TV Series Encoding problem

[nomorecoasters]

Not sure if this is the right forum to post this but it is in regards to DVD-RB so hopefully it is. :)

I have ripped a TV Series(The Inbetweeners) from my retial DVD using DVDFab to a full DVD9 at 7.91GB

The problem im having is when i go to encode it using DVD-RB @6Pass the result is extremely blocky and very low-res and pretty much unwatchable.
I have encoded 100's of films before at around the 8GB mark, usually i strip all warnings trailers and languages and subs etc i dont need and the results have been extremely good.
So im puzzled as to why this is the case with this series.
Can anyone shed any light as to why this may be happening please?

Many thanks

[jdobbs]

Not sure if this is the right forum to post this but it is in regards to DVD-RB so hopefully it is. :)

I have ripped a TV Series(The Inbetweeners) from my retial DVD using DVDFab to a full DVD9 at 7.91GB

The problem im having is when i go to encode it using DVD-RB @6Pass the result is extremely blocky and very low-res and pretty much unwatchable.
I have encoded 100's of films before at around the 8GB mark, usually i strip all warnings trailers and languages and subs etc i dont need and the results have been extremely good.
So im puzzled as to why this is the case with this series.
Can anyone shed any light as to why this may be happening please?

Many thanksHow much total content is there on the disc? My guess is that there is probably a lot (5+ hours?) and it is already stretching the capability of MPEG-2 even on the original. In those rare cases (I've only ever see one or two), the only alternative is to back up to DVD-9.

[nomorecoasters]

Thanks for replying:)

Yes your right there is a lot of content.

I have taken a screenshot of it loaded into DVDShrink(just to show you the breakdown) and even with maximum compression in that program it cant shrink it to fit on a dvd5 as it can only compress to 5.9GB
I dont have dual-layer burner so i cant really burn it straight to a dvd9.

Is there any other option or maybe having to split it up and into 2 parts and have it on 2 discs but really just wanted to back it up to the one?

[setarip_old]

Hi!I dont have dual-layer burner so i cant really burn it straight to a dvd9. In this modern day and age, especially if you're working with video, you should really consider investing $20US or so in a DVD burner that has double layer burning capability...

[nomorecoasters]

I guess your right but this is the first case ive ever come across that i cant get to fit on a DVD5 in 6+ years of encoding and didnt really want to buy one on that basis, but you are right they arent that expensive.
I just dont like being stumped and not having the knowledge to do something and this will bug me even if i do buy a dual-layer lol :D

[Capsbackup]

Perhaps consider blanking half the content and burning it to one DVD5, and then do the same for the other half, call it "part 2"! :p

[nomorecoasters]

Yeah i guess thats all i can do, its a shame really, didnt think i was gonna have this trouble.

I wanted to rip and backup quite a few of my dvds but may not bother if if im going to have to double the amount of discs used.

[jdobbs]

Yeah i guess thats all i can do, its a shame really, didnt think i was gonna have this trouble.

I wanted to rip and backup quite a few of my dvds but may not bother if if im going to have to double the amount of discs used. I think that's a bit overboard. There's probably not one out of a thousand discs that is like this...

[HFW]

@nomorecoasters: I think you should consider use PGCEdit and strip things that you won´t use, like the second audio, some extras, etc, reclaim the unused space with FixVTS and use jdobbs´s DVD-RB with HCenc. Seriously, I never saw a disperssion of 300+ MB in titles, like the above. Usually, those series are made of 40+ minutes...

[Mr. Monte]

Wasn't there a program that would also save space by changing motion menu's into still menu's..sometimes reclaiming lots of space?..Been so long I forgot it's name

[Ghitulescu]

MenuShrink.

To the original topic: sorry that the series weren't provided as 200 episodes on a 256MB USB-stick but they've chosen instead 6 episodes per DVD9. What a waste of space :) Seriously, to fit 6 episodes on a DVD9 a lot of compromises should have already been made, further compressions in the same format would yield visible artefacts. Try reauthoring these 3 discs into 5-6 DVDRs with no or little compression.

[nomorecoasters]

Thanks for the advice i'll have a go at pgcedit and see if that helps, i tried dvd shrink just for comparison to get the screenshot and that also blanks out the menus etc but it was very poor.

sorry that the series weren't provided as 200 episodes on a 256MB USB-stick but they've chosen instead 6 episodes per DVD9. What a waste of space

Thanks for the sarcasm, its duly noted :rolleyes:

For the record i wasnt complaining on how the original was created,or suggesting they should of authored it in some other way, i just wanted to be able to back up my retail copy and seeing as thats what this forum was hopefully for, i put my question here as i have used DVD-RB many many times on 8gb films and seen fantastic quality results and so was curious to know why a series of the same size didnt turn out the same way. :)

many thanks for your time everybody :)

[Ghitulescu]

Thanks for the advice i'll have a go at pgcedit and see if that helps, i tried dvd shrink just for comparison to get the screenshot and that also blanks out the menus etc but it was very poor.



