Nero Recode 0.90 beta

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by ephesus79
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.

Are you sure YOU haven't done something wrong? I've never han any trouble with that kind of stuff.

[snidely]

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.

Sorry, but that is incorrect. If you do not remove the region coding from your rip, the rip will act as if you are trying to play an incorrect region disc, even if the original disc has the correct region coding. (Wow that sounded confusing, didn't it? :) )

Basically, you must remove the region coding from your rip or it will not play correctly (most of the time), regardless if the region is correct or not. (Did that sound any better? :) )

[ephesus79]

Okay, I get it...I think. But why wouldn't Recode automatically make it region free? Who would want to keep the region setting? I remember in DVD Shrink even if you set it to be region free, I would still have to go back on a few DVD's and remove region checking in IFO Edit. Did anybody else have that problem?

[mrbass]

in that thread that I linked to dvdshrink said "Can't let the guys at Ahead get ahead"...hehe. Sounds like...hmmm who knows maybe that ahead developers are the ones working on the transcoding engine and dvdshrink helped/sold (pure speculation) the interface and assisted them in integrating it, etc. Definitely 2.4 will be coming out which is good news.

[daddy_fizz]

yes mrbass it is getting very interesting...i can't wait to see what 2.4 holds for us...

i wish we knew what dvdshrink's true relationship with ahead was...could shed a lot of light on what is going/not going to be included in version 2.4 and future versions...

~Fizz

[Richk50]

"in that thread that I linked to dvdshrink said "Can't let the guys at Ahead get ahead"...hehe. Sounds like...hmmm who knows maybe that ahead developers are the ones working on the transcoding engine and dvdshrink helped/sold (pure speculation) the interface and assisted them in integrating it, etc. Definitely 2.4 will be coming out which is good news."

last I saw when asked if he was involved in recode, he didn't respond. I guess that's the only answer he can give.

[luphy]

I'm confused. Several folks are saying Nero reendcode is almost
as good as IC7. While some say Nero seems to have the exact same
engine as Shrink?

I think it's already been established that IC7 is better than
Shrink in terms of quality.....so for those who've done comparisons,
is Nero the same as Shrink or better and closer to IC7?

[mrbass]

Originally posted by Richk50
last I saw when asked if he was involved in recode, he didn't respond. I guess that's the only answer he can give. [/B]

dvdshrink is really good with the no comment stance. I believe he shouldn't comment if he doesn't want to/or can't and that's his right and let us speculate all we want. Notice how many posts/threads about donating to dvdshrink. He's never commented on it once.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by luphy
I'm confused. Several folks are saying Nero reendcode is almost
as good as IC7. While some say Nero seems to have the exact same
engine as Shrink?

I think it's already been established that IC7 is better than
Shrink in terms of quality.....so for those who've done comparisons,
is Nero the same as Shrink or better and closer to IC7?

It is better the InstantCopy imho. Did about 20 tests now and the quality is amazing. It made me decide not to use the CCE method anymore because I just can't find any noticable difference.

Only one movie I did that was not so good is NARC.


Some details:
Movie NARC R2 PAL (movie only one sounddtrack/one subpicture, everything else stripped):

The first scene is a very high motion scene where the camera man is running after the police man.
The Nero Recode version had a lot of macroblocks in this scene (it was still watchable but also very noticable). So I did the same movie with the CCE method.

I even noticed macroblocks (just a few) in the CCE compressed version. Those blocks where not in the original. So it must be one of the hardest scenes to compress.

The other movies I have tried where imho near perfect.

[Richk50]

"dvdshrink is really good with the no comment stance. I believe he shouldn't comment if he doesn't want to/or can't and that's his right and let us speculate all we want."

It seems silly this need to know. When you look at recode and it so strongly resembles DVDShrink, there has to be a connection. We know a company like Ahead is not going to just steal Shrink's work and Shrink is not going to be quiet about getting ripped off. Yet for some reason a lot of us (me) want to have our speculations verified.

[quantum]

I just compared Saving Private Ryan NTSC using both Recode 0.9.5.1 and IC7 with latest patch. I attempted to reduce everything evenly and save only the 5.1 audio track in both programs resulting in a video about 52% of the original.

Of course IC7 undersized the resulting output by 100 megs. Recode was within 11 megs of capacity.

The Recode video showed slightly less compression artifacts overall than IC7. I was surprised. It's not a huge difference, but noticeable. IC7 may have had more detail than Recode. While it competes with IC7, let's not get carried away and compare it to CCE. My previous backup of this tile with CCE is clearly better.

