dvd2one vs InstantCopy vs dvd95copy Quality

[Demi9OD]

Someone was gracious enough to post dvd2one and InstantCopy comparisons, if possible can we get some screenshots of dvd95copy in action? If not I'll do it myself, but I don't feel like dumping cash into all three of these programs.

[mrbass]

I'm working on it...but it's taking me a lot longer than usual. I did LOTR Extended Edition and Matrix. I was gonna post but there was NO difference from the original and I closely examined. Maybe it was just the areas I was comparing.

I'm just gonna pm a few people the link of the results....wait till I do Gladiator or another movie. I'm trying to find out which one has the best encoding/transcoding engine with equal comparisons.

Here's my crap notes which I haven't edited or anything cuz it's a worthless comparison.

1547 + 4320 = start dvd95copy at 12:54am lotr repack evenly unchecked title 3

Main Movie (2hrs & 2mins long) is 4.67GB + 401MB AC3 6CH Audio = total 5.07GB down to 4.37GB or reducing it by 701MB to fit on DVD-R.
IC Pic Quality percent is 70%. Menu quality to 60%. 551MB Menus reduced to 334MB.

DVD95Copy 55Mins, came out to 4.35GB, repack evenly
DVD2ONE 7:37AM to 7:54AM Elapsed 16mins
came out to 4.36GB

MATRIX
DVD2ONE 20mins came out to 4.35GB

dvd95copy 53mins came out to 4.35GB

ic7 1hr 46mins came out to 4.32GB
set it to 4.70GB (4.36 + (2 audio 190MB =380MB) 380MB = 4.70GB)

[Aragorn]

Hi!

For LOTR comparison have a close look to the flight at the mountain side, just before gollum finds the ring, and the scene of gollum down in his mountain cave (directly afterwards). Best is also not only to compare still pictures, but also compare the movie while running (pumping effects)... I am interested what you will find out!
Also try to use higher compression to find artefacts more easily...

Aragorn

[Demi9OD]

I thought the artifacts in LOTR SE were pretty darn noticeable with dvd2one. It seems to give a granier/noisier image than the original. I have some web space now, gimme 2 days and I'll give you guys comparison shots of CCE, InstantCopy, dvd95copy, and dvd2one. I expect the quality to be in the order I listed. If anyone else has noticed CCE and InstantCopy are true ENCODERS, they re-encode the video using a new compression algorithm, where as dvd95 and dvd2one are TRANSCODERS, simply removing data from the original stream. This is evident by the low cpu use and heavy file system load when running dvd95 and dvd2one. I expect the encoders to do a better job than the transcoders, but we shall see.

[MackemX]

yo mrbass :) (1st post of the day and it's turned into a monster :D)

looking at your notes I cannot see exactly how you are doing it and what comparision you are after as there are 2 possible comparisions when using these 3 programs

you say you are comparing the transcoding/encoding engines but there are two tests you can do with one DVD. The first is a 1:1 movie only filesize allocation comparision between the 3 and the second is a DVD backup comparision and from your results it looks like you are doing the latter

for the engine comparison I suggest you use a method similar to mine quoted below and you can also compare how well the 3 do with regards to menu/extras quality with a DVD 1:1 backup by using the same methods in separate tests

To do it the way you are doing and then also allocate exactly the same space to each movie/menu/extra would would be pretty darn hard to do in one test and wouldn't be a fair comparision

that's why it's easier just to seperate the 3 tests and use a movie only file to compare the engines in one test

looking at LOTR test I see the main movie is 4.67Gb and after processing it's 3.98GBish, so that's a setting of 85% which most people will be hard pushed to see as we all know as some people can't even notice 70% comparisons :D (I wouldn't mind seeing the pics by the way cos you shud know how fussy I am now regarding quality and my fine eye for this :))

you need a movie that is gonna be compressed by around 70-75% to get more of an example of a difference in quality and the engine performance

get a 2 hour movie with plenty of audio/extras and keep around 900MB of the movie audio,menu & extras so you only allocate around 3.50GB to the movie giving a reduction of 75% for an original movie only size of 4.67Gb

