High Compression and Episodic discs.

[kikker]

I have often read both hear and elsewhere the recommendation to use a front-end encoder such as DVD-RB rather than one of these transcoders if the movie requires more than say 15% compression.

Many also stay away from the transcoders with "episodic" discs. I assume they are referring to TV series episodes. My question is, why the special need for DVD-RB with these TV discs? Is it simply that they, too, require substantial compression?

[blutach]

Episodic DVDs have pretty high compression (often they are nearly 3 hours if there are 4 eps). DVD Rebuilder (http://dvd-rb.dvd2go.org/) does a better job than a transcoder for highly compressed material.

You could also split the DVD into 2. Either use VobBlanker (http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm) or DVD Remake Pro (http://www.dimadsoft.com/dvdremakepro/index.php).

Regards

[six13]

I agree with blu when it comes to RB and high compression DVD's. What I have seen done with some episode DVD's is to use another well known program in reauthor mode and select the tiles for say 3 episodes on the DVD and then set the start and end frames. Remove the other languages and the resuts are pretty good and fast with DA and AEC. if you want the full DVD with everything even those crazy previews DVD-RB is the way to go.

[Chetwood]

Most episodic discs I've seen seem not to be compressed very much contrary to a lot of feature films like Shoot Em Up (yeah, it sucks but being a Monica Belluci fan I had to try) which fit on a blank disc right away even though they come with serveral audio streams. Of course since episodic discs come on DVD-9 and you rip to DVD-5 the results aren't as good since the compression that has to be applied to put that many minutes on a blank DVD is considerable.

So your best bet is to put 3 eps in DVD Shrink's re-author mode on one disc, and add some basic navigation with the Shrink plugin of PgcEdit.

[Unhandled]

If one prefers to use only DVD Shrink, it's sometimes possible to simply replace half the episodes on the disc with a still frame and keep the other half at 100% quality.