Dog Soldiers Region 2

[stendhal_uk]

Just rented Dog Soldiers......
Disc is a dvd-9, duel layer disc, movie is 104min long.
there is only an english soundtrack and english subs track.
HAVE YOU SEEN THE TOTAL SIZE OF THE VOB FILES !!!!!!!!!!!!!
6,949,189,632 BYTES. ( nothing to strip to reduce file size.)
looks like a lengthy ReMpeg2 sesssion.
Why should the disc be encoded to this size ?
I first thought that it may have pan & scan and 16:9 versions.
Do the companies encode this way to disuade copying ?
OR HAVE I MISSED SOMETHING ???????????????????????????
anyone out there backed this title up yet ?
regards
Darren

[rjgn]

Well, have you checked the bitrate? Perhaps they just decided to take advantage of the space and encode with a very high bitrate in order to get a good picture quality. It's a very grainy film either becuase it was shot on a budget or because it was shot purposely like that for artistic reasons. Maybe because of the fact that the source material was grainy they needed to encode at a high bitrate in order to avoid much mpeg atifacting.

[stendhal_uk]

Thanks for the advice,

If i use one of the tools available to check the bitrate,
what bitrate is the average of the norm ?
what tool would you recomend using?

regards
Darren

[auenf]

looks like the movie was encoded to 8mbit, maybe cause of lazyness, or maybe copy protection too ;)

Enf...

[vobboy]

yes ive backed this up but the birate had to be lowered to 66% and its left the film a little to be desired and it did take a lengthy session im afraid

[old-hack]

Must be a R2 thing. The R1 version has full screen and wide screen versions on it. Might want to play it first to see. The opening menu on the R1 DVD offers viewing full or wide screen versions.

[jaay]

the reason is that the film was filmed a bit like a porno - the camera jerks around a lot, very sudden movements, so the high bit rate within a pal movie is needed to cope with this. the ntsc version needs slightly less bit rate being ntsc rather than pal. and no, the region 2 uk rental dvd has only the widescreen vers. of the film, one language track and one subtitle field. thats it in over 6 gig!

[auenf]

Originally posted by jaay
and no, the region 2 uk rental dvd has only the widescreen vers.

rentals are usually a basic version of the disc, well here they are ;)

Enf...

[jaay]

just thought id let you know that the ntsc region 1 copy is only 3.6GB and is much better quality!!

[cinephile]

The PAL R2 rental is very grainy.
Not sure if this is deliberate (to give the impression that a camera crew is following the soldiers documentary style (similer to Saving Private)), or due to a poor transfer, .
I CCE'd from about 7GB to 4GB and the results is exactly the same as the original so can't complain.

[auenf]

it is probably grainy by design, gives the 'right era' look.

Enf...