I posted a basic method just yesterday on how to create a fair quality comparision in another post

you could do it quicker as you dont even need to keep audio with the other 3 just allocate the same amount of video space and uncheck audio cos that is the constant and doesnt get reduced so isnt needed in a quality comparision so you just allocate a space for it :)

take a DVD with a few soundtracks and process this through DVD95Copy but you must try to get it to reduce the main movie video only by around 75%, using some maths here and a fast hand you can get it to do that, but you can do it and it may even be easier on the newer version

after DVD95Copy is finsihed load the DVD95Copy IFO into IC and see how big the resulting Movie Title is, ignoring the audio but the figure outside the brackets and make a note of it (say it was 3.45GB)

load the original IFO into IC and now you can see how big the original movie only is (4.67Gb) and work out the actual percentage of reduction (75%)

now set the menu to 100% for faster processing and untick all other titles apart from the main movie and also untick the audio/subs for all titles including the main movie title (this will take less HD space and may even be a little faster)

now adjust the slider for the movie title so that it predicts a size that is say 7% higher (3.69Gb) for IC's inaccuracy than DVD95Copy's resulting size so you will hopefully end up with a movie only size the same as DVD95Copy

with DVD2One uncheck all audio/subs and allocate 3.45GB for the movie only finished product by reserving 0.92Gb

and if you had CCE you could even use that for a compare also by allocating the same 3.45Gb for CCE movie only end result

with this method you could get all 4 to produce a video only file of around 3.45Gb (or whatever DVD95Copy produces firstly)

hope you understand my method and this is what I would call a 'true' best transcoding/encoding engine comparision as you have taken a movie only and compressed all 4 to the same size, so it is a like for like comparision

as I don't have DVD95Copy I cannot do this myself and I notice you can now set the quality in DVD95Copy so you could use IC 1st at a setting of 80% (probably work out at 75%)and then use that as the target for DVD95Copy and DVD2One if IC would be the most unpredictable resulting filesize of the 3

comparing a DVD 1:1 backup is different as then the resulting movie filesize allocated is variable between the 3 engines so the best encoding/transcoding issue is no longer fair but from what I've seen if you backed up an 8GB DVD and kept the menu/extra & same contents using the 1st 3 programs, the quality was as follows

main movie: 1st DVD95Copy 2nd InstanCopy 3rd DVD2One
menu : 1st DVD2One 2nd InstantCopy 3rd DVD95Copy
extras: 1st Instancopy 2nd DVD2One 3rd DVD95Copy

DVD2One is 1st for extras if you don't compress them and this order may depend on compression factor of extras so they could all be the best as IC suffers more the lower it gets

this order has probably changed due to the new features of DVD95Copy but I'm unaware how well it works unless I buy it :)

this of course is for a setting of 75% so another test of around 30% could be done using an extra of around 750MB movie only size to compare the 3 engines fairly on extras performance

but the thing to note with extras and comparisions is the actual average bitrate of the original extra will probably be less than the main movie bitrate so the quality loss using the same 75% setting as the movie would be probably be greater as the manufacturers have already compressed them as much as they feel necessary

imagine if you took a movie with an average bitrate of 4.5 and created a bitrate of 2.75 using CCE which would still be acceptable quality and then used this 2.75 file with the 3 engines with a setting of 75% to probably give a bitrate of just over 2. The loss in quality from the 2.75 file to 2 file will be far greater than the loss of quality if you used a 75% setting on the 4.5 file as that would result in a bitrate of around 3.37 which would still be of high quality

This is due to the movie being encoded previously and losing most of the space that the 3 engines would use during processing so they have to look elsewhere and quality will suffer because of this

even though the filesize reduction is smaller when using the 3 engines on the CCE file the consequences with be far greater as there is nowhere to save this space

a CD and MP3 is easier example to understand. Take a 40mb song and compress it to 4Mb creating an MP3 with a bitrate of 128kbits, still acceptable when done properly. Now take that 4MB and reduce it to 75% of 4MB creating a file of 3MB and bitrate of 96kbits and compare the loss in quality to the loss in quality if you reduced the 40MB to 30MB using 75% reduction. You probably wouldn’t even notice the quality loss in the 2nd version even tho you have reduced it by 10MB yet in the 1st version with the 1MB reduction you will here the difference

same % reduction in size yet different quality loss results and this will be the same with movie extras but not on such a great scale so before and after average bitrates would also be a factor to note in comparisions of extras due some of them being sub standard quality having already reduced when compared to a movie bitrate

cheers matey and I look forward to your results :)