Thanks for the sarcasm, its duly noted :rolleyes:

For the record i wasnt complaining on how the original was created,or suggesting they should of authored it in some other way, i just wanted to be able to back up my retail copy and seeing as thats what this forum was hopefully for, i put my question here as i have used DVD-RB many many times on 8gb films and seen fantastic quality results and so was curious to know why a series of the same size didn't turn out the same way. :)

As I said if you passed over the sarcasm :) to read the rest :), some series are heavily packed, and if one goes below a certain bitrate, which is subjectively considered the best ratio between size and visual quality, that one will end with bad results, no mater what settings and what re-encoder uses. And the bitrate depends on the material, very much like the school marks depend on the pupil.

[hello_hello]

I'm a little curious as to the structure of the DVD. It would appear there's six titles of around 20 minutes and 300MB is size. Then there's quite a few more titles which are also 300MB in size but which run for hours. I'm curious as to which titles play according to which menu options you choose (you can check which titles are playing as you navigate around the DVD with a player such as MPC-HC).

Anyway, it seems to me that if for backup purposes you want a copy of the DVD which allows you to watch the episodes while keeping the original safe, then using DVD Shrink to re-author the disc keeping just the six 20min titles which seem to be the episodes, you'd end up with a backup requiring (6x300MB) 1800MB of disc space. If you include the extras it's still only about 2300MB.
Actually no, my logic there is faulty as the sizes listed in your DVD Shrink screen shot are post-compression which means before compression each episode would be about 500MB and the extras about 800MB. That's still only 3.8GB uncompressed in total though, unless I'm missing something.....

DVD Shrink will replace videos in menus with still pictures, but at best it looks like it's only going to save you about 150MB.

[six13]

run the folder through shrink once at about 85% on the slider and output as a folder then process the folder again with shrink, or increase the compression on the menus, or cut the credits from each episode with vobblanker.

DVD-RB is the best DVD5 option with a good low bitrate matrix. Otherwise DVD9 is needed.

[steptoe]

Just to make it more interesting, I have seen series disks where each episode is one file so thats nice and simple, but have seen others where the entire disk is one big VTS file split as if it were a DVD-9 movie. Not very helpful

But there are others that make no sense at all and have a huge amount of VTS per episode for no apparent reason other that to make it more awkward to rip

VOBBlanker is what I have used with very good effect in the past to strip all the unwanted crap like FBI warning, and forced previews and the pointless wipes that some companies insist on using between menus that your just going to skip past anyway and this can sometimes reduce the final size by quite a bit when its used across an episode disk. Another good one to strip using VOBBlanker is all the extra language menus and copyright messages, all can be stripped or reduced to a blank VTS or cell so the DVD structure hasn't actually changed but you have saved some more space

DVD-RB and VOBBlanker seem to work together quite happily without screwing up the DVD structure, unlike others, and VOBBlanker has actually repaired the DVD structure a few times that DVD-RB refused to process fully as it had been mastered cheaply and out of spec

VOBBlanker is also very good at stripping out titles or baldy mastered straight to DVD episode disks of old series. The BBC are prime culprits for this and appear to just copy the master tapes to DVD without any processing at all to save on costs, as it has a simple but effective cut option where you tell it where to start or end each VTS so shaving off a few minutes per epsiode

So you end up with old titles on some episode, the countdown on others or nothing on others. This again can help reduce the overheads

Try using the avamat6 or it may have been avamat7 matrix I think it was for bitrates between 1800 to 3500. On eis for bitrates below 3500 the other is for bitrates above 3500

There are also matrix designed for even lower bitrates to squeeze as much as possible out of the source, or you could try changing the output size in DVD-RB setting to half-DVD size so the encoder doesn't have as much to work with

[six13]

VOBblanker is a great tool. But what about just using shrink to reauthor, each episode might be a VTS, if there are 5 episodes in the folder drag each episode to the left side to reauthor. The downfall is that the menus will be lost but you could set the start, end frame on each of the episodes to help with the compresion #. This way you could put 1/2 of the episodes on DVD 1 and the other 1/2 on DVD 2 with very minimal compression.