IC7 took about around 2 hours. Recode about 45 minutes.

Good reasons to use Recode over IC7:
- Close to same video quality
- Good ability to fill 4.7 gig disk
- No proprietary file formats (pdi) that require an additional lengthy step to convert << I wonder who thought up this piece of work
- Much faster, especially when factoring in the need to unscramble the pdi file format
- Better user interface

Are there any reasons to use IC7?

I'd post some screen shots, but I don't see how to include attachments here.

[quantum]

One thing I noticed when trying to backup Matrix. It refuses to reduce extras beyond a certain amount. I couldn't get the main title over about 60% while the extras remained about 55%. I wanted to bring the extras down more but couldn't. I notice DVDShrink has a lower limit of 50% so I guess there's a lower limit in Recode also.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by quantum
One thing I noticed when trying to backup Matrix. It refuses to reduce extras beyond a certain amount. I couldn't get the main title over about 60% while the extras remained about 55%. I wanted to bring the extras down more but couldn't. I notice DVDShrink has a lower limit of 50% so I guess there's a lower limit in Recode also.

Why don't you use Shrink to just reduce the extras to say level 6 (leaving everything else at No Compression). Then, use Recode as per normal.

In fact, you could maybe use Recode to do the same, by unchecking the 'Fit To Disc' box, and then juggling about with the sliders.

[snidely]

Are there any reasons to use IC7?

Were there ever? :)

Why don't you use Shrink to just reduce the extras to say level 6 (leaving everything else at No Compression). Then, use Recode as per normal.

Until Recode incorporates all the features from DVDShrink, I have been using Shrink to reauthor for movie only, strip streams, etc. and then transcode using Recode. Fat Bast'rd has got the right idea. :)

[Fat Bast'rd]

Fat Bast'rd has got the right idea.

"Get in ma belly! I'm really sexy, ya know".

[glocker]

Noobie question here but I can't get any audio for the main movie..DD 5.1 in Road to Perdition...How do you configure selection of the audio streams? I know it's a dumb question.:confused:

[jzaman]

I have been pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of RECODE. It matches, in my opinion, the quality of IC without the sizing issue. I have set the custom size at 4482 and it has maintained a 4.37gb size for the last five backups I've done. It is not a CCE or MAINCONCEPT killer but it does fit into the high end transcoder family. Whether you are a Nero hater or Nero lover it is worth a try. Also if you use ImgTools 1.0.0.6 for burning the 6.0.0.11 API works flawlessly.

[mrbass]

Originally posted by jzaman
I have been pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of RECODE. It matches, in my opinion, the quality of IC without the sizing issue.

Are you guys sure about the quality of Recode? I flip through frame by frame and the third frame isn't pretty. This reminds me of dvdshrink 1.3 engine. Kinda like 1.3 compression but with 1% incremental ability.

[JFerguson]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
It is better the InstantCopy imho. Did about 20 tests now and the quality is amazing. It made me decide not to use the CCE method anymore because I just can't find any noticable difference.

Only one movie I did that was not so good is NARC.


Some details:
Movie NARC R2 PAL (movie only one sounddtrack/one subpicture, everything else stripped):

The first scene is a very high motion scene where the camera man is running after the police man.
The Nero Recode version had a lot of macroblocks in this scene (it was still watchable but also very noticable). So I did the same movie with the CCE method.

I even noticed macroblocks (just a few) in the CCE compressed version. Those blocks where not in the original. So it must be one of the hardest scenes to compress.

The other movies I have tried where imho near perfect.

This is one high-motion scene. I did it with InstantCopy and am very pleased with the results (tested on 52" TV). I couldn't see any issues other than one blip when Jason Patric jumped the brick wall in the chase.

[JFerguson]

Originally posted by snidely

Until Recode incorporates all the features from DVDShrink, I have been using Shrink to reauthor for movie only, strip streams, etc. and then transcode using Recode. Fat Bast'rd has got the right idea. :)

Or use InstantCopy to reduce the extras down to 30-40% and then use Recode to compress movie.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by mrbass
Are you guys sure about the quality of Recode? I flip through frame by frame and the third frame isn't pretty. This reminds me of dvdshrink 1.3 engine. Kinda like 1.3 compression but with 1% incremental ability.

Which movie are you talking about. When you say the frame isn't pretty what do you mean ? Are there a lot of macro blocks ?

