DVD Shrink is still the best for me!

[ookzDVD]

It's been over than 2 years I've been using the DVD shrink,
and I still think that it is the best.

The user interface is easy and the result is superb compare with commercial competitor, no one can beat it!

The bad thing is the development is freezed. :(

[elizerrojas]

i'm with you there. shrink is still great, i prefer Recode2 only because is faster but, i still use shrink a lot. don't think the newcomers are as good as recode2 and shrink qualitywise.

[Slitheen]

It's good because it's free, but I actually think CloneDVD2 makes better quality backups, and faster too.

[elizerrojas]

It's good because it's free, but I actually think CloneDVD2 makes better quality backups, and faster too.

oh! yeah. read this.http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=68396

[elizerrojas]

actually, clonedvd2, in terms of quality output(i'm speaking about lots of amount of compression)is the worst.

[rahzel]

agreed... i can't see how anyone would think clonedvd2 produces better quality backups than shrink or recode2.

[elizerrojas]

agreed... i can't see how anyone would think clonedvd2 produces better quality backups than shrink or recode2.
That's right, when speaking of quality output and only quality output, Recode2 and shrink are the best transcoders there are.

[setarip_old]

Since this thread is totally subjective, I'd suggest that, in my opinion, DVD2One yields results that are superior to DVD Shrink and NERO recode...

[elizerrojas]

Since this thread is totally subjective, I'd suggest that, in my opinion, DVD2One yields results that are superior to DVD Shrink and NERO recode...

Although i don't share your opinion, i can underestand why you think that way. i have done movies with dvd2one V2 that have come out very, very good or as good as shrink or recode2.
let me just ask you. do you really believe that dvd2one is better than shrink or/and recode2?

[nwg]

The results I got from DVD2One v2 were embarrassingly bad. Shrink is a lot better.

[Chetwood]

I second that.

[jwo62]

The results I got from DVD2One v2 were embarrassingly bad.


It all depends on what title you are backing up.

If you are doing a full disc backup with dvd2one,and the disc has a lot of extras or a second aspect ratio,the result WILL look like crap. thats why erwin suggests doing movie only for these type of discs. this is a weakness in the program. at the moment,I only use Dvd2one for movie only (basically,all of my kids movies) or title joining. It is VERY fast. about 12 mins. on my pc.

with shrink you can reduce the quality of the extras or replace them with a still image and leave more room for the main title. thats the only reason the quality seems better.

Better still, is Dvd95copy's ability to completely remove unwanted title sets,even a second aspect ratio (something shrink CANT do) and still retain the menu or desired extras. so,you can keep the menu,and still have nearly the same quality as a movie only backup. the best of both worlds.:D
another advantage Dvd95copy has over the others is its great ability to rip all arccos discs without DVDD.pgcedit or any other helper programs. A real time saver.

As far as quality,they all are about the same, unless you use shrinks deep analysis which is better,less jerky,but you pay for that by having the program take many times longer to transcode than the others do. I only use shrink,in deep analysis, to transcode longer titles or movies (star wars,LOTR etc.) where I really want a great picture,no jerky video.

There really isnt a "best". like setarip said "this thread is totally subjective" its all about what the user wants and needs from a program. I use all three,Dvd95,Dvd2one and shrink. And I wouldnt be happy without all three of them.

in general, I do agree with the original poster,after all this time,Shrink is still a great program. But keep in mind,its only still usable because of the hard work the makers of Pgcedit, plugin wizard,fixVts,ripit4me etc. without these,it wouldnt be much good at all.;)

[Chetwood]

But keep in mind,its only still usable because of the hard work the makers of Pgcedit, plugin wizard,fixVts,ripit4me etc. without these,it wouldnt be much good at all.;)

That does not affect it's encoding ability in any way which still is superior to that of DVD2ONE even so on movie-only rips. BTW, Deep Analysis runs quite smoothly only when you use the extra quality settings Shrink will take a lot longer.

[nwg]

It all depends on what title you are backing up.



It was movie only which resulted in big pixelation. The same DVD using reauthor mode of Shrink had no pixelation. That was enough for me.

BTW, I can still do over 95% of DVD's with Shrink alone.

[jwo62]

That does not affect it's encoding ability in any way which still is superior to that of DVD2ONE even so on movie-only rips. BTW, Deep Analysis runs quite smoothly only when you use the extra quality settings Shrink will take a lot longer.

INMHO,dvdshrink's quality isnt any better than Dvd2one's UNLESS you use Deep analysis. This is just my opinion.

on my pc,just the deep analysis process,not including transcoding, takes about as long as Dvd95copy takes to transcode AND burn a full disc.

It was movie only which resulted in big pixelation. The same DVD using reauthor mode of Shrink had no pixelation.

Thats interesting,by any chance do you remember what title it was? on a movie only backup,thats not a typical result.

[nwg]

INMHO,dvdshrink's quality isnt any better than Dvd2one's UNLESS you use Deep analysis. This is just my opinion.

on my pc,just the deep analysis process,not including transcoding, takes about as long as Dvd95copy takes to transcode AND burn a full disc.

Thats interesting,by any chance do you remember what title it was? on a movie only backup,thats not a typical result.


I would rather spend the extra 10 minutes using Deep Analysis and get a better backup. I have always believed and seen for myself that too quick backup ends in poor results.

The DVD was R2 SW: Return of the Sith.

[Chetwood]

Well, I've actually never used Shrink without Deep Analyis, I like the idea of it knowing where to apply which amount of compression. I also use MultiShrink so those few extra minutes do not hurt.

[elizerrojas]

Using shrink WITHOUT deep analysis and AEC is like using one of the other transcoders. REcode2 or shrink with DA and AEC are the best in term of quality.