[MackemX]

Originally posted by Demi9OD
I thought the artifacts in LOTR SE were pretty darn noticeable with dvd2one. It seems to give a granier/noisier image than the original. I have some web space now, gimme 2 days and I'll give you guys comparison shots of CCE, InstantCopy, dvd95copy, and dvd2one. I expect the quality to be in the order I listed. If anyone else has noticed CCE and InstantCopy are true ENCODERS, they re-encode the video using a new compression algorithm, where as dvd95 and dvd2one are TRANSCODERS, simply removing data from the original stream. This is evident by the low cpu use and heavy file system load when running dvd95 and dvd2one. I expect the encoders to do a better job than the transcoders, but we shall see. LOL I took so long writing my post you have given further evidence to support my points regarding extras and the smaller the average bitrate the greater the loss in quality due to the lack of date to throw away :)

hope you understand most of my points in that hugemongous post and take some into consideration when doing your compare to give a 'true' comparision of the 4 engines

also note for comparision pics get a frame from the orginal that is suffering in quality to begin with as you will then see what the 4 engines do with an already substandard quality pic

I noticed with my Star Wars AOTC that the majority of frames had little difference due to the high quality of the original frames but it was greater on these types of frames I have just suggested which were mostly fast action scenes with a lot of action going on :)

comparing these types of frames will give a greater difference in quality and performace of the engine than a static image as I showed when I did the 70 frame side by side analysis of AOTC as some frames were impossible to separate yet some were blatantly obvious

but that is only when they have all been allocated the same amount of movie only filesize. This all changes due to the inclusion of extras as this then has an effect on the allocated movie only filesize

DVD95Copy can increase the space for the movie due to high compression methods for extras creating more main movie only filespace and then produce better a better quality movie with this but with poorer quality extras when compared to IC. It would be interesting to see how much extra space DVD95Copy needs to produce the same quality as IC. i.e is a 75% movie from IC the same as a 80% movie from DVD95Copy?

we all know that CCE is the best engine when using a movie file only comparision, then Instantcopy followed by DVD95Copy and DVD2One and the reasons behind that are obvious and if you can't see it then that's your opinion and methods that disagree with me

I'm more interested in whether DVD95Copy is that much better than DVD2One for quality to justify the extra time taken in processing between the two but then again this 15-20 mins for DVD2One is only relevant to movie only backups because a point to note is that diehard DVD2One fans seem to forget 'actual usertime' needed and still only seem to include processing time when talking about 1:1 backups!

How much usertime do you actually need compress the movie and each extra and then rebuild the DVD (and get it working!) using DVD2One?, as InstanCopy and DVD95Copy both need only a few minutes with a fully compliant DVD! and CCE also needs a bit of work

this is why some programs are best for some people and not for others due to usertime and requirements and all the factors involved in making the end product. Some people want high quality but have plenty of time yet some people have no time and are prepared to suffer in quality loss for this and some people are in the middle infact there are the diehard CCE's at one end and the diehard DVD2One's at the other end so it just all depends where you fit in the line as to which program you use :D

Maybe someone could write a program that asks 20 questions including stuff like your time available, your eye for quality and what you use to view it on etc and then it spits out the program ideally suited for you, bit like a dating agency questonaire:D

this is why most one frame comparisions can make people's opinions vary but by now most people with a fine eye for detail will know the 'true' order of quality regarding these 4 products :D. The difficult part is trying to show that to others who can't see the difference and having them agree to the order as I tried it once and got mixed results (tho not from friends & relatives who viewed the images that I also saw) so no more quality comparisions from me I think, see my quote in the sig below which says it all regarding quality :), but I still take interest in other people's efforts as long as they are fair

(2nd post of the day and massive again :)

[Demi9OD]

I used to do comparisons ALL the time when creating some of the first VBR divx encodes with 3.11 and scene change keyframes, WAY before Nandub existed. In short I know how to do a good comparison and at least for my purpose, main movie quality comes first with extras, menus, and encoding time coming in far behind. The best way to do the comparison is to take the original PGC and create new IFO files with IFO edit, containing only the original movie. Then encode with all 4 programs and get equivalent sizes out of all of them. Pull up frame by frame comparisons in Vdub through an avs script as well as eyeballing the video in motion to see how it handles frame transitioning. I will use a pretty demanding source, such as Saving Private Ryan or Brotherhood of the Wolf, long with lots of action and detailed scenes. I will probably use Brotherhood for my testing because I don't have it backed up ATM anyways :)