I did try it on about 20 different movies now and I am still amazed by the quality. Also very long movies like LOTR still look very good even at a compression level of 57%.

[mrbass]

well I only did one movie Casino at 57% with Recode and at level 8 with dvdshrink 2.3 and to me it sure seems similiar recode and dvdshrink 2.3. I've just having a hard time where people are comparing the quality of recode close to IC7 which I don't quite see that's all. Guess I need to do a few more movies before forming an opinion one way or the other.

[Fat Bast'rd]

I'm amazed at the %ages you're getting.

I've done LOTR, and got 67% on the main movie. I stripped out the DTS track, and removed credits in the menu etc.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by Fat Bast'rd
I'm amazed at the %ages you're getting.

I've done LOTR, and got 67% on the main movie. I stripped out the DTS track, and removed credits in the menu etc.

For testing I did the hole disc, did not strip anything thats why the %ages are so low.

[daddy_fizz]

Originally posted by mrbass
Are you guys sure about the quality of Recode? I flip through frame by frame and the third frame isn't pretty. This reminds me of dvdshrink 1.3 engine. Kinda like 1.3 compression but with 1% incremental ability.

good thing when i watch a movie i dont' stop on every third frame and look at it :D

~fizz

[quantum]

good thing when i watch a movie i dont' stop on every third frame and look at itI might, if there's a topless scene going on...

At first I thought Recode might have a good frame/bad frame algorithm, but now I'm not so sure. Compare it frame by frame to a IC7 transcode and you'll probably find they're similar.

Good comparison technique here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58808)

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by mrbass
well I only did one movie Casino at 57% with Recode and at level 8 with dvdshrink 2.3 and to me it sure seems similiar recode and dvdshrink 2.3. I've just having a hard time where people are comparing the quality of recode close to IC7 which I don't quite see that's all. Guess I need to do a few more movies before forming an opinion one way or the other.

Sounds good to me. I'm currious what other people results are.

Until now I did about 20 tests with the results that for me look far better then the Instant Copy test I did run (I tried the 7.11 version a while ago on 3 of the movies I also tested now one of them was LOTR). The Instant Copy result of LOTR was not good at all lot of artifacts. Also Instantcopy causes strange fastforward/backward bugs on my standalone and on my PC. PowerDVD locks up and I have to kill it by using the taskmanager (this is not acceptable at all !). Standalone gives an error that the disc is dirty and needs cleaning.

DVDshrink 2.3 gave a lot of macoblocks in the LOTR backup. The Nero Recode version (0.90 beta) looked great. Maybe I did not look at it all the way true but the scenes I checked where great (used frame stepping also to check the quality).

So looking forward to hear what your test result will be.

[Fat Bast'rd]

I did LOTR and did a few screenshot comparisons. I could barely tell the difference between the two (with it compressed @ 67% with Recode). Lines were not quite as sharp as the original, but I could only tell the difference when side-by-side - and even then, it's only slight. Not an artefact in sight!

Talking of artefacts, did you know Van Gogh painted the Mona Lisa?

[quantum]

Now if only we could convince the Recode author to stop stripping out the closed captions...

[surreal120]

A lot of people have said on here that they think the quality of Recode is as good as or better than CCE. Just curious to get some more feedback on this. My big question would be: does/can recode do more than one pass? If not, it's hard to believe it could really outdo CCE.

But who knows... Anyway, if there's an objective method of comparing the two, I would be very interested.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by Fat Bast'rd
I did LOTR and did a few screenshot comparisons. I could barely tell the difference between the two (with it compressed @ 67% with Recode). Lines were not quite as sharp as the original, but I could only tell the difference when side-by-side - and even then, it's only slight. Not an artefact in sight!

Talking of artefacts, did you know Van Gogh painted the Mona Lisa?

off topic
"A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people stand in line to see the original." - Louis Armstrong
/on topic

Just did gangs of new york (movie only/5.1 dolby soundtrack/ 1 subtitle).

Quality, amazing (if you look of the size of this movie). There are a few jumping pixels in the last scene (only noticable on my computer on my widescreen TV I do not see them) but the rest looks great. Did not find any artifacts yet. Will do some frame comparing later.

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by surreal120
A lot of people have said on here that they think the quality of Recode is as good as or better than CCE. Just curious to get some more feedback on this. My big question would be: does/can recode do more than one pass? If not, it's hard to believe it could really outdo CCE.

