Nero Recode 0.90 beta

[sync]

Originally posted by Fat Bast'rd
I only installed the 2nd package to get Recode. That seems to sit happily with old Nero.
That worked fine for me also.

[luphy]

I saw this on the afterdawn board. Anyone know anything about this?
I can't see any reference to this on the Nero website.


"However, we do know that the Vision Express is improved on the version we reviewed earlier. Based on our feedback the updated version will include an option to use external video encoders, such as CCE or TMPGEnc"

So a quick question to those already using the Nero Recode:
You were able to install the Nero Recode component and still use
it with Nero 5.5 without having to upgrade to Nero 6?

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by luphy
So a quick question to those already using the Nero Recode:
You were able to install the Nero Recode component and still use
it with Nero 5.5 without having to upgrade to Nero 6?

"I refer the right honorable gentleman to the answer I gave a few moments ago..."

[Erik_Osterholm]

Well I tried re-encoding a couple of movies: Empire Records and Donnie Darko. Both were too long to copy directly, so I shrank them using Recode. I first burned Empire Records and tried it in my DVD player (as a test for Nero 6; I wanted to make sure it would work since some previous versions of Nero burned discs incompatible with my player). Everything worked fine except for menu selections--they simply weren't there. I could press the appropriate button combination to access anything the menus linked to (i.e. down, down, enter to get to Special Features) but there was no highlighting of the menu items.

Thinking it could be a player incompatibility, I tried it with the ISO of Donnie Darko through WinDVD and Nero Showtime. Same problem. Tried the original disc to verify that there wasn't something wonky going on and it worked correctly.

Ideas? Is this just a bug I need to report to Ahead? Is it something I can correct myself in the IFO?

Also, the first time I encoded Empire Records, the Fit-to-Disc feature didn't really work too well. Came out with a set of files that was 500 megs too large. Anyone hit this bug?

[Bear263]

I noticed that it doesn't select any audio for menus. I have to select them manually.

[ephesus79]

I noticed that it deselected audio on the menu also by default and that was a little annoying. How exactly does the profiles work? Can you create a profile where all audio is enabled by default?

I like to keep the menus so I usually use DVD Shrink to compress extras to stills, leave the movie at 100% and then run it through Instant Copy. I was experimenting with Nicholas Nickleby which had 2.2 gigs of extras which DVD Shrink can compress to 333 MB without audio. I tried Recode and used a picture of 1 black pixel for the stills and that brought the stills down to 84 megs which is a 25% improvement, which isn't bad. Going from 2.2 gigs of extras to 84 megs and still keeping a fully comliant DVD structure...that's sounds acceptable in my book.

BTW, why were people scoffing at the fact that Recode used a user selectable still for the extras? I know that people were begging DVD Shrink for that feature since it first came out and here it is. There are programs out there that do remove extras completely and keep menus but doesn't guarantee a fully compliant DVD. I don't really think that will change.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by Bear263
I noticed that it doesn't select any audio for menus. I have to select them manually.

Make a custom profile (or deit the default one).
Deslect under the audio tab all languages.
Select the option preselect all available audio languages if none of the tracks meet the selection criteria.

This did for me the trick. It works the same way for subtitle tracks.

[oCe]

I have the same problem with Recode; tried several DVD's. Everything seems ok, quality is on par with Instantcopy imho. Plays fine on my pc, with PowerDVD 5. But, in my standalone (bot Philips 625 and Cyberhome 512) no highlighting in the menu's. Simply can not use the menu's on a standalone, which works with all other transcoding tool I've tested. Bug?

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by oCe
I tried several DVD's. Everything seems ok, quality is on par with Instantcopy imho. Plays fine on my pc, with PowerDVD 5. But, in my standalone no highlighting in the menu's. Simply can not use the menu's on a standalone

Well now you mention, I'm getting the same thing. Thought it was my eyes until now.

[DVDRFreak]

Did you remove audio/subtitle tracks from te menu's.

Recode removes (default profile) audio/subtitle tracks from menu which do not match the english language. Maybe this could be causing this problem.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
Did you remove audio/subtitle tracks from te menu's.

Recode removes (default profile) audio/subtitle tracks from menu which do not match the english language. Maybe this could be causing this problem.