[MackemX]

Originally posted by Demi9OD
I used to do comparisons ALL the time when creating some of the first VBR divx encodes with 3.11 and scene change keyframes, WAY before Nandub existed. In short I know how to do a good comparison and at least for my purpose, main movie quality comes first with extras, menus, and encoding time coming in far behind. The best way to do the comparison is to take the original PGC and create new IFO files with IFO edit, containing only the original movie. Then encode with all 4 programs and get equivalent sizes out of all of them. Pull up frame by frame comparisons in Vdub through an avs script as well as eyeballing the video in motion to see how it handles frame transitioning. I will use a pretty demanding source, such as Saving Private Ryan or Brotherhood of the Wolf, long with lots of action and detailed scenes. I will probably use Brotherhood for my testing because I don't have it backed up ATM anyways :)

good to hear and I also thought of ripping the movie only title out using Ifoedit and had suggested in my original post here, but then took it out as I didn't know whether you could get DVD95Copy to create a reduction of 75% iwth only the movie file, so I gave that a miss as a suggestion to mrbass and told him just to ignore the adio/extras in the InstantCopy/DVD2One/CCE as you can adust the resulting movie only size with these 3

I look forward to your comparision as it looks like you are more meticulous to detail as I am when it comes to comparisions :D

but we are know the order of results anyway, but it's still nice to see the pics :)

[mrbass]

Originally posted by MisterX
[B]yo mrbass :) (1st post of the day and it's turned into a monster :D)

you say you are comparing the transcoding/encoding engines but there are two tests you can do with one DVD. The first is a 1:1 movie only filesize allocation comparision between the 3 and the second is a DVD backup comparision and from your results it looks like you are doing the latter

for the engine comparison I suggest you use a method similar to mine quoted below and you can also compare how well the 3 do with regards to menu/extras quality with a DVD 1:1 backup by using the same methods in separate tests

To do it the way you are doing and then also allocate exactly the same space to each movie/menu/extra would would be pretty darn hard to do in one test and wouldn't be a fair comparision

no it wouldn't. It would certainly be fair....I'm allocating the same space to each ...to see which encoding/transcoding is the best. I wasn't able to do this with dvd95copy until I got 1.2.3beta1 which allows me to uncheck certain titles. For 1:1 comparison I'll leave that comparison up to others...Personally I don't really care.

[MackemX]

Originally posted by mrbass
no it wouldn't. It would certainly be fair....I'm allocating the same space to each ...to see which encoding/transcoding is the best. I wasn't able to do this with dvd95copy until I got 1.2.3beta1 which allows me to uncheck certain titles. For 1:1 comparison I'll leave that comparison up to others...Personally I don't really care.
you confused me as in your post you include the IC % settings for LOTR and I'm still confused as to what you are comparing as you are keeping menu's and audio :confused:

in your post a 70% setting in IC for the movie only of 4.67Gb would result in a file of 3.27Gb so I assumed the movie@70%+audio+menu = 3.99Gb (3.27+0.39+0.33Gb) which is smaller than 4.37Gb

I am completely wrong assuming this? cos I doubt you did mean or actually do this as I can make more sense out of you Matrix info which shows a more fair result, that's why it was so confusing and accept my apologies

if you are doing a movie only comparision and not a 1:1 why not do away with menu/extras/audio and do it the way Demi9OD is doing it which was gonna be my initial suggestion and rip out just the movie PGC using Ifoedit and create new ifo's then allocate say 3.5Gb for each program to work with on the movie only 4.67Gb LOTR file :). You don't need audio/menu/extras for a pic quality engine comparision so why waste time & HD space processing it 3 times

the extra/menu comparisions will be totally different due to some having lower average bitrates and quality so test those separately as I explained in previous posts somewhere :)

unless you use a high original filesize movie you will be hard pushed to see the difference even in frame comparisions and impossible during playback for most movies. Something like Saving Private Ryan is a good one to use for comparisions of movie only as then you suffer noticable quality loss due to large original movie only filesize

