DVD Shrink disks on an upscaling player

[Franco50]

How do copies made with DVD Shrink perform on an upscaling DVD player? I am considering buying an LCD TV and an upscaling DVD player but as a lot of my DVDs are copies made with DVD Shrink I wondered if they would play OK. I'm not expecting near-HD quality but if the quality is acceptable then I'd be satisfied.

[The Boss]

Hello.
I'm not sure, but I think the quality will be pretty good.

[Marrib]

Franco50,

I have a few dvd's from DVDShrink. They play well on a dlp. You will be satisfied.

[writersblock29]

@Franco50

It really depends on the source material and playback equipment. The larger the screen, the more in-your-face every little flaw is going to be... but of course this even applies to studio originals that weren't encoded all that great to begin with. Since upscalers work partially by using pixels that ARE there to create information for pixels that AREN'T there, the cleaner the source, the cleaner the playback. Many of the DVD Shrink projects I've done over the years still look astonishing using my RCA upscaling standalone on a 50" DLP. Others, however, I found myself redoing via DVD Rebuilder and either CCE or HC encoder. You can somewhat use your computer monitor as a guide, since monitors are normally run at relatively high resolution settings: If you see artifacts on your monitor, it'll be ten times as bad on a large-screen HDTV in the living room. Large-screen HDTVs will, frustratingly enough, sometimes STILL show you more artifacts on a source that looked fine on your computer. You can always try burning to a rewritable so that you can test the acceptability of your DVD Shrink projects before committing them to a +-R. But yes, upscaling will make flaws even more apparent than they may have been using a standard progressive scan player.

In the future, though, you may profit from visiting the DVD Rebuilder forum and grabbing a copy of the free version. Used in conjunction with HC encoder, you'll be getting very comparible quality to CCE (however, HC is a free encoder while CCE Basic is a <>$60 program). You can still use DVD Shrink to pre-process if you'd like, removing extras or creating movie-only project and running them with no re-compression. You can then load this into Rebuilder and let her rip, knowing that you're doing the most you really can to maximize the quality of your backups. Chances are you'll feel the program's worth the donation and upgrade to the Pro version, and if so, your reliance on DVD Shrink will be less and less (the Pro version has many features that make using Shrink beforehand... well... pointless).

[Franco50]

Thanks for the feedback guys, especially 'writersblock29'. Although I have used DVD Shrink for a number of years now I wasn't aware of DVD Rebuilder or what it could do. I shall certainly read up on it. Up to now I have been perfectly happy with the quality of my Shrink backups using a standard definition Sharp DVD recorder and a Samsung 28" CRT TV but as you say the combination of an upscaling player and a 32" or 37" LCD may show up the flaws, warts and all. I shall be moving house quite soon and plan to buy the new player and TV then so we shall see what happens. As long as the playback quality isn't noticeably worse than my present set up I shall be happy enough. By the way I am in the UK in case any of the terminology I have used caused confusion!

[writersblock29]

@Franco50

If I was able to do more than confuse you, I'm honored! :) Moving up to a 32" probably won't cause many concerns, but with the plummetting costs of a good HDTV in the 50"+ range, who knows if you'll later be tempted to upgrade again. Some of those DLP projection screens make it hard to say no (I know I couldn't!). DVD Shrink is a transcoder, which whittles away some of your picture information in order to make the filesize smaller. Most times this "subtracted" information isn't stuff you really notice... and other times it is. DVD Rebuilder utilizes encoders, which completely re-create a DVD's stream, using the original video as reference the same way it would if you were encoding, say, camcorder footage. This allows the encoder to yeild a filesize identical to a transcoded project, but with far fewer artifacts. There are limits to either approach, of course... 4.36GBs is sometimes like trying to stuff an elephant into a VW Bug. But in nearly all instances I've run into, the re-encoded project whops lumps all over a transcoded effort. At any rate, DVD Rebuilder is developed by this forum's very own Jdobbs (who moderates in these here hills), and he's outstanding about supporting his baby, ocassionally adding a requested feature or two. The intent of his program was always to match the higher quality encoders can give you, while maintaining the ease-of-use a one-clicker like DVD Shrink can give you. I think you'll like it! It's pretty painless to use.

[Franco50]

Thanks again for the useful info. Once my house move is out of the way (you know how stressful these things can be) I shall definately take a look at Rebuilder.