DVDShrink 2.0 released

[TifKag]

Yes, it's your LiteOn.
A buddy of mine has the same problem with his LiteOn.
My Pioneer doesn't.

He just rips the movie with DVDdecrypter first (File mode/All files), and after that he decodes it with DVDshrink.

[herrde]

Hi,

so far I haven't heard too much from all you guys about the actual quality when using DVD Shrink 2.0!

The fact that it really is a professional piece of software with excellent ease of use remains undisputable. Also, its overall speed and the fact that you don't have to rip the original DVD first makes it somewhat outstanding. Plus, it seems to have less difficulties in dealing with multiangles/seamless branching in this latest version.

But qualitywise?

I did a copy of "Star Wars Episode II" (RC2/PAL) last night, setting the compression level of the main movie to 3 or 4 to get a reduction of about 25% (not too much compression IMHO).

I was clearly disappointed by the results. Macroblocks everywhere, especially in the yellow introduction text moving into space, but even worse in the first space scene in front of the black space - even on my TV, the macro blocks were very clearly visible!

Don't get me wrong - I definitely appreciate the programmer's effort, especially when regarding the "price" of DVD Shrink. But I would be more than willing to sacrifice some processing speed in favour of better picture quality. Therefore, I will stick with DVD95Copy which offers the best mixture of picture quality, possible compression settings and speed. Plus, DVD95Copy (like DVD2One) always uses the full capacity of a DVDR medium. Only if I want to copy a multiangle/seamless branching title, I use InstantCopy 7.

Anyone agreeing to my point? What do you say?

All the best,

G.

[TifKag]

The problems with decoding (version 2.0) in level 3 and higher are already discussed here !!!!!!!!!!!

that's why the author released a 2.1 beta version, tell us what the results are with THAT version

[djyeo]

Ok, regarding the CCS (DVD copy protection) error I got while dvdshrink was reading the DVD...I just solved it. It turned out that my LiteOn DVD drive was not assigned a region to play DVD movies. It was basically a region free (i think). I just got this new computer earlier yesterday. I tried to assigned the LiteOn drive to region 1 and the problem is solved. Now, I can rip the files using dvdshrink. If any of you have the same problem, try assigning the drive to region 1.

[TifKag]

That's a great tip for my buddy
THANKS

[herrde]

@TifKag:

(don't scream at me...! )

That's not true! The quality of Version 2.0 hasn't really been discussed here - there were only a few guys saying that the quality has improved and only one or two saying that the quality is still not good. But no one compared it to its competitors!

But anyway - I will try the beta of 2.1 tonight and see if the quality has improved. Haven't seen it yet, but I thought that the beta has just two more compression levels!?

G.

[TifKag]

Oops... sorry for screaming.

I was wrong about that discussion.

I have been reading at two forums, and the discussion i mentioned was on the other one.

here's the link
http://forum.digital-digest.com/show...threadid=21116
and
http://forum.digital-digest.com/show...5&pagenumber=1
Once again.....sorry

[dvdshrink]

I did a copy of "Star Wars Episode II" (RC2/PAL) last night, setting the compression level of the main movie to 3 or 4 to get a reduction of about 25% (not too much compression IMHO).

You did pick the most difficult example!!!

The first sequence in Star Wars II (with the letters scrolling into space) is composed entirely of P-pictures, with an I-picture every 12th frame. There are no B-pictures, which is very unusual. DVD Shrink tries to get most of its compression from B-pictures, which offer the best quality/compression tradeoff.

The results in DVD Shrink 2.1 are significantly improved at 25% compression, still some fuzziness around the edges of the text, but no visible blockiness. Beyond 25% this particular scene goes bad again, but the rest of the movie looks good at 45% or even 50%, in my opinion ;-)

[herrde]

Hi dvdshrink,

thanks for your fast reply, man!

I just checked what you wrote - and you are right; the quality has improved a lot! It almost seems that you have now won the war about the best "one-click-copier"; at least for the time being !

If now as the next step your "compression levels" could be exchanged for a "percentage option", the end of that "war" would be even nearer...

But I understand that this is a completely different approach than yours, right?

Keep up the good work, mate!

G.

[Pasqui]

@ dvdshrink

Hi, first of all, thanks for your great work ! It is greatly appreciated
I've been experiencing a strange behavior with either dvdshrink 2.0 and 2.1 beta. I reauthored Starwars 2 Attack of the Clone keeping only angle 2. The movie plays fine (btw compression in 2.1 is far better looking than 2.0) but I'm unable to seek in the movie with PowerDVD. Is it a known issue ?