But who knows... Anyway, if there's an objective method of comparing the two, I would be very interested.

You could do a comparison by making frame shots. Read a few posts back howto do this.

Recode does do a 2 pass. Pass 1 is analyse the video. Pass 2 is transcode (this will take about 30-40 minutes for a 2 hour movie).

CCE does do multi pass encode to determine where the most bitrate is needed. It will give at max a 10% quality increase if you do more then 2 passes. More then 5 passes is useless. (5 passes will take about 6-8 hours to encode a 2 hour movie). Plus the time to recreate the complete title set and make sure that all menu items work (at least 1 hour for a complex DVD).

Better then CCE it will proberly not be. Without noticable differences I am sure that this is the case.

[quantum]

A lot of people have said on here that they think the quality of Recode is as good as or better than CCE. Just curious to get someWhere did you see this? I haven't seen anyone say Recode is as good or better than CCE. Many have compared it to IC7. Neither are as good as CCE when compression levels are extreme. CCE is still king when the job is tough.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by quantum
Where did you see this? I haven't seen anyone say Recode is as good or better than CCE. Many have compared it to IC7. Neither are as good as CCE when compression levels are extreme. CCE is still king when the job is tough.

I don't see how it can get tougher than LOTR. It is almost 3 hours long, and I can only tell the difference when comparing frames side-by-side, and even then the difference is miniscule, and undetectable to the naked eye!

[surreal120]

Quantum, I have seen a few people say on this thread, that Recode looks as good to them as CCE. For example, I think Fat Bastard said that about Lord of the Rings.

Like you, however, I am skeptical. Maybe I'm just "old school" but it seems like CCE's taking 4 or more hours to transcode a movie with multipass encoding should result in a better quality product than Recode's approx. 45 minutes. I know Ahead had some pretty smart developers, but I can't imagine them writing an algorithm that is SOOO much faster than the guys at Cinema Craft and having just as good results. You never know though... look at the time/quality differences between CCE and TMPG!

[thop]

Notice how many posts/threads about donating to dvdshrink. He's never commented on it once.Yes that is very interesting. DVDShrink is also very secretive about his real identity, i don't think anyone knows anything about him. I've heard rumours that he is from Japan, others say he is from the US, i've also seen Spain mentioned. Notice how he doesn't even use a real nickname! :)

That Ahead getting ahead quote is very interesting as well.

Anyway i'm surely looking forward to DVDShrink 2.4! I don't like Ahead software, else i'd give Recode a try, i use burnatonce for my CD/DVD burning needs.

[quantum]

Quantum, I have seen a few people say on this thread, that Recode looks as good to them as CCE. For example, I think Fat Bastard said that about Lord of the Rings. You think he said that? It's right there in this thread. He never said he used CCE. He compared a Recode job to the orignal.

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by quantum
You think he said that? It's right there in this thread. He never said he used CCE. He compared a Recode job to the orignal.


Indeed. I have never actually used CCE in my life. But from what I have read on these pages, my impression is that CCE encodes whilst Shrink and Recode transcode. Encoding means converting from one format to another, whilst transcoding means keeping the same format, but downgrading the quality by increasing the compression.

So although CCE isn't being used to convert formats when you're doing it from DVD ('cos the original and final formats are both MPEG2), it's engine is nonetheless still going thru the entire encoding process, which is why it takes so much longer than any transcoding process, since transcoding works from data that is already there by stripping out information, rather than an encoding process which would create that data from scratch.

Or at least, that's my take on the matter. Please correct only if truly knowledgable.

[luphy]

Btw, several folks are surmissing that Nero Recode is free.
But it is not. Sure you can run it and you get no nag screen
or expiration date. If you run Nero VisionExpress demo, you get
the expiration date.

Once you past that expiration date, Nero Recode will no longer work.
Try it - set your date ahead a month and when you try to run Recode,
it will say your demo has expired.

Only way to keep it going is to buy the serial code for Nero 6.
I don't see any option to pay for just the NeroVision or just the
Recode components.

[Erik_Osterholm]

That significantly decreases it's worth, in my opinion. Having to use a tool to remove CSS (decrypting to an ISO) before shrinking greatly increases the amount of time it takes to do the encode. Hopefully DVDShrink 2.4 will have all the features of Recode, but will be free (and removing RCE would be a nice touch, too).

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by Erik_Osterholm
That significantly decreases it's worth, in my opinion. Having to use a tool to remove CSS (decrypting to an ISO) before shrinking greatly increases the amount of time it takes to do the encode. Hopefully DVDShrink 2.4 will have all the features of Recode, but will be free (and removing RCE would be a nice touch, too).

