2:30+ movies down to 1CD, good idea?!?!

[DaveQB]

i have read in here before guys boosting they can get near DVD quality rips down to 1CD for movies 2hours long.

i am approaching getting that quality, but havent had the time to really getting into testing different settings, filters etc.

but my question is, for the experts/experienced, is it at all possible to get a near DVD quality rip of a 2:30hr movie down to 1CD ????



also, wheres a good site for filters for DivX5 ??
i had a link , but its dead :(

[Trahald]

ive done some xvids to 1 cd (2:30 min or more movies) usually cant go to big on resolution (576xXXX) range and a good temporal smoother helps tons... (i havent tried convolution3d but i hear its good).. also using simpleresize or just bilinear increases compressability.. but you have to decide what you can live with.
the results ive gotten have been pretty good so far.

[DaveQB]

hmm, i think i need to do more testing/practice/experimenting...

i havent any more filters other then the ones that come with VD 1.4.10 besides "Logoaway"

links ????

[Acaila]

Great VDub filters -> Donald Graft's filter collection (http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/)
Great Avisynth filters -> Avisynth Q&A (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25002)

Possible to get 2:30 hours on 1 CD with near DVD quality? I doubt it. My personal cutoff point is somewhere between 2:00 hours and 2:15 hours, depending on the movie's contend ofcourse. But even then it's not always near DVD quality, just ok quality (if I don't really care about the movie, otherwise I'll use 2 CDs instead).

The trick is to make the movie more compressable without removing any visible detail, and that can take some testing indeed.
Best way to see what amount detail a noise filter removes is by using Subtract() in Avisynth (just look it up in the docs (http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/)).

Ps. My 1000th post!!! :D

[DJ Bobo]

Near DVD quality is impossible on 1-CD Rips of very long movies. The DVD will be much sharper.

So as you may have understood, the resolution does the trick! the more you wanna put on a CD, the lower the resolution.
So, typically, you'll get near VHS quality (without the noise of course) if you rip very long movies on 1 CD.

@ Acaila
Lucky you I was in holiday! you'll see me over 1000 very soon! count on it! :D

[NetSoerfer]

fyi, the link to Donald Graft's filter collection is down right now
(09.09.2002, 21:40 CET)

soerfer

[khp]

fyi, the link to Donald Graft's filter collection is down right now

Not down, moved

http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/

[NetSoerfer]

yup, great... thanks... :)

soerfer

[cypher_soundz]

ive just recently started ripping to 2 cds WOW i love the quality , and it only take a min more to join the two cds when i want to watch them , or use a asx file ! For me now its 2 cds all the way, give or take REAL short movies , thats just over kill! :D

[JohnMK]

IMO it makes much more sense to decide upon 1 CD vs. 2 CD, after you've run a compressibility check. If you must reduce the resolution to below 512xwhatever to keep 60% compressibility, then I personally might opt for 2 CDs.

[DJ Bobo]

Hehe, if you ask me, as long as it is higher than VCD resolution, I'll put it on one CD! and it remains better than VHS!
I was always happy with VHS, why shouldn't I be happy with "better than VHS"?! :D

[JohnMK]

It's a subjective debate, very true.

[DaveQB]

Originally posted by DJ Bobo
Near DVD quality is impossible on 1-CD Rips of very long movies. The DVD will be much sharper.

So as you may have understood, the resolution does the trick! the more you wanna put on a CD, the lower the resolution.
So, typically, you'll get near VHS quality (without the noise of course) if you rip very long movies on 1 CD.


hmmm this all very interesting.

when i first had a go at ripping DVD's to divX i found i couldnt get Stars Wars I onto 1 CD in any good quality, so its on two.

now, i might be able too, not sure, perhaps the moving having alot of motion still wouldnt allow me.

but in these very forums i have read a bit from people boosting they can fit 2hr movies onto 1 CD @ quality that is very hard to tell from DVD.

thats just what i read.

so i have since then being trying everytihng to emulate this and fit 2hr movies onto 1 CD with moderate success.

