DVD Rebuilder Questions

[Kevin523]

I'm a new poster and I'm sorry for several questions in one post, but I figured it would be easier for me to track.

First of all, I would like to use dvd rebuilder with the hc encoder. I think it's the rockas installer? However, I notice it doesn't have the latest encoder (it's using 0.017). Do I just replace the two exectuable files there with the latest one?

Second,
I kind of got the impression that hc encoder uses different matricies? Is this true? I read the help file but am very confused. There are a lot of profiles listed. Can someone explain to me what these do? Are there specific ones that should be chosen for different types of dvds? I probably don't want the technical details..but would like to know what matricies are best for video encoding?

I also notice (and read in the sticky) that closed captioning is removed when using the hc encoder..is there any way to preserve it as I'm a hard of hearing individual who relies on the captioning.

I have to say the video quality of the one dvd i used (i think the matrix used was bach1 or something like that?) looked pretty darn nice.

It did take me nearly 6 hours to complete this dvd (it was 3rd rock from the sun season 1 disc 2). Is this normal? I was doing some other things while it was encoding like web browsing, etc.

If someone could answer these questions for me I'd appreciate it.

[jdobbs]

1. What version of DVD-RB are you using. The last two versions of the Professional Edition have used HC v0.17. The freeware version is a little dated, so I assume you are using that one. Answer: Yes, just overwrite the HCBatch.EXE file with the new one. You should rename it to HCBatch.EXE.

2. The Professional Edition supports matrix selections and it also keeps the Closed Captions (if you select to do so). The freeware one doesn't. Matrices can improve the encoding under specific circumstances -- especially in very low bitrate scenarios, animation, and CG. Generally when in doubt you can use the MPEG standard on any source and get good results.

3. Six hours sounds like a long time to me. My system is middle-of-the-road (Athlon XP 3200) and it takes about 3.5 hours to do a typical movie with HC. But sometimes series discs hold a lot of video... the determining factor in speed is the total number of frames to be encoded. Films generally encode a little faster than television series for the same amount of time (e.g. two hours) because they are stored internally with about 25% fewer frames.

[Kevin523]

I am so sorry for the lack of information, let me try again. :)
First,
My system is an HP Pavilion a530n
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0 ghz 1mb of l2 cache (socket 754)
512mb of pc2700 ram
200 gb ide 7200rpm hd
Nvidia Geforce FX5200 video card
nforce3 150 chipset motherboard (oem motherboard from asus built for hp pc's).

Yes I am using the free version.

So if I want to keep closed captioning I must pay for the pro version? how much is that?

How do I set the matricies?
Is there a way to determine which one is better for which type ofdvd? If not maybe i'll stick with the one the free version defaults to because I imagine it should be decent enough for almost everything.

Thanks for your help and work on such a wonderful program.

[jdobbs]

You can find out more about the Pro version by using the freeware version's HELP menu -- the Rebuilder web link. I'm not avoiding the question, I just try to avoid appearing to use Doom9's site for commercial purposes (sometimes less successfully than others).