compression & avoiding pixilation

[sierra54]

In the near future I will be abandoning my old crt tv and upgrading to a 47" or larger lcd hd. My concern is will the movies I burnt to dvd5 look blocky if I compressed them too much using dvd shrink? Generally, I try to keep them, the main movie title, above 75% of their original size. I've tried searching this issue.

[dialysis1]

My concern is will the movies I burnt to dvd5 look blocky if I compressed them too much using dvd shrink?
Most likely yes.
You may want to look into DVD Rebuilder.

[setarip_old]

Hi!My concern is will the movies I burnt to dvd5 look blocky... Since you've already burned them, you'll find out if this is a problem as soon as you've acquired your HDTV - by playing them.

If you find any of them to be unsatisfactory, you can always re-rip them and either consider the suggestion by "dialysis1' (to use DVD Rebuilder), or burning to D/L media (Verbatim D/L DVD+R), or splitting to two discs...

[sierra54]

I still have almost 80 single layer verbatim +R left to use. I was curious if there was an approximate percentage I could shrink the main title to which would allow it to fit on a single layered disc yet avoid pixilation.

dvd rebuilder looks like a more thorough shink program. Is this correct?

Thank you for the input thus far.

[setarip_old]

I still have almost 80 single layer verbatim +R left to use.Since you'e going to purchase your HDTV in the near future, I'd suggest you hold off burning any additional backup copies of your DVD collection until you have the TV...

[dat720]

As long as you did not compress them too much... if you compressed them just enough to fit on a DVD5 you should be ok, altho it depends how much extra content is on the original disc, generally when backing up my dvd's i take just the movie and english audio/sub tracks, nothing else.

[setarip_old]

@dat720if you compressed them just enough to fit on a DVD5 you should be ok, altho it depends how much extra content is on the original discPerhaps more importantly, it depends on whether the movie contains a significant amount of high action scenes (explosions, etc.) and a lot of color throughout, as well as whether it's 16:9 (better results at same compression) or 4:3 (poorer results at same compression) - and, most obviously, the running time of the movie...

[Video Dude]

If you really want max quality for a SL DVD, use DVD-RB instead of Shrink and do movie only encodes with a single audio track. Get rid of all extras and menus.

Thats how I backup my discs, and they look great on my 42 inch HDTV.

[burfadel]

You also have to consider the resolution of the HDTV. Worldwide tv manufacturers have effectively conned the public, calling tv's 'HD ready', 'HD compatible', among various things. They've had to coin 'TrueHD' to reference real HDTV's, those that have a resolution of 1920x1080. Some cheaper screens are terrible, especially for plasma, in terms of resolution. Many HDTV LCD's are for example, 1300x768 (thats the rough number, can't remember the exact number) and the tv downsamples the input. Doesn't matter whether it has an inbuilt tuner, the tv downsamples the image. Same goes for HD set top boxes, s-video output on those are downsampled to normal tv resolution. A 20 yr old tv is HD ready, HD compatible using a HD set top box, especially if the set top box outputs RF, that makes a tv from the 1950's HD ready and HD compatible (among the other monikers the companies use).

The reason why this is important in your case is the quality of the screen will determine whether blockyness is noticeable or not. A good DVD player is essential when using a HDTV, you should have one that upsamples the standard resolution. You can upsample to 720P or 1080i for example by HDMI. This will give a much better image that using the normal output method. Its true that if there's blocking in the dvd, it will just upsample the blocking but it will still look better. LCD screens also has a response time issue, if the tv has a slow response time you won't notice the blocking so much in motion scenes, this is actually a bad thing because the screen is effectively blurring the image!

Basically though, if you can't see blocking etc currentl and the image looks the same as the original, you won't notice too much difference with a new HDTV. It would be better to use a programme that has a good encoder and a 2 pass option for best quality (especially in motion scenes) though.

[dat720]

@dat720Perhaps more importantly, it depends on whether the movie contains a significant amount of high action scenes (explosions, etc.) and a lot of color throughout, as well as whether it's 16:9 (better results at same compression) or 4:3 (poorer results at same compression) - and, most obviously, the running time of the movie...

Very good point, i was only giving a rough guide tho.

If you really want max quality for a SL DVD, use DVD-RB instead of Shrink and do movie only encodes with a single audio track. Get rid of all extras and menus.

Thats how I backup my discs, and they look great on my 42 inch HDTV.

DVD shrink can also achieve this.

[Video Dude]

DVD shrink can also achieve this.
Yes, but a DVD-RB re-encode using HC/CCE (Basic)/ProCoder should yield superior PQ compared to the trancoding engine of Shrink especially when displayed on a HDTV. You can do advanced tweaks in RB that you can't do in Shrink. For example, you can manually adjust the bitrate of individual cells and specify that high action scenes are not re-encoded and cut the bitrate of the credits to give more to the movie.

Since the original poster was concerned about pixelation I would recommend DVD-RB. There is a free version.

[sierra54]

Thank you to for your input and suggestions. I will definitely give dvd-rb a try.

[shuq]

I was giving this DVD-RB a try but it looks for CCE and I don;t know if that is Free or is that only a Trial version available ? Any hints ?

[dialysis1]

You have to pay for CCE. There is a trial version. The HC encoder is a free and excellent encoder.