admittedly i havnt alot of experience and figured it was my lack of experience that didnt allow me too (yet)

but from the sounds of it in here i am doing alright :D

this one guy in particular even said he would put a part of one of his movies on a site to be downloaded for ppl to check out the quality... dunno.. :rolleyes:


any (polite :D) suggestions welcome

[Acaila]

but in these very forums i have read a bit from people boosting they can fit 2hr movies onto 1 CD @ quality that is very hard to tell from DVD.It all depends on the source. Ofcourse there are 2 hour movies that fit unto 1 CD with near DVD quality. Those are the low-motion-mostly-dialogue type of movies. And besides, what seems transparent to one could look merely good to another, it all depends on what the viewer looks for and on how trained the eye is at seeing differences.

this one guy in particular even said he would put a part of one of his movies on a site to be downloaded for ppl to check out the quality... dunno..I know exactly who you're talking about. Besides the people who try to be honest, there will always be those who boast their skills.
Just keep questioning and testing your own methods and don't believe anything anyone says (that includes me ;) ) without testing it for yourself, because you are the only one who can tell what looks good for you.

[serbersan]

I totally agree with Acaila:

It all depends on the source. Ofcourse there are 2 hour movies that fit unto 1 CD with near DVD quality. Those are the low-motion-mostly-dialogue type of movies.


Examples:

From Hell 1:51min (without credits) 1CD -> After doing a two pass encode the quality is 95% (amazing) The most easy to compress movie I've encoded.

Natural Born killers 1:52min (without credits) 2CD -> The quality is over 49% For me, it isn't comparable with dvd. The most difficult movie to encode I've done.


And besides, what seems transparent to one could look merely good to another, it all depends on what the viewer looks for and on how trained the eye is at seeing differences.


The bigger truth I've seen. I have a friend who tells me that he has seen The Lord of the rings 1CD rip and the quality was very good. :confused: :confused: Maybe the rip has made using XviD with core 5.X ;) ;)

A 1CD rip could look relatively good... but I think in generally after do many rips and compare with the DVD source maybe you'll go for another cd even if in 1CD it looks good.

Just my 2 cents.

[DaveQB]

yeah i am thiking along those lines.

the CD covers i got here are slim and dont fit 2 CD's well (they fall out when ya open 'em)
its not the 80cents for another CD i am worried bout just convenience.


i have done a movie here that was 2:10 , i think, and it looked fine on 1 CD, but i think i will almost automaticly do 2 CD's for 2.5 hr movies.

question:

i take a few portions of the movie (1min) and encode them with 1pass and see how they are.

does 2pass for the entire movie make my method redundant???

dont want to encode a whole movie just to "see" how it looks :(

[serbersan]

Well, the main problem of your method is that is very inaccurate because between your 1 pass clips and your 2 pass encodes the quality could vary very much. But could be an option.

I suggest to use tools like gknot and use compressibility check and then you have to associate a quality with a percentage.

The you could see a rip that looks good for you and see that the compressibility check is .. maybe 65% at 640x...

You only have to do a 5% compressibility an see if the movie fits or not in 1CD. another advice is to compare the clips with the original DVD or quick 1 pass quantizer 2 at 640x... and the you will see why generally you will go for 2CDs

[DaveQB]

what is the "compressibility check " in GK ??

i have never used it,
i do all my DivX encoding stright through VD :)

[Acaila]

Check out Doom9's guides on how to perform the compressibility check. Performing a search in the forum will also give you about a zillion posts that talk about it.

Basically it's about testing a representative short piece of your movie to find out which settings will be best for the entire movie.

[manono]

Hi-

GKnot-DivX5 Guide (http://www.doom9.org/gknot-divx5.htm), including Compress Test instructions.

[TheXung]

The bigger truth I've seen. I have a friend who tells me that he has seen The Lord of the rings 1CD rip and the quality was very good. Maybe the rip has made using XviD with core 5.X

This is gonna sound strange, but Lord of the Rings actually does decently compress onto one CD. It's not the same as the DVD, but it's not bad quality.

Compressibility and compressibility checks do not always give an accurate measure of if a movie will look good on 1 CD. A movie that I had ripped "Dangerous Beauty" had a pretty bad compressibility rating but turned out to be pretty good at 640x480 on 1 CD. If you rip LOTR at 576 or even 604 by whatever the right aspect ratio is, with bframes, q-pel, GMC and fit it onto an XCD, it doesn't look that bad. Of course the actions scenes are a little blocky but there's not much you can do about the curve compression. And on a 17 inch monitor, the lower resolution isn't that noticable.

Compressibility checks give you an idea of what the settings should be, but there are movies that stray from what it predicts.