thanks for the pics and even I can hardly see a difference if any :confused:. You would have to zoom in 4X to see any difference in quality in the pics but I don't think anyone watches a movie at 4X zoom using framestep

what I and probably a few others would like to see is what happens when you actually make these programs work hard and have to use more than the black areas. Squeeze 5Gb of movie only into 3.5Gb or use a 70% setting would be noticable as higher than 80% the difference is very minimal and not even visible on most playback systems unless you use pause & zoom :)

that's why I look forward to Demi9OD's comparision as he is gonna make these babies work for their living :D. Keep up the good work too mrbass :) and I also look forward to your comparisons aswell

[MackemX]

well I've got me a copy of DVD95Copy and had a play just now and I must say the results are quite impressive

movie quality is of a very high quality and extras are excellent also even at a very low percentage (I take it all back SniperKilla :))

this looks like it gonna be the best option for 1:1 for me

it's simplicity is simple
it's accuracy in filesize is just about right
it's speed it great also, took me 47mins to do Blade 2
you can actually remove Titles without destroying DVD structure
what more do you need? (it will even wipe your bottom for you)

so for my needs this knocks IC off the top spot for 1:1 backups (or 0.9/1) due to the overall package and its features and the job it does

there's nothing to fault with it and Digimedic seems to be ironing out any bugs that do appear as fast as he can unlike some I know :) ( I've already sent him a few minor ones)

I'm not gonna bother with comparisions as others are doing that but I am more than impressed with the results thats all I can say

the registration idea is not as bad as it seems as all it does is generate a simple code in an email that contains a 12 character code, your name and email, so no real harm in that as I thought it contained personal info but 12 characters of info cant exactly contain your life story or the gory details of your HD :)

if this continues to improve as fast as it has been then it will rule the roost if it doesn't already

boy have I changed my tune :D (sorry Pinnacle), but the full version of DVD95Copy is in no way the same as the trial version that I had based my opinion on before as there have been updates since then

there is even a 10 day money back if you are not satisfied. Now that can't be bad and I doubt very much you will be disatisfied after 10 days and you are more likely to be impressed

I know this is based on one DVD but I will be doing more don't worry

:me puts IC back in drawer:

[MackemX]

new version of DVD2One is out now that does 1:1, so we have all 3 in the same ballgame now. All the better for us users :)

so now you can compare all 3 using a 1:1 backup

I notice you can't strip out the titles using DVD2One but thats simple enough to overcome by using the Ifoedit strip with a little learning for newbies, for the oldies it should be a breeze to overcome

[waldok]

Taken from the dvd2one site :


Full disk copy mode added. Please note that the image quality will be less than when you use movie-only copymode, because there is more data to copy and also all soundtracks will be included.


He He : image quality will be less than when you use movie-only cause there's more data to copy and ALL soundtracks WILL be included.

Well, it says it all about "custom" backups. You've got the choice between movie only or the whole stuff.

I don't think this one is a winner.
Securing the software was really a BIG mistake and a waste of time.

Waldok:cool:

[mpucoder]

You may be wondering why this thread survived so long with all the problems in the past. Simply because the discussion was about how to make a fair comparison. But we don't want to stray from that subject. View the images, draw your own conclusions, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. We have a rule against asking "what's best" simply because objective questions bring out the worst in people. So, it follows that we don't want the same result as if someone asked "what's best".

[Demi9OD]

OK, all my encodes are done, I will do my comparisons and have a web page up some time this weekend. Initial results are putting dvd2one and dvd95copy at almost identical levels, I have not had a chance to look at CCE and Instant Copy yet (at work, remote desktop sucks for image viewing :))

1) Methodology was as follows, ripped movie title only.
2) Re-created ifos with IFO edit.
3) Encoded movie with 1 soundtrack to 4.36 gigs with every program.
4) Created frameserve from each encode and compared frame by frame in Vdub with 1280*720 bicubic resize.

The video size on each of the encodes is almost identical, withen 50 megs of eachother, took a couple of encodes to get them all right. Look for a link this weekend.

[MackemX]

looking forward to the post and I promise I will keep my mouth shut and just refer to the quote in my sig :D

[wgw]

You might also capture a series of frames from Dvd2one and Dvd95copy that show artifacts from transcoding and compare crc's. I found the same frame from both programs to be identical much of the time.

