Calypso
12th February 2003, 06:27
I thought I'd give DVD2One the workover on a particularly difficult challenge- backing up the disk Vin Diesel's 'XXX'. Since I try my best to retain everything on my DVDs, I thought this would be a good candidate. This disk consists of 14 VTSs- 13 of those are 'extras'.
Everything on the disk except for the movie VTS total 3275MB (3.12 GB). The movie (2.35 anamorphic) has lots of action and totals 4423 MB (4.31 GB). I ran all but one of the non-movie VTSs thru my standard CCE/Scenarist process, using Q60 followed with 4-pass VBR and managed to crunch the non-movie VTSs down to a total of 2265MB (2.21GB). After allowing for all audio and subtitle tracks, this left me with a mere 1244MB for the 2:05 movie video. After accounting for overhead, this left me with an average bitrate of 1329 Kb/sec! This equates to a lot of grey areas (Q>10).
Well, what the heck. I used the DVD2ONE/MakeEasy process, and made one disk. I then used my standard CCE 6 pass process on the movie, and made another disk. Now for the acid test:
DVD2ONE clearly has troubles when left with the woefully inadequate overhead that 1329 Kb average provides. The macro blocks are painfully obvious, but I was somewhat surprised at the overall result. The mosquito effect was also quite pronounced. The noise level and color rendition, however, seemed to be much better than I expected- better than CCE in many cases.
How did CCE do? CCE was much better in the macro block area, but in some cases the noise level was worse than DVD2ONE. There is one scene in particular in the movie that CCE had a rough time- a nightclub scene where there is intense blue/white lighting that casts a very bluish tint on everything. The noise level in CCE was very bad- much worse than DVD2One. But this was just one scene...
All in all, I found the slightly elevated noise levels with the CCE output to be far less noticeable and tolerable on my 36" TV, compared to the ugly macro blocks throughout the movie that DVDV2ONE produced. CCE version was more 'watchable', while the DVD2ONE version was eternally blocky, which is very distracting.
In the end, I removed one audio and one subtitle track, giving CCE 1773 Kb/sec to work with, went with 8 passes, and ended up with a very satisfactory result.
In previous tests, I found DVD2ONE to be quite satisfactory when given more headroom- like > 3500Kb/sec. It is not easy to tell the difference between CCE and DVD2ONE at this bitrate on a television screen. But I found that the MakeItEasy/DVD2ONE method to be nearly as time consuming as simply letting CCE do its thing. I set CCE up in the evening, give it 8 passes, and it runs all night and during the day while I am at work. No big deal, and not a time killer. This is certainly not knocking MakeItEasy- jdobbs has provided a very ingenious tool to get around limitations in the current version of DVD2ONE.
I like DVD2ONE for knocking out backups of my DVD's for the kids to scratch up. But for my own viewing pleasure, I'm still sticking with CCE.
Everything on the disk except for the movie VTS total 3275MB (3.12 GB). The movie (2.35 anamorphic) has lots of action and totals 4423 MB (4.31 GB). I ran all but one of the non-movie VTSs thru my standard CCE/Scenarist process, using Q60 followed with 4-pass VBR and managed to crunch the non-movie VTSs down to a total of 2265MB (2.21GB). After allowing for all audio and subtitle tracks, this left me with a mere 1244MB for the 2:05 movie video. After accounting for overhead, this left me with an average bitrate of 1329 Kb/sec! This equates to a lot of grey areas (Q>10).
Well, what the heck. I used the DVD2ONE/MakeEasy process, and made one disk. I then used my standard CCE 6 pass process on the movie, and made another disk. Now for the acid test:
DVD2ONE clearly has troubles when left with the woefully inadequate overhead that 1329 Kb average provides. The macro blocks are painfully obvious, but I was somewhat surprised at the overall result. The mosquito effect was also quite pronounced. The noise level and color rendition, however, seemed to be much better than I expected- better than CCE in many cases.
How did CCE do? CCE was much better in the macro block area, but in some cases the noise level was worse than DVD2ONE. There is one scene in particular in the movie that CCE had a rough time- a nightclub scene where there is intense blue/white lighting that casts a very bluish tint on everything. The noise level in CCE was very bad- much worse than DVD2One. But this was just one scene...
All in all, I found the slightly elevated noise levels with the CCE output to be far less noticeable and tolerable on my 36" TV, compared to the ugly macro blocks throughout the movie that DVDV2ONE produced. CCE version was more 'watchable', while the DVD2ONE version was eternally blocky, which is very distracting.
In the end, I removed one audio and one subtitle track, giving CCE 1773 Kb/sec to work with, went with 8 passes, and ended up with a very satisfactory result.
In previous tests, I found DVD2ONE to be quite satisfactory when given more headroom- like > 3500Kb/sec. It is not easy to tell the difference between CCE and DVD2ONE at this bitrate on a television screen. But I found that the MakeItEasy/DVD2ONE method to be nearly as time consuming as simply letting CCE do its thing. I set CCE up in the evening, give it 8 passes, and it runs all night and during the day while I am at work. No big deal, and not a time killer. This is certainly not knocking MakeItEasy- jdobbs has provided a very ingenious tool to get around limitations in the current version of DVD2ONE.
I like DVD2ONE for knocking out backups of my DVD's for the kids to scratch up. But for my own viewing pleasure, I'm still sticking with CCE.