[zyrill]

basically i don't only THINK it's possible to get 2 hours of film onto 1 cd - i KNOW it. i don't know what you guys use as techniques but i have pretty much everything i know adopted from doom9. and my rips are hard, most of the times not to tell from dvd, depends on which movie of course. it doesn't even depend on how much action there is - i haven't figured out yet what affects the quality. movies like ep I fit perfectly on 1 cd with breathtaking quality. today i even made pulp fiction fit on 1 800mb cd with quality not to tell from dvd. i'll post a guide i wrote some time ago if you're interested - it uses dvd2avi, vfapiconv, virtualdub and ogg as audio. if i cannot compress a movie adequately (like lotr) i make 2 cds of course, but including ac3 instead of ogg when i do that. what i still just don't get: why do so many people still use divx 3.x? it's just ******* awful-looking, even the so called hi-q rips from sharereactor - i just cannot understand how anyone can deny that divx 5 just looks better. i downloaded star trek - insurrection some time ago, a 2cd version with 3.x and then i borrowed the dvd from a friend making a 1cd rip - and the quality is better! i don't tell you to show how 1337 i am - i don't need that kind of apreciation - i tell you because seeing people using 3.x makes me angry everytime i downloaded a movie. it's like using DOS 2.0 which didn't even have support for harddisks.

[DaveQB]

oh ok, how can i use ogg as audio ??
i mean how do i ad that encoder to VirtualDub

[Acaila]

You can't do that with VirtualDub because:
1) Vorbis (not ogg, that's a format!) doesn't have a VfW codec, so VirtualDub can't do anything with it.
2) VirtualDub can only write to AVI, and Vorbis can't exist in AVI.

You'll need BeSweet or HeadAC3he to encode the audio stream to Vorbis and OggMux or OgMuxer to multiplex the audio and video stream together.

[DaveQB]

oh ok cool,

i am starting o encode all my music files in ogg

so be cool to use that with my DivX files,

play back of a DivX movie with an ogg audio track causes no issues i asssume??

thanx

[zyrill]

i will post some excerpts from my guide concerning audio encoding and muxing:
- Start OggMachine
- Click in the yellow box to the right of "BeSweet.exe" and select its location
- By clicking in the box below you will have to set the input-file, the .ac3-file
containing the correct language that is. The "SubStream ID" is only needed for
ripping directly out of .vob-files which is obsolete in our case
- Configure an output-location and -filename in the third yellow box
- Set following options:
- "LFE To LR Channels" : "-3db"
- "Channels Mode" : "stereo"
- "Dynamic Compression" : "normal"
- Select "Gain" instead of "PostGain"
- Select "Auto Find Maximum Gain"
- Select "Quality" and set it to "~128Kbps" respectively "0.410" (i have
experienced excellent quality with this setting - if you experience size-problems
when burning you may want to reduce quality to achive smaller audio-files)
- Uncheck all other options except "Output to Log File" and "Append to Log File"
- Hit "Give me OGG!"
- Start OggMux
- Select the video-file by clicking on the Button next to the "Movie:"-field
- Enter the name of the Movie
- Select the audio-file by clicking on the Button next to the "File:"-field in the
"Soundtracks"-box, enter the Language in the drop-down-box to the right, set the delay
(the delay is shown in the filename of the .ac3-file that DVD2AVI creates and that you
encoded to .ogg) and press "Add"
- You can also enter chapters and mux subtitles into the stream but you won't find how
to do that in this guide
- Enter a name for the output and press "Mux File!"; if the movie does not fit onto 1 cd
you will want to split the output; to do that, you will have to use Oggfile cutter 1.0
because Oggmux doesn't cut keyframe-accurate so files can start with a stall picture

if you got any suggestions, just ask me...

[zyrill]

i don't think there are any issues/problems...

[beta447]

depends on the movie

a 4:3 comedy rated PG-13 has a lot of brightness, needs 2 cds...keeping the faith...needs 2 cds...it NEEDED...2 cds...i know...i've done it in divx 5

however, from hell is over 2 hours long, but widescreen and compresses great at one cd. why? becuase the video of the movie is so god damn dark, the codec maxes out on it and i end up with a video file smaller than 540MB when the set audio bitrate in the calc. is 160kBit/s and the vid. was set to 2CDs.

but usually, not a good idea. maybe in divx 3, but that's another forum, and another codec, one i don't know much about.