Nope. I've changed it to not keep menus in their original state, and to keep all subtitles and audio tracks by default, so no go there I'm afraid.

[Fat Bast'rd]

I've just done one where even PowerDVD doesn't highlight the menu buttons properly.

[oCe]

Originally posted by Fat Bast'rd
I've just done one where even PowerDVD doesn't highlight the menu buttons properly.

cool! that's why they call it 0.90beta I guess, though; quite a HUGE bug imho!

[oCe]

Originally posted by Fat Bast'rd
I've just done one where even PowerDVD doesn't highlight the menu buttons properly.

oops... i should not click that fast ;) double-post... :rolleyes:

[DVDRFreak]

I did a DVD or 6 without any problem. Maybe my sony player is to damm good (yeah right, if it plays on a sony it plays on anything else that picky these player is about structure).

Maybe it is in the way you rip the DVD. I use DVD Decryptor (3.1.6.0) in ISO mode to harddisk and then mount with DAEMON Tools (3.33).

Can you give some examples of the titles you tried. Maybe I have one laying around where I can test on. I like to see if I also can expect problems.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
Can you give some examples of the titles you tried. Maybe I have one laying around where I can test on. I like to see if I also can expect problems.

LOTR - Fellowship Of

Menus don't highlight in PowerDVD either. They function okay, and the mouse changes pointer when hovering over a button, but the buttons don't highlight as they should.

Of course, since there's no mouse on a standalone, you don't even have that indication eihter.


Just done another one. Tipping The Velvet (bit obscure, I know). Same thing.

[quantum]

I too noticed the menu highlighting problems. I also notice some menu video frames are combed. As far as video quality is concerned, my further tests showed it may be on par with IC7.

[Erik_Osterholm]

Just took a closer look at what Recode selects/deselects by default, and there are a whole mess of subtitle streams in the menus that it turns off. I'm guessing this is it. I manually selected them (each was .1 mb, hardly a problem unless recode can't take that into account on fit to disc) and am currently recoding. I'll post my results.

[snidely]

I'm very interested gathering opinions of the transcoding ability of this program, especially as different people will be presenting different challenges for the compressor. I've only tried one title so far, Die Another Day RC1, and I was quite impressed. In casual observations, it looks almost as good as my CCE encode.

Since the reauthoring feature is missing or yet to be implemented, right now I have chosen to reauthor for movie only using DVDShrink, then transcode, and then transcode with Recode, as I would like to directly compare the two engines, since the rumors are that they were both written by the same person. I'll report back later.

[Erik_Osterholm]

As I suspected, re-enabling the subtitles for the menus worked like a charm. So if you're missing menus when using Nero Recode, try that.

Now to do some hard-core quality tests.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by Fat Bast'rd
LOTR - Fellowship Of

know). Same thing.

Ok, Got the R2 version (movie on one disc). I'm transcoding right now to see if I have the same problem.

It should have something to do width subtitles missing from the menu because that is the way that those highlights are stored on a DVD.

Will post result later.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
Ok, Got the R2 version (movie on one disc). I'm transcoding right now to see if I have the same problem.

It should have something to do width subtitles missing from the menu because that is the way that those highlights are stored on a DVD.

Will post result later.


Ah, well you may well have hit on something there then, because I deliberately went thru and removed all subtitles from the menus ('cos LOTR's subtitles actually take up space - which if you now tell me is menu buttons, then it's beginning to make sense).

So Recorde has badly recognised the buttons as subtitles???

[daddy_fizz]

Originally posted by Erik_Osterholm
As I suspected, re-enabling the subtitles for the menus worked like a charm. So if you're missing menus when using Nero Recode, try that.

Now to do some hard-core quality tests.

read this post a couple above yours...

turns out (from his tests) that nero recode disables all subtitles in the menu's which is acutally the button highlighting. If you want to see button highlighting in menu's you just need to re-enable all subtitles in the menu's that recode removes by defualt.

I would assume you could still take the subtitles out of the main movie if you wanted to without any problems...

~Fizz

[DVD Maniac]

Tested with Die Another Day which all other apps struggle with because of the wierd angle structure. If I did not include ALL of the subtitle references in the Menu then the buttons don't work. Keep them all and they work fine which confirms that it is not identifying button structure properly. Good news is it handles the angles well, no blocking or player freeze ups.

