Lord of the Rings - 3 hrs. on a 4.7gig DVD

[Lame]

I'd like to make a backup copy of the Lord of The Rings I just purchased, before my grandchildren get a hold of the original. I've re-encoded several movies with great sucess but never one that was three hours long. I use rempeg2. Based on VOB size etc. I'll have to re-encode at ~ 62%. Will the quality of the finished DVD be acceptable?

[HomerJ]

Lame,

Why not give it a try anyway, and let us know the outcome ? I use to have a personal encode level of 80%, but I have gone as low as 72% and not noticed too much of a lose. I have even seen people suggest a level of 50% !! when encoding.

Personally, films of this length I split to 2 discs. Gives me a chance to go to the loo half way through. ;)

HomerJ

[Nogami]

I finished converting Das Boot (3:20) to a 4.7gb DVD. TMPGEnc did a reasonably good job of it - can see a bit of MPG fringing around high contrast areas if I'm up close to the TV, but it looks fine from my couch.

I also kept the german AC3 5.1 mix on the disc (removing it would be a crime!) But if I went with a 2-channel AC mix, I could've saved about 300mb and put a few more bits towards the video stream.

Granted, DB has a lot of slow/still scenes that the encoder can save bits on, where LOTR is more action-oriented.

Let us know how it turns out.

[ronnylov]

I would consider encode it at 1/2 D1 resolution (352x576 PAL or 352x480 NTSC). The quality may be higher at that low bitrate.

[Bigbucks1959]

I just finished encoding LOTR to 1 DVDR..Main Movie only
Used setting of 60% on ReMPEG2..it fit perfectly and looks awesome.

Phil K.

[jdobbs]

Hmmm... I have my doubts. This is one of those instances where you probably really need CCE to get decent results. I backed up both "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Lawrence of Arabia" onto a single DVD-5 (one each of course) in the past -- and they looked fine. I'll be doing LOTR later tonight -- I'll let you know how it looks...

[Lame]

I went ahead and re=encoded Lord of the Rings at 61%. The results are great.

[Bigbucks1959]

YEP,
this is one of those incidents where ReMPEG2 was very nice to me.

Phil K.

[jdobbs]

Yeah, after I started encoding with CCE I could see that this is a very low demand movie (in terms of bandwidth). Using the Robshot method and CCE I could have shrunk this video down to 2.1Mbs and still stayed below the line... Of course I raised the bitrate to improve quality and use up all the DVD...

[Stonecold78]

I recently encoded LOTR and got poor playback results.

I used ReMPEG2 @ 61% and burnt it on to a Princo White Label Disc.
I have been using ReMPEG2 since I began encoding and thus have had reasonable results from it. And The Princo discs have not failed me since I started using them.

Play back results on my Sony PS2: lots of stuttering.
Play back results on my Pioneer DV-333: Picture runs smoothly but every now and then the sound cuts out for a split second, and unfortunately this becomes more regular as I get further in to the film. Also I noticed that during the Moria battle when the action gets to frantic the picture goes in to blurry squares.

Anyone else had similar results?

Lame can you please let us know what settings you used to encode and what type of disc you are using?

I was looking at the CCE method but found it to be to long and intricate to bother with.
Also looking at encoding LOTR with TMPG but have read varying results, if I go ahead with it I’ll let you know the result.

[Bigbucks1959]

I feel your problem is with your player , NOT your encoding.

My LOTR transcoding done at 60% with ReMPEG2 was flawless and looked very good, playing it on my APEX 5131.....
Damn,they make this cheap piece of electronics great for playing any DVDRs and any SVCDs..

:>)))

My samsung player did what u described..so popped it in my APEX, and watched it all the way thru AGAIN, flawlessly.

Yes, the guide on CCE Encoding/Maestro is pretty broken up on doom9 (gotta love this site, in fact I have found doom9 so helpful I sent in a donation recently...to keep this great site going, nothing big but it shows my support and hopefully will keep it going another few months..)

But all the pieces for CCE/Maestro encoding are there, you just have to know which guides hold which pieces.. Took me a little while to figure out.now I don't even look at guides anymore. Just wrote down steps on a piece of paper and saved the commands in text files.

I would be happy to post a CCE/Maestro Guide for you from DVD Ripping to Authoring with Maestro that works for me, which is the same as doom9's but it has all the pieces for you..
But understand 1 thing..All I am after is the main movie, 5.1 DD Sound and Chapters..No menus or extras.

First of all,do you have the proper tools? CCE and Maestro most importantly..without these tools you will need some kind of dvd authoring program and the only one I use presently is Maestro.


Good Luck

Phil K.