Is there a program that will compare 2 video streams and tell you the percentage or quantity of identical frames.

[mrbass]

Originally posted by Demi9OD
Someone was gracious enough to post dvd2one and InstantCopy comparisons, if possible can we get some screenshots of dvd95copy in action? If not I'll do it myself, but I don't feel like dumping cash into all three of these programs.

Ok...I've made up my mind..to each their own...please remember that. And do your own tests to. Thank you.

dvd2one, dvd95copy, instantcopy 3 way comparsion 2MB download
http://www.mrbass.org/instantcopy/gladeheateher.zip

I'm still waiting for yours Demi9OD

[MackemX]

top work mrbass

thats a fine example and I think you will agree that two are about the same quality and one stands out :D


I'll let the rest of you argue, but I can't imagine what you are gonna argue about :)

[wgw]

This is no fun if you can't voice your opinion.:(

[MackemX]

dont you think X stands out and that Y & Z look the same with Y just having the edge over Z ?

[wgw]

Well I don't know. Y looks pretty good to me. And don't forget about W. What detail!

[MackemX]

u see that's how arguments start

you said nothing about X

I rate them

1. W - 100%
2. X - 80%
3. Y - 65%
4. Z - 60%

[wgw]

Sorry Mister X. I should have known not to leave that one out. Yes, X is number 1, I mean 2. Do I pass the doom9 visual aquity test hosted by mrbass?

[REECYCUP]

wow it looks like bleep and bleep are using the exact same encoder
all the noticable blocks are in the exact same spot(or are you funning us?)
i hate to say it (because i cant get the damn program to work)
bleep bllep is sooooo close to the original


sorry i realy didnt see mpucoders post

[MackemX]

nice change of words :)

[REECYCUP]

im sorry i said i hated to say it:)

[mrbass]

friendly reminder...hope you guys read the readme.txt in that. I kept all audio it's about 1.2GB or so that we don't need. If you only keep AC-3 6Ch which most always do then all three programs will give better results. This was only to point out differences between them. I have people saying well screw IC or whatever I won't use it on Gladiator. I think it was at 67% pic quality. Do your own tests to reach your own conclusions. a plus or minus b squared radical b squared over 4ac. I'm doing it right now in IC7 again but this time unchecking DTS and the other two audio. It's set to 87% pic quality. I'll see if it hits the 4.37GB target size or not.

[MackemX]

87% will produce a good result with all of them and you'll be hard pushed to split them

it's the 60-75% where the 3 start to drift away from each other regarding retained quality, the lower the % the bigger the drift so I hope you catch it :)

p.s. see!, you are quite good at maths cos you only missed one factor out :)

a plus or minus b squared radical b squared over 4abc

[MackemX]

I've just put these images up on my TV via the computer and the difference is less than shown on my monitor but one still stood out and thats the Wolf jumping through the fire in the woods

try looking at the detail of the wolf, the tree detail and also the fire detail especially at the bottom left to see how much fine detail is sacrificed

there is a big difference as W & X still contain fine detail and Y & Z seem blurred and blocky and both lose the high clarity of the image

[Dre]

fire picture shows lots of macroblocks on two of them and almost none in the other.


Edited post.

[MackemX]

Originally posted by mpucoder
You may be wondering why this thread survived so long with all the problems in the past. Simply because the discussion was about how to make a fair comparison. But we don't want to stray from that subject. View the images, draw your own conclusions, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. We have a rule against asking "what's best" simply because objective questions bring out the worst in people. So, it follows that we don't want the same result as if someone asked "what's best".

LOL victim number 2 :D

why do you think I'm using W,X,Y,Z?

I never named any names :confused:

[Demi9OD]

OK I finished all my comparison stuff. Here are the screenshots (http://www.striker2000.com/pics.zip) I attained, you can read my encoding methodology in an earlier post.

I am going to draw some conclusions, they are my opinion from looking at all the programs, and thats all they are, opinions.

dvd2one and dvd95copy both have their advantages, they are very simple programs to use and are very quick at encoding. Because they are simply removing information from the stream to make it smaller, they do not make the best use of the bps available to them, and suffer noticeably in quality. Scenes requiring a high bitrate such as heavy action and detailed scenes do not do so well on these programs.