[zyrill]

only comment: as mentioned above, it sure does depend on the movie - but 2 hours are no problem whatsoever using .ogg you should have over 700 kbps which results in really good quality. and NEVER use divx 3! it SUX! i just can't understand those guys... the quality improvement to divx 5 is not subjective - it's just plain visible.

[JohnMK]

Originally posted by zyrill
i will post some excerpts from my guide concerning audio encoding and muxing:
- Start OggMachine
- Select "Quality" and set it to "~128Kbps" respectively "0.410" (i have


Suggestion:

Keep this function in mind:

Pick a bitrate in mp3 that would suit you for your movie.
Say, 128.

Cut that in half. Add 25. That's 89. That's also about what --quality 2 ogg vorbis averages out to, in movies. So. Here's a cheat sheet:

MP3 == Ogg

192 => -quality 4 (roughly 120kbit/s)
160 => -quality 3 (roughly 105kbit/s)
128 => -quality 2 (roughly 90kbit/s)
96 => -quality 1 (roughly 75kbit/s)

If you normally use 192kbit/s mp3, by all means use -quality 4 ogg vorbis. It'll sound slightly better and be much smaller.

If you use 160 or 128 or 96 mp3, then use ogg vorbis qualities 3, 2, or 1 respectively. There's no reason to use -quality 4 for all instances. It's way overkill.

[DaveQB]

yeah i agree DivX5 is the best, naturally

i am going to give this a try next DivX CD i make,

using ogg

so the AVI will play back fine on systems that cant play ogg files ordinarily ??

[snowbeach]

Hey guys! I ripped "There's Something About Mary" (114min) to 1 CD (700MB), the audio file (MP3, 128kbps) was about 142MB big. Now start calculating - what is left for the video?! ;) The video quality is ok, could be much more better. A 2CD rip of the movie gives me "excellent" video quality. So, I do not understand your discussion. Never seen a 1CD rip-movie (do not be afraid - encoded with DivX502) that lasts 2h min with a very good quality. Anything else are fantasies...

@zyrill
I am interested in your guide for video encoding. Like to try it your way for 1CD rip and compare the video quality with mine! ;)

[zyrill]

link to my guide: mitglied.lycos.de/zyrill/Zyrills%20DivX%20Guide.txt
NTSC-deinterlacing is still missing - i'm too lazy... will be done when i get a funny feeling... :rolleyes:

snowbeach: if you want you can send me your adress via email and i'll send you a 1 cd i made of pulp fiction (2h 57min) quility is stunning for 1 cd (i admit it's 800mb)

[snowbeach]

Testing Results: Doom9 DivX5 Guide (GKnot) vs. Zyrill's DivX Guide
------------------------------------------------------------------


FYI. I am no expert! ;) I can only tell you what I've seen/experienced and which way of video encoding I prefer! This test is a video quality test!


Used movie: "There's Something About Mary" (114min), PAL
Task: Video encoding with an average video bitrate of 716 kBit/s for 1 CD (700MB) and a resolution of 640x352.


1. Doom9 DivX5 Guide (GKnot)
Everything done as described in the guide. Only video encoding!

2. Zyrill's DivX Guide
Download the guide at http://mitglied.lycos.de/zyrill/Zyrills%20DivX%20Guide.txt !
Everything done as described in the guide too. Only video encoding!
The following describes minor changes in the procedure. But they are not decisive to the result!
Chapter 2.3. of the guide:
- Did not proceed the tasks regarding the aspect ratio (screenshots) due to the fact that I knew which resolution (640x352, value got from GKnot) I want to use!
- Used a bitrate of 716 kBit/s for better comparison with GKnot ;), value got from GKnot already!
Chapter 3:
While setting the "Filter mode" to "Precise bicubic (A=-1.00)", I also set the resolution to 640x352!

Result
------
The video quality of both encoding ways was ok. Have not seen any major differences - to be honest, have not seen any differences at the first sight, maybe there are some. ;) But I think that is not important - a normal user won't see any differences and he won't try to search for minor differences. ;) At the end it is important to choose your favorite way of encoding. I will stay with GKnot, because it is easier (at least for me) and a great all in one tool! :D


BTW. For those, who think that MP3 is not a must, I suggest to use OGG. It's smaller and gives you more space for video encoding. And the best - you have to search to listen major differences.


