how to avoid reencoding part of a dvd

[ztrmils]

Kind of a newbie kinda question, here.

I'd like to backup a dvd where the main movie is untouched, but the extras are shrunk down enough so that the whole thing fits onto a dvd-5. The main movie in this case is about 3.4GB and the extras are a little more than that. If I tell DVD-RB to steal 50% from extras and do the half-d1 thing, the output for the Prepare stage says that "Movie improvement from extra reduction = 100.0%" Does that mean that the main movie is untouched?

Using HC, when I start reencoding, it seems that the main movie is being reencoded by HC. I understand the need for it to be processed, but I'd have expected that it would be done exactly as it was without going through any of the actual reencoding process.

Can I do what I want to do?

[Sevenhunt]

Ehm, no not exactly.

Most of the time The main movie has to be reencoded to be able to fit on a dvd-5.
But you do have the possibility of limiting this as much as possible.
The best thing is to remove all the extras before encoding, for example with pgcedit.
With the setup you`ve got it wouldn`t be worth keeping the extras because they are really bad quality.
It`s possible for a dvd to fit on a dvd-5 now, but most dvd`s still need reencoding.

With dvd-rb pro you have the possibility to let dvd-rb select only the main movie and the menu. But editing before is still better.

Now you`ll see, that when you`ve deleted all the extras, the movie probably won`t fit on a dvd-5 so you still need encoding.
But that isn`t bad.
If you get a bitrate of 3000 or up, as dvd-rb calculates in the beginning, you won`t see any difference from the original.
Some people even say 2800 and up.

[blutach]

But ztrmills has the situation already that if he gets rid of the extras with PgcEdit or VobBlanker, there is no need to re-encode at all.

I'm not sure if RBKeeper works on the current versions of DVD-RB, but it's original intent was to keep the movie untouched and only encode the extras. See links in the stickies.

Also, RB-Opt may help, I'm sure.

Regards

[Sevenhunt]

Well, if indeed the main movie and menu fits on a dvd-5, then just delete the rest with pgc-edit and burn.
No need to use dvd-rb at all.

They don`t come much easier.

[blutach]

Except I do get the feeling he'd like to keep some of the extras.

Regards

[Sevenhunt]

Sure, but and 50% and half, makes very bad quality extras. But hey If he wants that indeed it could mean that the main movie is untouched.

But even if it is encoded, the bitrate would be so high that you won`t see it.

[SpazzHH]

Kind of a newbie kinda question, here.

I'd like to backup a dvd where the main movie is untouched, but the extras are shrunk down enough so that the whole thing fits onto a dvd-5. The main movie in this case is about 3.4GB and the extras are a little more than that. If I tell DVD-RB to steal 50% from extras and do the half-d1 thing, the output for the Prepare stage says that "Movie improvement from extra reduction = 100.0%" Does that mean that the main movie is untouched?

Using HC, when I start reencoding, it seems that the main movie is being reencoded by HC. I understand the need for it to be processed, but I'd have expected that it would be done exactly as it was without going through any of the actual reencoding process.

Can I do what I want to do?
To actually answer your question, no. At this time, all VTS's are re-encoded regardless of your setup. The ability to choose whether to leave something "untouched" is something that is being considered as a possible future feature. The "Movie improvement from extra reduction = 100.0%" means that by selecting Half-D1 and Half Space for Extras, you have doubled what the bitrate would have been if you had not selected it.
And always remember that pre-processing your videos is always a creative option, however jdobbs has stated on many occasions that he will not respond to any bug threads if the project in question has been pre-processed. Sometimes it's hard enough to find RB's little quirks, much less those introduced by someone else's software. If you are going to pre-process, and you run into an error, always try it on the pure source first before reporting any problems.
Spazz

[wmansir]

RB-Keeper was an addon tool designed for just this function. Unfortunately the author seems to have abandoned it, and I doubt it will work with the latest versions of DVD-RB, as I couldn't even get it to work with the current version at the time of it's development.

You could hack your way thru this and get it done, thought it may be more work than you want to do.

Step 1.
Setup DVD-RB to do a "no Compression" rebuild, but just complete the "Prepare" step in 3-click mode.

Step 2.
Check the D2VAVI directory in the DVD-RB working directory and find the .m2v files for the main movie. MOVE them to another folder, leave the .m2v files for any extras you want to re-encode.

Step 3.
Rerun DVD-RB, this time with the encoder method of your choice, again Prepare step only.