I must disagree when you say greatly reduses time. When using DVDdescryptour to build an ISO with all protections removed (RCE/Macrovision/CSS/User restrictions) will just take about 10-15 minutes.

It is also better for your DVD player to first build an ISO.

[harlemthug]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
I must disagree when you say greatly reduses time. When using DVDdescryptour to build an ISO with all protections removed (RCE/Macrovision/CSS/User restrictions) will just take about 10-15 minutes.

It is also better for your DVD player to first build an ISO.

does dvddecrypter also remove rce/macro/css/user restrictions if you select the FILE MODE instead of iso mode?

[DVDRFreak]

Originally posted by harlemthug
does dvddecrypter also remove rce/macro/css/user restrictions if you select the FILE MODE instead of iso mode?

Yes it does remove all protections also in file mode.

[harlemthug]

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
Yes it does remove all protections also in file mode.

thx for the info! :)

[ephesus79]

I have been using AnyDVD 1.4.1.1 and its been working beautifully with Recode. In fact, none of the program I use recognize the CSS encryption and it takes me the same 45 minutes as it seems to take everybody else to run a DVD through Recode. I hate that extra step of ripping to your hard drive and if I can save 15 minutes, I'll take it.

[surreal120]

Quantum,

Originally posted by DVDRFreak
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.

There's also some more modest opinions, like

Originally posted by snidely
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.

Sorry for misrepresenting Fat Bastard before. And FB, thanks for the info on the difference between encoding and transcoding.

Anyway, maybe I don't understand the transcoding/encoding distinction well enough, but now I'm even less sure than before: is it possible that Recode is as good as CCE (or very VERY close)?

[Fat Bast'rd]

Originally posted by surreal120
Anyway, maybe I don't understand the transcoding/encoding distinction well enough, but now I'm even less sure than before: is it possible that Recode is as good as CCE (or very VERY close)?


D'oh! It's like comparing apples & oranges. Recode transcodes, and CCE encodes. Probably whats happening, is that Recode is transcoding a movie already encoded by the movie company with CCE. Hence, you're already starting off with a CCE encoded film which Recode merely has to transcode (ie; compress even further).



[The assumption being that they use CCE in Hollywood].


PS. I don't actually know I'm right. It's just what I've gathered in my couple of months of doing this stuff.

[surreal120]

Fat Bastard, thanks for all the info. I don't mean to sound stupid about this, but I'm still a little confused:

Suppose I rip out the MPEG-2 video stream of a DVD and get a file that's 6 GB - too big for a DVD-R. So, I re-encode the video using CCE to get something closer to 4 GB. So, information is being compressed right?

Now, let's say instead I transcode the DVD itself using Recode. Again, information is compressed or stripped out. So, it seems like two very similar processes are going - not apples and oranges.

At least, as far as I'm understanding it. Does encoding mean literally taking the video in its native, uncompressed FILM format and encoding it as MPEG-2? Once it's already MPEG-2, wouldn't encoding it further be a lot like transcoding? It sounds like there's something I'm missing - sorry for being such a pain! Thanks.

[DVDRFreak]

What CCE and other encoders do is take a native uncompressed AVI file and encode it to a MPGEG2 compressed file. Therefore it is neccesary that you always do frame serving (convert mpge2 to uncompressed AVI format) with a tool like avisynth so the CCE encoder can encode the uncompressed video that the frame serving program feeds it.

What a recoder does is process the MPEG2 compressed file directly. It increases the compression level of the frames stored in the MPEG 2 file.

[geffroman]

Originally posted by thop
Yes that is very interesting. DVDShrink is also very secretive about his real identity

Yes ! and about as difficult to contact as AHEAD. The lack of desire to collect donations is weird.

I suspect that DVDSHRINK was a test product for AHEAD all along. What better way to test it out during developement than to present it to the hacker community as another SMART GUY programming from his college dorm in his spare time.

If you ask me the developement and feature set of SHRINK has always been kick ass... and has always seemed very professional compared to all the others...

AHEAD makes their money selling NERO to drive makers as bundles. I think they just wanted to expand their suite of products to keep their edge in this market. Every Drive sold has a 3rd party bundle in the box and AHEAD makes a living competing in that arena.

All speculation of course... and if it's true there is nothing wrong with that...

Jeff (My real name)