Other observations

Quality = IC
Title Removal = Not checked out fully yet
Retention of Structure = Not checked out fully yet.

Gonna run more tests with fussy titles and my fussy player but is looking REALLY good.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by DVD Maniac
Other observations

Quality = IC

Since Mr. Shrink had a hand in writing Recode, the question is is where does the quality come as regards to DVD Shrink and IC?

DVD Shrink <= Recode <= IC ?

[DVD Maniac]

Not wishing to get in a Pissing comp with you my fine friend! Just initial visual comparisons with same movies at same compression speeds. I am sure the more technically and tool endowed forum members will debate this to excruciating depths in the coming weeks.

Besides, IC title stripping is STILL not fixed despite the best efforts of various forum members to show Pinnacle the way forward and last but not least, STILL no output to a VIDEO_TS file for final fine tuning = CRAP.

My simple requirements look to be (almost) satisfied with this one - I am eager with anticipation

[luphy]

Can't seem to get to Nero's online shop to find out price
of buying just the Nero Recode program without Nero 6 itself.
Anyone actually bought just the Recode program and how much
did you pay for it?

Hopefully Nero will add something like Shrink's re-authoring
and start/stop features. If the quality of Nero is almost as
good as IC, then I guess I could always use Shrink to deselect
menus and certain titles/subtitles/audios and edit the start/stop,
and then run it through Nero Recode.

Seems Nero Recode does a good job with compressing it to fit onto
one DVD - something IC seems to have a hard time with. If quality
is the same for Nero and IC, I'd go with Nero.

[quantum]

Die Another Day isn't a great title to test video quality as even DVD2One seemed to compress this to close to original quality at default settings.

I just finished Baraka (1992) with DVD2One (at constant setting), IC7 and Recode. DVD2One had visible cubes evenly throughout. Recode has a 1 good frame, 2 bad frames, algorithm. The good frame was close to the orignal, the 2 bad frames showed visible cubes. This is probably what causes what others refer to as a "pulsing" effect. IC7 showed the least amount of cubes. The cubes were evenly distributed.

I'd place Recode somewhere below IC7 in the group with DVD2One, DVDShrink, etc. Maybe it just uses the shrink code.

I'm in the process of running this through CCE. I'm expecting CCE to very closely match the original. Will update when done.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by quantum
Die Another Day isn't a great title to test video quality as even DVD2One seemed to compress this to close to original quality at default settings.

I would have said that something like LOTR was a good example to make cross comparisons with, because it is a 3 hour movie and at that length compression is bound to show at the seams - the question being, how much?

Incidentally, my judgement of LOTR having been Recoded is that it appears more blurred than the original on my monitor, but on my 32" widescreen CRT, it seems perceptually the same as the original (which is surely what counts). If you're judging off a projection system, then go use the original, Lol.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Yipee dah! Just re-done Tipping The Velvet leaving the menu subtitles in, and I now have menu buttons!

[DVDRFreak]

Did LOTR also now.

The menu behaves the same as the original and also works on my standalone.

But the quality. Amazing !
Did the complete disk (50% for movie 47% for extra's). Did not strip anything ! Move almost 3 hours long.

I did not find any macro blocks yet. It is a little less sharp but even if I encode it with CCE this will happen because of the bitrate being cut in halfe.

I think that this little proggie works so great that I even consider not using CCE anymore. I can not find the difference between the CCE version of LOTR and this one.

I hope they build in a movie only option because thats what I like for my movies. Maximum quality no other stuff on the disk.

Quality imho better then Instantcopy (for this test at least) and without the fastforward/backward bugs instantcopy has.

Gonna test some more.

Update (just a thought)
I wonder if this is the DVDshrink engine. Maybe it is but then it is completly rewritten. I did this movie with DVDshrink 2.3 a while ago and there where macro blocks al over the place. Also I did a comparison with bitrateviewer between the original and the Nero Recode one. The bitrate seems not to be compressed as much in all places indicating that it is proberly recoded using some kind of variable transcoding technic. DVDshrink 2.3 uses a constant compression level (at least taht is what I did understand).