Step 4.
Using RB-Opt or Ecl Optimizer, set the bitrates for all the movie segments to 100%. This will adjust the Extra settings to the correct bitrates to hit the final DVD5 size when they are re-encoded and combined with the original movie .m2v files. Be sure and save the .ecl/.inf files in RB-Opt/Optimizer.

Step 5.
You can either run the DVD-RB "Encode" step and let it waste some time re-encoding the main movie, or you can fiddle with the rebuilder.inf file to skip encoding of the main movie.

The "Encode_Progress=XX" line in the Rebuilder.inf file tracks how many segments have been encoded. If you increment the count it will skip over some segments when you start the Encode phase.

If you movie is at the end of the Encode phase you can cancel the Encode step and set the line "Progress=x" to "Progress=3" to allow you to run the Rebuild step without finishing the Encode step.

Step 6.
Copy the .m2v files from Step 2 back into the D2VAVS folder, overwrite existing files. MAKE SURE you have a matching .m2v file for ever .FLG file. Then run the Rebuild step in DVD-RB.

This should use the original video extracted in step 1 to rebuild a new DVD with the re-encoded extras.

[blutach]

Here's an alternative way of going about thing - one that has worked for me. I know it means "pre-processing" but these tools work fine.

1. Blank the VTS containing the main movie (and any extras you don't want) in PgcEdit/VobBlanker/DVDRMP. This leaves a fully compliant DVD with just the extras you want.

2. Figure out the size of the movie - this is easy - just look at the PgcEdit/VobBlanker backup folder. To this, add the sizes of menus and IFOs and subtract this from 4.37Gb. Convert this to sectors and set the resultant TargetSectors in the options section of the rebuilder.ini (I know this feature isn't quite accurate, so maybe lower these sectors by about 5%).

3. Process and rebuild as normal with the matrices you like. Use RB-Opt, RME, whatever you think is right. This ends up with your extras only encoded to the correct space and is quite quick (less than 2 hours).

4. Now replace the PGC containing the main movie (which you blanked in step 1) from the backup files with either VobBlanker or DVDRMP. Both these tools will carry over the domain streams attributes and subpic CLUTs etc.

5. Test and burn.

6. Don't forget to delete the "TargetSectors" line you inserted in rebuilder.ini afterwards.

I have found this to be a bit easier than moving files out of rebuilder.inf and setting processing progress manually.

Hope it works for you.

Regards

[ztrmils]

Thanks so much to ALL of you.

Sevenhunt, as I stated at the beginning, the main movie is about 3.4GB, so it could easily fit on a DVD-5. The extras are a little over 4GB, so compressing them down to a quarter of that would make for poor quality. But I don't really mind that in this case. I'm more interested in the audio in the extras than the video, which is not so good to begin with.

It seems strange to me to reencode the main movie completely even though there's no need. Lots of time to change something that doesn't need to be changed. Not that I'm refusing to do it. I may well end up doing it that way.

I'd already played with RB Keeper a little and it doesn't seem to work anymore.

wmansir, you came up with exactly what I was looking for. I'll at least give it a try to see how it goes. It all makes sense to me with the possible exception of Step 5, the part that deals with Rebuilder.inf. Though I'm not that familiar with all the values in that file, I'm comfortable experimenting. It's just that I may not understand this clearly enough to do it right.

I'm starting the process as I write. I'll check back once I get a sense of what's happening.

[ztrmils]

blutach, I just read your approach, which didn't post until after I posted mine, timestamp notwithstanding. I'll play with that, too.

wmansir, do you mean in Step 1 that I should move the .mpv files? There are no .m2v files created in my prepare step.

[wmansir]

If there are no .m2v files created with "no compression" try Rejig Mode, which I know extracts the video files.

I assumed "No Compression" did too, but I haven't actually used it very much. Now I realize it could just copy the video stream directly from the source during rebuild, like it does with the subs and audio.

[robot1]

If you have .mpv files, rename to m2v and copy over.

[ztrmils]

I'll work with these methods. Thanks.

[jdobbs]

Yes, no compression extracts the MPV files. They are renamed to M2V in the "Encode" Phase (hey, it had to do something in encode).

[jptheripper]

is a "no compression" option in the segment editor still in the works for v1.0 final? or is it for v1.1

[jdobbs]

Probably V1.10 -- unless I get some time this week.

[jptheripper]

cool, thanx for the update