InstantCopy and CCE both re-encode the video at a lower BPS, and they both do a good job of it. In all but the closing credits scene, they are nearly equal. It is obvious CCE is much closer to source on very difficult scenes such as the fade in closing credits though.

All in all I'd have to say IC7 is the way to go for making backups of DVDs at the moment. It has the power to do everything, including menus and extras, is fairly simple to use, and encodes alot quicker than CCE (about 80 minutes for a 2:30 minute movie on my P4 3ghz). You can easily rip out extras and credits with IFOedit .ifo re-creation, or do it directly in InstantCopy.

Take into mind that I picked three of the worst frames I could find, and the quality of dvd2one and dvd95copy was acceptable for most of the film.

[mrbass]

Excellent work Demi9OD. It is a hell of a lot work to painstakingly get each screenshot. As to your conclusion...I'll just quote a doctor in the movie catch me if you can...."I should have just concurred".

I deleted dvd2one and dvd95 after viewing them and looked at ic7 and cce very closely. Hmmm I'll keep my opinion to myself. I didn't go full screen so as to not rezise the frames. Was this a 3 or 4 pass CCE. 4pass can make a difference. 5 pass though is overkill.

[red321]

Demi9OD;

Thanks for posting your screenshots.

You say that you squeezed the video and 1 audio track down to 4.3 GB in an earlier post. As I havn't got this Movie, what was the original video/audio size / Or to save my calculators batteries,:D what was the reduction "guessed" by IC ??

Thanks.

[Demi9OD]

75%, so not an incredibly demanding encode. 4 pass CCE. One thing I noticed, while there is a slight loss of detail in IC7 shots, CCE adds a little bit more noise, check out the girls eye shot to see what I mean. The IC7 is actually closer to source because its less noisy.

[mrbass]

Were you using bicubic 0.60 (bilinear isn't as good) and you didn't have anti-noise checked right cuz that screws it up worse. That's what I was gonna says IC7 looked closer to the source.

[Demi9OD]

Bicubic .75, no anti noise in CCE 2.66, filter was dissabled.

[MackemX]

this is exactly what I knew and tried to show in my earlier AOTC comparision since the first time I used IC cos I was impressed by the quality

It didnt create the same blocking on the dark scenes and large areas of same colour as DVD2One nor create a faint blur across whole image (like using a high noise reduction setting on a TV if it has one)

Now yours and mrbass's excellent comparisions go to show this in great detail

DVD2One IS a great tool, but I prefer to keep the fine detail in my backups and DVD2One doesn't give this yet. DVD95copy can compete with IC due to the fact it compresses the extras a lot more than IC can thus allowing greater space for the main movie along with the space IC wastes with it's errors and the 'Phantom' MB's sometimes

thanks for the effort you two guys and maybe all these pics can be used as a sticky to stop all the bitching when another person comes onto the forum and asks which has the best quality (which will probably be later today!). I suggest the one of the bloke in Demi9OD's example and the tiger one from mrbass'ss as the best examples but also stress in this sticky that this is not evident throughout the film as this wouldn't be fair to the others and that it is based on a 1:1 filesize comparision with same reduction setting that tests the engines of the programs. Quality results would be different if you backed up the whole DVD with the three programs. At the moment with current features DVD2One would suffer more, IC would be the same and DVD95Copy would increase if you backed up the whole DVD and compared them again

Demi9OD, one thing tho, don't take offence if I suggest you don't suggest that IC is used to rip out stuff cos it can't do it properly due to the 'Phantom' MB bug (I like 'Phantoms':)). Not a dig just a suggestion :), cos I dunno if you have seen my Spy Kids 2 and Simpsons posts about this and the way it 'butchers' IFO's and leave video in even if you choose to remove the Title

[Demi9OD]

Yeah I noticed the same thing with the Matrix, so many wierd interwoven extras, it couldn't handle it. But using IFO edit to re-create vobs is easy, and personally I don't take the time to watch the extras, so I am all about movie quality.