[jwo62]

Using shrink WITHOUT deep analysis and AEC is like using one of the other transcoders. REcode2 or shrink with DA and AEC are the best in term of quality.

Exactly!

[blutach]

I would rather spend the extra 10 minutes using Deep Analysis and get a better backup. I have always believed and seen for myself that too quick backup ends in poor results.I'm with you nwg - but I like to spend a extra few hours and get a phenomenal backup from DVD Rebuilder (http://dvd-rb.dvd2go.org/). And no-one could say that it is not a 1-click solution.

Regards

[nwg]

I'm with you nwg - but I like to spend a extra few hours and get a phenomenal backup from DVD Rebuilder (http://dvd-rb.dvd2go.org/). And no-one could say that it is not a 1-click solution.

Regards


I only use DVD-RB when I am using DTS or the quality of the film requires it.

[rahzel]

i find that DVD-RB is only better at fairly high compression (around 33% or higher) but it also depends on the overall bitrate, how much head room there is for compression and how 'clean' the source is.

i've done several encodes with both, and each tool traded blows.

king kong, lord of the rings, gladiator and batman begins (marginally) all looked better on DVD-RB, understandably as all these movies required a lot of compression (with exception to batman begins). i'm guessing batman begins looked better with DVD-RB, because the source was fairly clean to begin with. blade 2 and pirates of the caribbean, i actually noticed less macroblocking with DVDShrink, but these movies were fairly noisy and not A LOT of compression was needed.

with gladiator, pirates of the caribbean, LOTR and king kong, i used CCE 3pass and the avamat7 matrix. with batman begins, blade 2, i used encoder default 3pass. and with shrink, i used aec sharp with DA enabled for all movies (using smooth may have helped with the higher compression movies). i also experimented with different matrices with all movies, and those settings, i found, produced the best results.

and this is how much compression and what the overall bitrates were for each movie.
batman begins - around 4.2mb/s and around 70-75% (forget)
blade 2 - around 4.6mb/s and around 80% (source was fairly noisy)
gladiator - around 3.5mb/s and around 64% (source fairly noisy, especially during the first 20 minutes or so)
pirates of the caribbean - around 3.8mb/s and around 75%
i forget what LOTR and king kong were, but you know they were low.

[ludeboy12]

i tend to use a combination of shrink and cloneDVD2.

I usually run my backup through clonedvd2 (dvd9 output) first so i can remove all extras while preserving the menu. Then i use shrink with deep analysis for its superior transcoding to get it on a dvd5.

it takes a little longer to do things this way but in the end i think its worth it as i dont want still images cluttering my dvds.

[undercover_dancer]

First thanks to rahzel for his very detailed post


Yeh, I know you might call me a lunatic as it take HOURS to copy but i came back to InstantDVD.


I wanted to back up my DVDs of lost season 1 and I had did long visual analysis of the other tools (dvdshrink recode2 and clonedvd) - while it "feels" and "look" identical in many cases, when it came to parts where the original DVDs had very fine-details of many small pixels images InstantDVD was really way better then others.

I can think of DVD2 the first episode when jack is portrait as a child and he is being put on the ground by another child) - it starts with a close up on his face. With all tools (execpt instantDVD) the photo showed "noise" that was not there.


And yeh, it's the most horrible tool when it comes to accurate calculation of disk side, the registry hacks don't work as well as I hope they will, but I prefered that on re-encoding as my machine is really an old athlon 2000 box.


And I started with DVDShrink, removed the extra langauges I didn't need, then I used dvdremake to remove the extra menu and not needed things so I ended up with 6GB on average of 3 hours of video before re-encode.



In any case I can't really recommend it to "normal" users. it's way, way too complicated and nuts (no screen saver allowed etc.). superb transcoder packed in a buggy software.

By the way - anyone - is it true that instantDVD was the only product that did more then just "plain" transcoding? Is that the reason they have 5 passes on each video? I remember I saw it once but I didn't found any reference to it.

[Slitheen]

oh! yeah. read this.http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=68396

Quite interesting, but do you ever watch films zoomed in that much?

I don't.

[TomBrooklyn]

I like the results in Shrink when the compression is not greater than about 67%.

[lilhobo]

well firstly, DVDrebuilder needs external mpeg encoders and is dependent on their quality.

secondly, the number of passes also determine the quality of the final result. If you do 100 passes you would get a better result than 10 passes. But can the eye tell the difference.

the best encoders are the ones that can compress at high rates with comparable quality output and CCE seems to be the encoder of choice

[blutach]

100 passes? 10 passes even? Total waste. jdobbs will tell you 3 is tops for CCE. HCEnc uses 2 passes on best mode which produces darn good quality and Procoder 2, the daddy of them all, uses 2 on mastering quality, which is unsurpassed at low BRs.

Regards

[lilhobo]

100 passes? 10 passes even? Total waste. jdobbs will tell you 3 is tops for CCE. HCEnc uses 2 passes on best mode which produces darn good quality and Procoder 2, the daddy of them all, uses 2 on mastering quality, which is unsurpassed at low BRs.

Regards


lol i was just making a point...In any case, you think procoder has better quality?? so whats the speed like then???

9 hrs for CCE for a DVD is a bit much !!

[blutach]

Using 3800 X2 dual core O/C'ed to 2500Mhz, multiple processes, I get 30 PAL frames per second consistently on mastering quality (ie 20% faster than real time).

Regards

[Lord_GalAthon]

Well what I like about DVD shrink is the ability to back up the movie at a better compression/quality rate by removing the clutter of the rest of the crap they usually bundle with it.