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
I hope they build in a movie only option because thats what I like for my movies. Maximum quality no other stuff on the disk.

Well that's easy to do. Use Shrink to re-author the movie with no compression, then use Recode on the Shrink output.

I'm doing that to get some still mode compression. Strangely enough, Tipping The Velvet has a Stills Gallery that can be compressed from 63Mb to 8Mb by doing that. Bizarre...

[sync]

I read about a technique for IC that may work well for Recode. You start off by using DVDFab (freeware) to strip out what you don't want. It is an easy to use app. It will create vobs that you then bring into Recode where you have it process all the files.

The advantages are that it is easy to use and allows you to strip out files that some transcoding apps won't. And supposedly, at least compared to IC, it creates files that are more compatible with some standalones.

DVDFab used to rip but the author took that out. But there is a hack available that lets you rip with it. If you use the hack then it won't take any longer to set up your vobs this way.

You can find the software and a guide at mrbass.org.

[sync]

Hey you Fat Bast'rd, :) I guess we're on the same wavelength. Shrink would be another route to accomplish this. DVDFab doesn't transcode.

[DVD Maniac]

Now completed Die Another Day tests using this app,

- Angles work perfectly (not even IC got these right)
- Unwanted Audio Streams have been removed perfectly with the dummy references in place
- Audio / Sub streams all work from the original menu without the need for a Menuedit cleanup
- Visual quality is high standard with no difference (that my eyes can detect) from an IC result
- The Default Audio stream was corrected automatically (I removed the default .ac3) - Wow! :cool:

Very impressive!

Now going to run more tests but it looks very promising. Nice to see that DVDShrink and its author have arrived at what looks like being the ultimate one click app and getting rewarded!

Note - You MUST select ALL subtitle references in the Menu selection tree otherwise your buttons will not work properly - hope this bug is being worked on!

[Richk50]

"Nice to see that DVDShrink and its author have arrived at what looks like being the ultimate one click app and getting rewarded!"

Someone previously stated on this forum, that DVDShrink was coming out with a new version. If he's working for Ahead, isn't it unusual for them to allow him to continue working on a freeware version of a program that they sell?

[DVD Maniac]

I just meant that he's been rewarded for his work on DVD Shrink. I very much doubt we will see DVD Shrink developed further as you say

[mpucoder]

But, it is being worked on, as the other thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58426) says.

It is not unusual that someone does contract work rather than become an employee.

[mrbass]

read dvdshrinks comments (http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?&threadid=21475&perpage=15&pagenumber=3) July 20th about transcoding between IC and dvdshrink. Perhaps he did after all modify it for recode...pure speculation though. He sure sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

[DVD Maniac]

It certainly seems that DVDShrink is not dead, yet.......

If the rumours are true that he is contracting for Ahead I just cannot see them agreeing to a rival product thats available at no cost and has almost identical features - makes no commercial sense to me. In all previous situations I have seen of a freelance developer being hired or contracted by the big boys, the free version of the app disappears rather rapidly! (eg Derrow and his tools)

Ah well, lets see what happens

[Erik_Osterholm]

Originally posted by DVD Maniac
It certainly seems that DVDShrink is not dead, yet.......

If the rumours are true that he is contracting for Ahead I just cannot see them agreeing to a rival product thats available at no cost and has
Ah well, lets see what happens

I believe that Recode is free, at least for now. It never nags me about registering or anything, and as others have said, it works fine alongside Nero 5.5. It's possible that they just wanted to have an interface change and paid him for that, without the stipulation that he not release his own version for free.

[duartix]

People, people, you are confusing Nero with Recode.
For many people who don't search and don't have the brain power to get to DVDShrink, Recode is just a small thing that adds some value for those who buy Nero.
Good for Shrink, good for Ahead, which can sell a few more copies of Nero for those which haven't found out (myself included) that Recode is also free, and good for those who crawl in here...:)Perhaps he did after all modify it for recode...pure speculation though. Mr. bass, from that post it didn't look like Shrink was very much enthusiastic about it. I don't believe he has gone the reencode DCT blocks way. 2 reasons why:
1 - Is Recode quality a match for IC?
(well I can't really say it's not because I haven't tried)
Is there anyone willing to compare image quality between Recode & DVDShrink?
2 - Speed! Shrink said it would be a lot slower to do that.