[SniperKilla]

Originally posted by MisterX
well I've got me a copy of DVD95Copy and had a play just now and I must say the results are quite impressive

movie quality is of a very high quality and extras are excellent also even at a very low percentage (I take it all back SniperKilla )

muhahaha i been waiting to hear those words :)

[Richk50]

What a bunch of cowards. Do any of you have any guts at all. Just state your opinions, it isn't politics or war for goodness sake.
You're giving this way too much importance.
OK, I'll tell you what the pictures say.
1. IC
2. DVD95Copy
3. DVD2One

[mrbass]

I'm a coward, idiot, nutcase, etc....only difference is I'm proud of it if I do say so myself.

[MackemX]

Originally posted by mpucoder
You may be wondering why this thread survived so long with all the problems in the past. Simply because the discussion was about how to make a fair comparison. But we don't want to stray from that subject. View the images, draw your own conclusions, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. We have a rule against asking "what's best" simply because objective questions bring out the worst in people. So, it follows that we don't want the same result as if someone asked "what's best".

it's took you this long to decide :)

we all know the order but we don't want to upset the certain users, so that's why no names were mentioned and W,X,Y,Z were used instead cos people have different opinions (see sig)

expect the backlash now Richk50, from some angry DVD2One users :p

[Richk50]

"expect the backlash now Richk50, from some angry DVD2One users"

I can only thumb through the pictures mrbass created. If a person can't admit to what they see, what can I do.
DVD2One never claimed to have the best image quality, just by far and away the fastest. When 99.9% of the population can't tell the difference in image quality between the 3 programs, isn't that enough.
Most of you know far more about these subjects than I do. I come to these forums to get honest information and opinions. I really want to hear what people have to say and I don't want it censored. I think the vast majority of people reading this feel the same way.

[MackemX]

Originally posted by Richk50
DVD2One never claimed to have the best image quality, just by far and away the fastest
:), DVD2One have never claimed to have the best image quality, it's the users that sometimes claim that DVD2One is the same if not better than IC etc, so that's how arguments start cos both parties feel strongly and when their judgement is question they will be liable to defend it

so that's why it's in the rules about asking which is best to stop these flame wars, but also probably why mpucoder said keep it to yourself for these examples, which we all honoured (well just about as we used W,X,Y,Z :D)

we all should know roughly which is the best in what situation, as you correctly pointed out yourself and probably 90% of users will agree with that, but if people cannot judge it for themselves to begin with then that's down to the 2nd line in my signature :)

[Richk50]

"there is a big difference as W & X still contain fine detail and Y & Z seem blurred and blocky and both lose the high clarity of the image"

I'm old and my brain doesn't work so well. I had to keep paging back through posts to understand what x,y and z was. It's confusing and a lot of unnecessary work.
You've spent hours developing the data, the facts. Obviously you want to share it with others of similar interests. Please just do it.

[MackemX]

but what happens when someone says

"there is a big difference as W & X still contain fine detail and Y & Z seem blurred and blocky and both lose the high clarity of the image"

then someone says

"there is a big difference as Y & Z still contain fine detail and W & X seem blurred and blocky and both lose the high clarity of the image"?

that's when the dummies get spat out and the toys go flying outta the pram :D

[mpucoder]

To expand a little on MisterX's sig. We do not all have the same equipment, we do not all have the same criteria for judging. The original material greatly influences the end result, especially the amount of compression required.
Most reports about quality lack many of the details needed for objective scientific comparison. First the judgment is subjective (this looks better), there is little or no information concerning the original DVD (not just the title, but region and version, not all transfers were created equal), and virtually no information about the viewing conditions. All this leads to flame wars, as someone drawing a different conclusion with different equipment and criteria can't believe the other person could make such a claim.
This is what we strive to avoid. While making screenshots using the different programs under conditions as identical as possible allows each person to make his own judgement, posting the opinion is sure to lead to disagreement.

[Richk50]

"To expand a little on MisterX's sig. We do not all have the same equipment, we do not all have the same criteria for judging."

We were talking about mrbass's snapshot comparison of exactly the same frame of each movie. Calling it w,x,y,z doesn't change what we see, just makes the terminology confusing.
If you feel mrbass' method of comparison is flawed, that's another story.
This stuff is so transitory anyway. Who is to say what next weeks new release will bring.
People are holding back their opinions to keep the peace.
That just isn't right. People come here to learn and get opinions from others who have the same interests. We have moderators to weed out those who have nothing constructive to say.