Thanks in advance,
Pasqui.

[dvdshrink]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone would notice this!

In re-author mode, seeking is ok for Angle 1. For Angle 2, I can't copy the TMAP table because it is only authored on the disk for Angle 1, so I discard it and the result means PowerDVD seek bar doesn't work.

This will be fixed in a later release.

[dvdshrink]

Yes, please send me the ifos!

[Eyes`Only]

I have been trying to use DVDShrink on a really complex DVD. It has 7 VTSes, each of which have well over 100 PGCs (most of them in TTN1). VTS 1 alone has 243 PGCs, 1-241 are in TTN1, 242 is in TTN2, 243 is in TTN3. DVD Spec states a max of 99 titles per VTS, but doesn't limit PGCs, so I'm assuming the max would be 255. Scenarist states that 242 is the limit, but I cannot confirm this.

Anyway, when I try DVDShrink, it starts reading the DVD and then errors with "Insufficient System Resources...". My system has 1 GIG of RAM, and at the time of running this, I had about 600megs of it free for use.

I can supply .ifos and whatever else you may need. I'd really like to get DVDShrink to work with this title!

[Eyes`Only]

Hmm OK, how do you propose I go about doing that? I can't find your email address anywhere! PM me with it, if you'd like.

[Arty_ms]

I try DVDShrink 2.0 - info about removed audio streams not removed from new DVD title

[mpucoder]

Originally posted by Eyes`Only
I'm assuming the max would be 255. Scenarist states that 242 is the limit, but I cannot confirm this.

Max PGCs is 999 per title, 32,767 per VTS. Any other limit is a limitation of the program.

[Eyes`Only]

Thanks, I was wondering about that. Scenarist claims players might have a problem with PGC counts > 242.

[bramswell]

Hi
Anyone had a problem trying to read a disc that has already been backed up?

I use copy to DVD to burn my dics but when running these movies through DVDshrink it comes up with a message saying incorrect iso volume lable and wont continue,i then have to re-rip with decrypter then use file mode.

the only reason i would like to be able to do this is because i have made some backups with 2 movies per disc and want to put 1 movie per disc now,

if it is a case of using different burning software,any recommendations as to which to use,copy to DVD works well for me as disc will play on ps2 and some tempramental players which wouldn't work with nero

thanks

[duartix]

First things first:
Thank you very much for this excelent software.

Doubts:

One great feature of DVDShrink is the still movie compression. It saves a lot of space but still I find it a bit odd that it doesn't save even more. I don't know how bigger than P-Frames the I-Frames are but for an I-Frame every 25 frames (I guess that's the average), taking 10% of the space looks like too much since it's 1/25 = 4% of the total frames.
Of course this all changes if I-Frames are 4x bigger than P-Frames. This should come at 4x4=16% of the space. I'm not even putting the B-Frames in the pan which should be even smaller than P-Frames so this percentage could get even bigger. Again, unless of course you are heavily quantizing the I-Frames which I think you are.
Right?

Feature Request:

In Still Pictures you are taking just the I-Frames right?
I believe if the frames are still there, and since they are taking up the space, we should be able to play these streams. The problem is that there seems to be no indication of the dropped P-Frames and B-Frames. What I mean is that the video plays (imagine 1 I-Frame in every 25) at 25x while the audio plays at 1x. Total desynch and useless stream.
Can you place dropped frames where the P & B-Frames should be?
Whould it increase too much the filesize?

Another Feature request:

I'm probably the only one looking for this but here it goes:
I would like (I don't know if it's ther in 2.1, I haven't had the time to test it yet) another high compression Mode.

Can you create a new Almost Still Movie Mode?
This mode would have:
I - Level 3
P - Level 3
B - Dropped

This could also be achieved if you allowed the user to customize compression levels for each kind of frame. And I wouldn't say no to a Level 4 with even higher quantization.
I know that it falls from the target croud of this program but could win you a lot of the tweakers around...

[Kopernikus]

Would it be possible to make DS able to process MPEG2 streams instead of VOBS? That wuold be useful to shrink capture content or other MPEG2 stuff a little bit without reencoding.

Whats about the compatibility? Are there known problems with DS output in Standalone Players?

I like DS very much. Thank you.