Rebuilder on quite a few movies now, and use pretty much the default settings (usually using half d1/half space for extras) and I have never seen a macro block in my output.

Macroblocks never come from Rebuilder itself. They produced by MPEG2 encoding with too low bitrate. One of the important features that differentiates encoders is the level when it gets too low.

I would say that you are lucky if you have not seen macroblocks with "Half space for extras" turned on. Try some long movie with lot of extras, and you will recognize them at least with extras.

[Glacier505]

well, I dunno exactly whats going on and I don't have the knowledge to draw my own conclusions, but I was recently backing up Boy Meets World disk 1, and without the extras and trailers and all that junk, just the main episodes, when i hit "prepare" in DVD-RB, it was giving an average bitrate of like 2750, whereas when I did the exact same thing, settings and all, in DVD2SVCD, it was giving an average of 3550, now that is a huge difference.

[TheSeeker]

DVD2SVCD is cutting something out, because you dont have that much of a difference in bitrate without a pretty big difference in filesize. It must be cutting out menus or extras or something, believe me there is now way that there is that big of a difference without there being a difference in content. Something is being cut out of the dvd2svcd one.

EDIT: Or that particular program allows for you to assign different bitrates to menus and extras as opposed to main movie. Because as it stands, with no 3rd party apps dvd rebuilder does everything at the same bitrate. If youget RB-Opt though you can assign seperate bitrates on a per vob id basis

[erdoke]

Maybe it's just a difference in what was calculated.

The difference is 600 kbps (can be one 5.1 DD and another 2.0 for example), so I guess the first one is for the entire movie and the second is for the MPEG2 stream only. RB adds the original audio stream to the movie during the rebuilding stage, so after preparation it has pic only.
Average bitrate can be calculated for any streams or the whole movie easily by dividing the size with the duration time.

[jsoto]

DVD2SVCD (DVD2DVD) is a movie-only program. No menus, no extras. Maximum number of audio channels=2. You can also change the final target size

DVD-RB is a full backup program. Menus and extars are included. Also, you can keep all the audios

jsoto