[quantum]

I just completed backing up Tears of the Sun. I used Recode, IC7, and DVDShrink 2.3.

I shrunk the main video to 70% in all 3 programs. Results:

- The DVDShrink 2.3 video and Recode video are almost frame for frame identical. I think it's the same underlying code.

- The video quality suprised me. It is close to IC7, maybe even better for this title. I looked at it very carefully. There is definite blocking in both titles, but the Recode version is not worse than the IC7 version.

- Recode doesn't retain closed captions - something I would like to see fixed

When trimming titles, creating a solid color bmp does reduce the size better than the default bmp. The more complex the image, the larger the resulting size. I found a single large white X on a black background is only slightly larger than a solid black BMP.

Recode is significantly faster than IC7.

All in all, I think Recode is a tool which may be a competitor for IC7. In the past I never considered DVDShrink a viable tool due to the inability to select sizes (other than in 5% jumps) and the lack of ability to remove titles (other than the static option, which still left hefty chunks). Recode handles both of these, although there is still room for improvement with the title removal feature.

[DVD Maniac]

All in all, I think Recode is a tool which may be a competitor for IC7. In the past I never considered DVDShrink a viable tool due to the inability to select sizes (other than in 5% jumps) and the lack of ability to remove titles (other than the static option, which still left hefty chunks). Recode handles both of these, although there is still room for improvement with the title removal feature.

Agree that the 5% steps in Shrink were a downside, but note that IC7 has NEVER carried out Title removal correctly and has always resulted in corrupted Structures which some players cannot handle. Only DVD95Copy has come close to offering a proper solution to Title removal, now Recode has come really close to a perfect solution, but as you say it needs some refinement.

[RadicalEd]

uh (http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7638)

[ephesus79]

I was backing up Solaris the other day and when I tried to played it in PowerDVD, I got a region error. I had to go into infoedit and clear the region checking. It's a good thing I didn't burn directly to the CD. This to me is another indication that Recode is related to DVD Shrink because DVD Shrink is the only other one click app I had this problem with.

[Erik_Osterholm]

Well this one was an interesting one.

Recode actually doesn't handle Animatrix at ALL well.

Menus take up 301.5 MB.
Main Movie takes up 3309.4 MB.
Extras take up 4544.5 MB.

Most of the extras are in a shared group, but the total MB of the entire suite of Extras is closer to 120 MB (if you add them up manually.) Disabling all extras also disables the Main Movie, and when you shrink everything to the point where (logically) it should all fit on a DVD-R, it comes out much larger.

DVDShrink comes out much better, extras are at roughly 2 GB, and shrinking them doesn't affect the Main Movie. There's no shared group or anything (this isn't something I'd come across before..what is it exactly?)

For now I'm going to use DVD Shrink, but I thought I'd post this and see if anyone had any ideas.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by benjust
but this was just wierd - princess bride with 80% quality.. there is no difference between the frames, i had to capture again to make sure i didn't capure from same source twice, but i didn't - there just is no difference.

http://benjust.is-a-geek.net:81/PDVD_049.jpg
http://benjust.is-a-geek.net:81/PDVD_050.jpg

This would confirm what I noticed in bitrate viewer. It looks like recode uses some kind of variable compression. So 10% does not mean that everything is compressed with a compression level of 10%. It just means that the total size needs to be redused by 10%.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by ephesus79
I was backing up Solaris the other day and when I tried to played it in PowerDVD, I got a region error. I had to go into infoedit and clear the region checking. It's a good thing I didn't burn directly to the CD. This to me is another indication that Recode is related to DVD Shrink because DVD Shrink is the only other one click app I had this problem with.

Nero Recode does not modify any protection data. So if you ripped the movie without removinf the region check then it will also be in the backup same for the macromedia analog protection.

[ephesus79]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
Nero Recode does not modify any protection data. So if you ripped the movie without removinf the region check then it will also be in the backup same for the macromedia analog protection.

I didn't remove the region check if it had one, but if it did, it would be region 1 so it should have any problem playing in my region 1 dvd-rom right? Also, the original played fine without any region problems.