@Zyrill

You did not say to use "Fast recompress". Or do I have to use always "Full processing" mode for video encoding? ;)

[Acaila]

@zyrill:

I just read your guide because of snowbeach's test and I have a few suggestions.

To frameserve from DVD2AVI to VDub you use VFAPI. I strongly recommend against using this tool for 2 reasons:
1) It forces a colorspace conversion to RGB.
2) Because of 1) it slows down encoding a lot.
The colorspace of a DVD is YV12 format (this is YUV), so this gets converted to RGB by VFAPI, read by VDub and compressed by DivX5 in YV12 again. Colorspace conversions are slow and lossy, which means you also lose information!
So: YV12->RGB->YV12 is bad

Avisynth on the other hand can frameserve from DVD2AVI to VDub in YUY2 format (and work is currently in progress to support even YV12 in the future). This, like YV12, is also YUV colorspace. So converting between these two is much much faster, and a lot less lossy than YV12->RGB.
Now setting VDub in full processing mode forces a conversion to RGB again, so best not to do this anymore. Which means that VDub's filters are out of the question. However Avisynth has excellent filters as well (and in my opinion much better ones than VDub), including a BicubicResize with changeable parameters just like VDub.

So to sum it up, using Avisynth instead of VFAPI you get:
1) Faster encodings
2) Less luma/chroma loss from colorspace conversions
3) Just as wide an assortment of filters as with VDub (plus you can give ideas for new filters on this board's avisynth section, and some coder might actually make it for you if you ask nicely ;)).

[zyrill]

thanks a million Acaila for pointing that out - i didn't knew... well i guess from now on i'll be using avisynth and i have to correct my guide.:rolleyes:

[DaveQB]

Originally posted by zyrill

- Start OggMux
- Select the video-file by clicking on the Button next to the "Movie:"-field
- Enter the name of the Movie
- Select the audio-file by clicking on the Button next to the "File:"-field in the
"Soundtracks"-box, enter the Language in the drop-down-box to the right, set the delay
(the delay is shown in the filename of the .ac3-file that DVD2AVI creates and that you
encoded to .ogg) and press "Add"
- You can also enter chapters and mux subtitles into the stream but you won't find how
to do that in this guide
- Enter a name for the output and press "Mux File!"; if the movie does not fit onto 1 cd
you will want to split the output; to do that, you will have to use Oggfile cutter 1.0
because Oggmux doesn't cut keyframe-accurate so files can start with a stall picture

if you got any suggestions, just ask me...

ok just tried OggMux real quick then...but used the fake WAV file VFAPI makes, no go. crashed OggMux hehe

so i am guessing you need a real WAV file or OGG file huh ??
trying that now ...

[zyrill]

of course you need a real ogg file... why don't you use the one you created some steps earlier with OggMachine? let me post the excerpt for you:
- Start OggMachine
- Click in the yellow box to the right of "BeSweet.exe" and select its location
- By clicking in the box below you will have to set the input-file, the .ac3-file
containing the correct language that is. The "SubStream ID" is only needed for
ripping directly out of .vob-files which is obsolete in our case
- Configure an output-location and -filename in the third yellow box
- Set following options:
- "LFE To LR Channels" : "-3db"
- "Channels Mode" : "stereo"
- "Dynamic Compression" : "normal"
- Select "Gain" instead of "PostGain"
- Select "Auto Find Maximum Gain"
- Select "Quality" and set it to "~128Kbps" respectively "0.410" (i have
experienced excellent quality with this setting - if you experience size-problems
when burning you may want to reduce quality to achive smaller audio-files)
- Uncheck all other options except "Output to Log File" and "Append to Log File"
- Hit "Give me OGG!"

hth,

zyrill

[DaveQB]

but isnt that the audio file you are talking bout there ?? :consufed:

i used a real ogg file for the audio, but the video file i think is whats causing the trouble,

tried a divx avi, same result...
i guess i'll just stick with mp3 audio tracks on my DivX rips

[zyrill]

vfapi isn't supposed to be used with AUDIO but with VIDEO! if you have your .avi-video-file already, you don't need vfapi - besides i've been told that avisynth is way better for framserving, so no need to use vfapi at all. you just select your videofile, add it in oggmux, take the audio-file that you generated with oggmachine and mux it - i don't see your problem? maybe you can tell me exactly what you did?

