Instant Copy - Getting Output Size Correct

[DVD Maniac]

I have now run several tests (8 in total) with the Instant Copy output size trick (F5 after manual setting) and have the following results / conclusions -

1. If you undertake a FULL 1:1 Copy then the oevrsizing trick works - a complete output size of around 4.38GB

2. If you do a pre-strip with Ifoedit to avoid problems of dropped subs about half works OK but others seem to come out well below target - around 4.1GB or so.

3. If you do Title selection and/or stream selection with Instant Copy the size works OK providing that you set the % sliders to the SAME levels for each title (but you might get dropped subs)

There does not appear to be any pattern as to why this happens so you cannot predict if you are going to get an undersize result. The only way of working round it is to rerun InstantCopy, increasing your target size by the same % difference that it missed by. For example, if you got 4.10GB the first run then you need to set the second run to 4.68 (4.38/4.1*4.38). Tedious and time consuming I know but it works.

Hope this helps

[KaoS]

Yep, dealing with the same problem here

It is a matter of trial and error for each movie

Bourne Identity, I had to oversize it to 4.45gig

Friends Season 2 Disc 4, I had to oversize to 4.7gigs

Shawshank Redemption I had to oversize to 4.55 gigs

In all cases I put extras down to 30% (only stripping extras subs and audio tracks.. I keep english subs and DTS tracks if available) and I then movie as high up as I can in quality

[Old1]

Thanks for this feedback guys. Is there a way of doing a resize an a "select all" basis, to reduce the size of all titles at the same time, and then selectively increase the size of the main movie?. This would save doing a resize for each and every title separately.

Old1

[DVD Maniac]

Not sure what you mean here. When you change the size it affects only the title you have selected - not all of them. The initial setting is by default the same for all of the titles.

What I do is set the extras to a low level, say 55% (as I will only ever watch these one or two times max) and then try and get the main movie up to at least 70% to ensure good output quality. If I cannot get at least 70% on the main movie I ditch extras - it makes no sense to compromise the viewing quality of the movie for the sake of having extras that you only watch a few times.

[dumb13]

Originally posted by Old1
Is there a way of doing a resize an a "select all" basis, to reduce the size of all titles at the same time, and then selectively increase the size of the main movie?. This would save doing a resize for each and every title separately.


Originally posted by DVD Maniac
Not sure what you mean here. When you change the size it affects only the title you have selected - not all of them. The initial setting is by default the same for all of the titles.



I would interpret his question the following way: say we have a DVD, with 6 titles, one of them is the main, the others are studio logos, trailers, extras, etc. Since the final size cannot really be predicted, we have to manually set the compressing ratio for oversizeing. And here, I think Old1 would like to see a general slider or so, that could change the ratio for the whole DVD in one step (just as automatic does it, but only for achieving the green), to set say 4,7GB (red obviously), but then change individual titles in case and as needed.

Yes, this would be a neat feature. I have just finished the 5th disc of The Godfather collection, lots of extras, 50+ titles, different size. The automatic run gave 3,99GB, than I had to oversize to 4,72GB, to achive actually a final 4,32GB. But it is really a pain to set the slider one by one for about 60 titles...

Regards
dumb

[DVD Maniac]

OK I see what you mean. I think the first step is for the program to properly predict the output size first though! Looks like we are stuck with the trial and error process for now until Pinnacle fixes this problem.