Originally posted by Stonecold78
I recently encoded LOTR and got poor playback results.

I used ReMPEG2 @ 61% and burnt it on to a Princo White Label Disc.
I have been using ReMPEG2 since I began encoding and thus have had reasonable results from it. And The Princo discs have not failed me since I started using them.

Play back results on my Sony PS2: lots of stuttering.
Play back results on my Pioneer DV-333: Picture runs smoothly but every now and then the sound cuts out for a split second, and unfortunately this becomes more regular as I get further in to the film. Also I noticed that during the Moria battle when the action gets to frantic the picture goes in to blurry squares.

Anyone else had similar results?

Lame can you please let us know what settings you used to encode and what type of disc you are using?

I was looking at the CCE method but found it to be to long and intricate to bother with.
Also looking at encoding LOTR with TMPG but have read varying results, if I go ahead with it I’ll let you know the result.

[p3distxii]

I purchased Lord of the Rings (R1) and I must say that there are some scenes where the encoding is not done very well (mostly in dark scenes). I'm sure they had to keep the bitrate low to fit the entire movie, but I was kinda suprised to see this on a newly released blockbuster title. Maybe my eyes are just noticing this stuff more now that I'm doing more transcoding. I also noticed this on the retail version of Harry Potter (R1) which also has a lot of dark scenes.

Sucks to see movies that are not in their divinitive form--in the end it means we will buy the same movies over again when a better format comes out. And I though going digital (when I first bought a DVD player--long ago, now) meant that I was buying these movies for the last time. Silly me...

[Bigbucks1959]

Your eyes must be better than mine...

My DVD of LOTR looked fantatsic.


Some dvds are bad source for digital so bad DVD..also bad DVDR.

Phil K.

Originally posted by p3distxii
I purchased Lord of the Rings (R1) and I must say that there are some scenes where the encoding is not done very well (mostly in dark scenes). I'm sure they had to keep the bitrate low to fit the entire movie, but I was kinda suprised to see this on a newly released blockbuster title. Maybe my eyes are just noticing this stuff more now that I'm doing more transcoding. I also noticed this on the retail version of Harry Potter (R1) which also has a lot of dark scenes.

Sucks to see movies that are not in their divinitive form--in the end it means we will buy the same movies over again when a better format comes out. And I though going digital (when I first bought a DVD player--long ago, now) meant that I was buying these movies for the last time. Silly me...

[goonyah]

@ Stonecold78

It's also possible that your playback problem stems from having DVD compliant checked in CCE. I read somewhere that this can cause the overall bitrate to be too high, and some players choke on it.

Just a thought, try unchecking it and trying again. Otherwise, it probably is your player.

- Goonie Goo Goo

[ulfschack]

I'm with p3distxii on this one. There definately are some dark areas that have blocks in the original release. And yes I do think it's a desease of the trade. No normal person would ever notice :)

I just split it with ifoedit. Kept the menu for disk one and made the second one "a running start" so to speak. Took me about a half hours work

But my main question here is this: Why on (middle)earth does this 3 hour movie only take up 6.5 GB on the DVD !!!???

cheers

[HomerJ]

Simple,

They have used a low bitrate to encode the movie. Why have they done this you ask ????

Is it so that when the next release comes (November I think) they can proclaim "digitally enhanced".

And how many more folk are going to be lured into buying (for the 2nd time) that release as well ??

Call me cynical, but that's my two penny worth.

HomerJ

[ulfschack]

I think you're right on the money: "digitally and comercially enhanced" might be even more to the point :)

I hear that the next release will contain an extra half hour of movie, so maybe they'll only have to add an extra vob and edit the ifo and still get it to fit, no sweat. :)

cheers

[IDTib]

I cant comment on ReMpeg, but I did LOTR with 2500 VBR in CCE and it looks excellent to me :)

[ulfschack]

Yesterday I burned the whole thing to one DVD-5 after encoding 2-pass VBR with TmpgEnc on 3100 kbps. I didn't like it ... and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't like it were I to do it in CCE either considering my past experiences with these two encoders.

Maybe this fancy digitally enhanced november version will have the quality/bitrate needed to make a good 4.7 backup. For now I'm sticking with IfoEdit's split.

cheers

[jdobbs]

I used CCE and the quality is virtually indistiquishable from the original. Using the Robshot method (2 passes) I got the Q down under 5 for most of the movie. I am very pleased with the results.

[Bigbucks1959]

Sweet may do again with CCE.

Phil K.


Originally posted by jdobbs
I used CCE and the quality is virtually indistiquishable from the original. Using the Robshot method (2 passes) I got the Q down under 5 for most of the movie. I am very pleased with the results.