Archiving DVDs with Nero Digital MPEG-4 AVC

[Thorax12]

Hello

I just want to archive all my DVDs on a harddisk, so that I can access all my movies from the mediacenter I've attached to my computer. I tested x264 and nero digital, and just have to be honest, that personally i think, it's a lot easier with nero digital than with x264, less tools needed. Anyway, that is not the question.

I'm currently not sure which format and bitrates I have to use, to have a good quality, which will also last in future, because I want to do the job just once. I tried to encode SHREK with different settings,

Standard AVC 1mbit
Standard AVC 1.5mbit
Standard AVC 2mbit
Cinema AVC 2mbit

So my real problem is, that in the output, I didn't see any qualit difference between the outputs, except the file size. in the properties i see, that there the average and maximum bitrate varies.

My questions
1) which bitrate do you think should I take for this?
2) as far as i understood, Cinema AVC is for higher resoloutions than DVD-PAL, so for archiving DVDs it does make no sense. right?
3) Should I use for this other tools than Nero digital?
4) Any other good hints from the pros?

Thanks for your help

[siddharthagandhi]

I use Nero Digital as well. It is indeed MUCH easier with Nero Recode, and I love the software suite. And the good part about it is that for my content I do not compromise quality by using Nero Digital instead of x264. Nero Digital has proven to be the best format for my videos, x264 doesn't give me good results.

I know a lot about Nero Recode and Nero Digital, especially because I use it all the time. Now to answer your questions...

1) For my content, which are Halo recordings, even the slightest bitrate change can be detected in a loss or gain in quality. However for movies, it is much harder to detect.

I can't tell you what bitrate unless you want to specify a file size per DVD that you are willing to allocate on your hard drive. Obviously you should put up the bitrate as high as you can in the space you have. I encode all my videos at 2 mbps. But that would mean 1 full movie would take up to 1.5 GB of space on your hard drive. I need to know how much space you are willing to use. But for general, since 2 mbps and 1 mbps looks the same to you, do 1.5 mbps.

2) Cinema AVC is a profile. These profiles don't have quality differences, they simply set limitations on the content you can encode. That is to make sure that you don't encode incompatibly with the Nero Digital capable players and things like that. Its simply a guideline. It doesn't matter what profile you encode in, for the most part. Unless you're dealing with HD or low low bitrate stuff, in which case you should deviate from the Standard Profile.

3) Don't understand your question.

4) I'm not a pro compared to many people here, but I have a lot of experience and I'm definetly not a noob. Some tips include: follow Doom 9's FAQ. Its great; and although most of the settings he specifies are defaults, some of them aren't, and those can add quality to the video. Unless you have a concern for encoding time I suggest 2-pass with maximum quality settings. For a dvd movie this could take several hours, maybe 5 plus hours.


And as my custom user title says, GO Nero Digital!!!!!!!!

[Thorax12]

1) For my content, which are Halo recordings, even the slightest bitrate change can be detected in a loss or gain in quality. However for movies, it is much harder to detect.

aehm, what are Halo recordings?

I can't tell you what bitrate unless you want to specify a file size per DVD that you are willing to allocate on your hard drive.
I want currently to use as low space as possible, but still have a good quality. I mean, the best is just to make iso-files, but then I use too much space. so If I use 1.5gb (this is 2mbit) i can live with that, but if lower bitrate is ok, I'm still happy


2) Cinema AVC is a profile. These profiles don't have quality differences, they simply set limitations on the content you can encode.

ok, that was what i thought

3) Don't understand your question.

yes, the question was if other tools are better than ND, but as I assume from your post, no :-)

yes, you are right, it takes about 7h for a DVD movie, but time doesn't matter, when the output is something that lasts also for the future :-) so thanks for your hints

btw, do you now if nero digital movies will play on standard mpeg4-avc players? i think the subtitles don't work, but the rest?

thanks

[siddharthagandhi]

1) halo recordings are recordings of a video game called Halo...using Fraps (www.fraps.com)

2) Since you said you witnessed no quality differences between the various bitrates, encode at a lower bitrate. But just to be safe (1 mb might have bad quality in certain scenes you haven't seen yet) put it at 1.5 mbps bitrate.

3) profile thing you got it

4) in this forum we arent allowed to say whats best or not (even though I believe we should be)....a mod seeing that would say to do your own tests...but as a brief response...many codec tests including MSU's and Doom9's show that Ateme codec (used in Nero Digital) is in the top three codecs. It is a very good codec. The only real competitor is x264 (but i get bad results with that) and maybe, remotely maybe, xvid.

5) as of now there are very few (there might not be any) released players that support Nero Digital, but there are many more coming..and yes i'm not entirely sure but i think the player specifically has to support Nero Digital in order for it to work\\

There is a thread about this here at Doom9.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=95047&highlight=Nero+Digital+hardware+players

[siddharthagandhi]

Few more links, read up on Nero Digital players and the codec:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=94538

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88775

[foxyshadis]

Nero Digital's codec is subpar to Ateme's private codec, though; ND's hasn't been updated in, what, a year now? While Ateme's as of four months ago greatly surpassed it. That was the one doom9 compared against, not ND's current one (well, he did that one too and it didn't do so hot).

If you want to find out quickly the relative quality of an encode, check out very dark scenes with a lot of grain or motion, and rainy/foggy scenes. Those are where AVC typically hiccups, usually by smoothing way too much at lower bitrates.

[siddharthagandhi]

Yes, Ateme's best codec is High Profile, while Nero Digital is main profile. But its still a great codec, even though its main profile. And High profile in Nero Recode 3 will make it even better.

My experiences show that the darkest scenes with almost no lighting are where AVC screws up.