The Complete Idiot's Guide

[r6d2]

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to a good DVD Conversion

DVD conversion is an artisan's work. There are no recipes, no sliced bread, no magic parameters tweak for any general case. It requires work, learning a lot and becoming a real artisan from a simple apprentice.

There is not much you can do about being an idiot, but about being ignorant you have an option.

http://www.geocities.com/r6d2_stuff/

Hope you like it. Questions, comments and bug reports welcome on this thread.

[dvd2svcd]

Very nice guide indeed. Would have reduced my learnig curbe with 6 months when I was trying to understand all this. :D

[Holomatrix]

Originally posted by dvd2svcd
Very nice guide indeed. Would have reduced my learnig curbe with 6 months when I was trying to understand all this. :D
hehe :) - I dido (not dildo) that :)

@r6d2 - thought i saw a bug... but then it jumped off my screen, looks great, gota get more time to read the other half of the novel :) whew :)

[windtrader]

Very nice guide. This version is geared toward SVCD output. If one is primarily doing DVD2DVD conversions, would it be possible at some time in the future to add a few words of advise for the DVD "idiots" in the crowd?

thx again

[salsbst]

Thanks for this guide. The second half of it, concerning the VBR techniques, was new to me.

One quibble: it has become cost effective to compress carbon into diamonds: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html

[r6d2]

@windtrader,

I think that most of the guide applies to any output frame size (except for the "Number of CD" phrases that might change to "number of media"). Just in case, remember the D2Sroba plugin also works with DVD output.

(Personally, I'd rather transcode than reencode in DVD2DVD cases, but this was a free world the last time I checked ;). Also, as @DVD2SVCD took the time to enable DVD output in his program, I think there is indeed a market for that).

When I get more familiar with the particular details of DVD output I'll update the guide. Thanks for your suggestion and your words.

@salsbst,

Actually, I have a perpetual motion machine in the works ;).

@Holomatrix,

I hope the bug that jumped off your screen was not the fly from "The Ring". If that is the case, please remember to make a copy before a week elapses ;)

[jsoto]

Very good summary of the current tools and quality/size dilemma. Many thanks for the guide.

BTW, we've been noticed about DVD dual layer recording (Doom9's news), and, with this technology, DVD backup will not be more an artisan's work. (What a pity!)

jsoto

[r6d2]

Originally posted by jsoto
BTW, we've been noticed about DVD dual layer recording (Doom9's news), and, with this technology, DVD backup will not be more an artisan's work. (What a pity!)
Well, I guess will find something else to do by then. It's in the blood, you know?

[r6d2]

Thanks!

Why not geocities? Yahoo is a very good free web service. Any alternative you suggest to consider?

[joe_dirt]

Great read, I have been lurking on these forums for quite a long time, but never really got around to posting anything.

I hate to be nit-picky, but I may have found a very minor error in your Idiot's Guide. In the audio video section it says the following:

"Audio and Video
Audio and video are very different animals. Audio typically uses only about 10% of the corresponding video space. Both are encoded using MPEG-2, though."

Audio is not MPEG-2. VCD/CVD/SVCD use .mp2 audio, which is MPEG-1 Layer 2. Just like .mp3 obviously isn't MPEG-3 it's MPEG-1 Layer 3 (in fact MPEG-3 format was originally planned for use in HDTV but it was abandonned before it was completely specified, only MPEG-1,2,4,7 exist so far, but that's besides the point) :devil:. As I understand it MPEG-2 audio is the domain of the mp3-PRO format. I am starting to get a lot of topic here however :scared: Furthermore DVD's use DolbyDigital or DTS, which isn't MPEG-2 either. Perhaps I am missing something, in which case I apologize for this post. :(

Like I said, I hate to be so picky, but you are striving to provide the best, most accurate information, and I believe this correction is in the best interest of accuracy.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by joe_dirt
Audio is not MPEG-2. VCD/CVD/SVCD use .mp2 audio, which is MPEG-1 Layer 2.
Thanks, joe_dirt. You are absolutely right. I'll fix it on the next version. If you find any more errors please let me know. Don't worry about being picky. I'm an idiot so I don't pretend to know everything. ;)

[joe_dirt]

Originally posted by r6d2
Thanks, joe_dirt. You are absolutely right. I'll fix it on the next version. If you find any more errors please let me know. Don't worry about being picky. I'm an idiot so I don't pretend to know everything. ;)

Thanks for the reply, good to see there are still friendly people on the interent :D

I actually found another error last night that I forgot to mention. In the "About this document section" you state your reason for making the document as such:

"There is no much you can do about being an idiot, but about being an ignorant you have an option."

I am guessing it should say "not" just like in your sig :)

It's not a big deal, but seeing as it is sort of your "mission statement", I thought you might want to fix up that little typo ;)

edit:
-----
Just noticed the same typo in your original post on this thread. Now I am wondering if that typo was an accident, or was it intentional :confused:

[r6d2]

Originally posted by joe_dirt
It's not a big deal, but seeing as it is sort of your "mission statement", I thought you might want to fix up that little typo ;)
Yes, it's a typo. Someone reminded me about fixing my sig too :) Since I have not released a new version of the guide, I have not fixed it there, but yes, it is a typo.

[Venom_IL]

What happens if a genius reads the idiot's guide ? :confused:

[r6d2]

Originally posted by Venom_IL
What happens if a genius reads the idiot's guide ? :confused:
Well, that possibility is covered too. Geniuses that have read so far have not suffered collateral damages. ;)

[Venom_IL]

Good, good.

Not that I ever had anything to worry about :D

[Wolfman]

Beauty is always on the eye of the beholder
Beauty is always *in* the eye of the beholder.

RE the resizing.. it is impossible to **retain** more than 100% of anything .. you can, with perfect, no loss resizing retain 100% of the detail, but as there is no such thing as perfect resizing then there must simply be methods which lose the least amount of detail eg they retain 97% as opposed to 94%. Nice guide tho not overly simple but also not pitched too high.
;)

[r6d2]

Originally posted by Wolfman
Beauty is always on the eye of the beholder
Beauty is always *in* the eye of the beholder.
Thanks, Wolfman. I have never learnt well when to use which. ;) In my mother language there is not such distinction.
RE the resizing.. it is impossible to **retain** more than 100% of anything
I guess you mean the "Detail Kept" table. You are right. It is somewhat confusing. The values are listed compared to Bilinear. If I set the values with respect to Lanczos=100%, Bilinear would be 87%. Maybe it would be more precise and lead to less confusion.

Actually, my definition of "detail" there is quite loose: it is just the resulting BR of the same q-based clip encoded with different resizers. ;) The idea was merely to show the impact of all of them.

However, and this is an interesting (though somewhat religious) topic, resizing can indeed keep more than 100% of detail. :)

Suppose you have an Anamorphic source. If you expand the anamorphic effect correctly to widen the source, you have to interpolate the missing pixels, which you can do well with a good resizer.

You create information where you had not any. ;)

Some would qualify this just a form of modern art, but the output looks quite good, and better than the traditional height reduction used most of the time.