[DaveQB]

yeah i did exactly that

OggMux spits out 2 errors messages then simply crashes..

maybe i need to re-download oggmux or something ,

i'll re-create the error message now....

1st window, heading "Error!"

can't create OggMuxer!

2nd window, heading "Error!"

Can't add OggMuxer to Graph!"


and then the whole
OggMux.exe has encountered a problem and needs to be shut down blah blah blah

[zyrill]

let me sum it up: BEFORE you even add a divx5-avi (video only) file, and BEFORE you add the .ogg-audio-file, oggmux crashes? well that's strange - and unfortunately i'm neither a developer nor a specialist for oggmux; you could check www.doom9.org for updates etc. though.

[snowbeach]

@DaveQB

Use in OggMux only your AVI file and the OGG file and everything should work fine! (Did you create your AVI file with GKnot, and your OGG file with BeSweet or OggMachine?)
Did you search the forum about similar problems. Maybe you should open a new thread at the related board (e.g. Audio encoding or A/V formats)

@Zyrill

As somebody said before ;): There are good compressable movies and there are horrible to compress movies. See the movies Doom9 likes :p - Matrix gives you a very good rip with 1 CD and to get a good rip of Saving Private Ryan you need 3 CD's!!

[DaveQB]

i used VD to create the AVI and BeSweet to create the Ogg file.

i get errors every time.
i think i'll stick with mp3 as the audio track, i havent got time for this (in the middle of assignments and exams in two weeks:( )

thanx all

[BxWrapper]

Response to the main subject:

IMHO, 576x... is the lowest resolution to go with ogg at q=3 as minimum.

If the movie is 1:2.35 AR, you may get quite "good" result with 576x... resolution AND if the movie quite compressible.

If the movie is 1:1.85 or even more 1:1.33, you will NEVER get good result with 1 CD.

[snowbeach]

If you want to see your movie on tv, than a 1 CD rip is enough! Ripped Gladiator 2:34h on 1 CD with a res 640x256, DivX502, 2pass. Comp test was about 32%, so on my pc the picture was not the best, in fast scenes you see pixels, while on tv it was really good, did not see any pixels.

[DaveQB]

hmmm funny how TV makes bad pictures look good

i guess thats its one job though

[bkam]

Haha, that's funny about Gladiator... I ripped it to three CDs Lanczos(672,yyy) no filters and 6ch ac3, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing with my ten crappy satellites and three subwoofers in my dorm (5.1 rules). Don't recall comp test, usually mine are 75-85%.

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally posted by DaveQB
but my question is, for the experts/experienced, is it at all possible to get a near DVD quality rip of a 2:30hr movie down to 1CD ????

As many have already said, It really depends on the movie and your definition of "near-DVD". For most movies, 2.5 hr on 1 CD won't be anything like "near-DVD".

For me, I use these guidelines:
Compressibility check 70-75 % of max possible size for chosen resolution/resize method - this is a MUST

For "Best" 1CD quality
======================
Resolution at least 640x[vert.] => 80 % of 720x[vert] DVD framesize
Neutral bicubic resizing
112 (pref 128 of better) Kbps MP3 (I dislike using ogg)

For OK 1CD quality
==================
Resolution at least 560x[vert.] => 60 % of 720x[vert] DVD framesize
Soft bicubic resizing
96 (pref 112) Kbps mp3

I also use YUV->RGB TV mode (requires Full Processing Mode) to cut final size by 10+ % for a given resolution. For many rippers this is a no-no, but to my eye the resultant colour spectrum is fine.

If I find a DVD can't be ripped to comp. check 70-75 % using at least OK 1CD quality guides, I go to 2 CDs.

JB

[makikes]

Although I'm not very experienced, getting DVD quality in one single CD, isn't related to one's particular skills or divine abilities. I think it's strictly the source that dictates if it will look good or bad. Some movies compress extremely well... and others don't! I recently ripped "Dune" (1984). The source was interlaced, the movie was about 2h30, very dark, not much action and it compressed extremely well (but i used SeparateFields, wich I think makes the compression a lot easier). Later on, i did "U-571" and the dark, underwater scenes look awful no matter the bitrate used (probably a bitrare allocation problem here). So, in short: you really don't get any control over the quality if you're aiming for n CD's. Compressibility tests work and should tell you what to do, and not the other way around.