SupaCoopa
2nd December 2003, 11:43
Let's assume our goal is to make the near-perfect backup to end all.
As always...
We will keep all menus and extras (except maybe the really crap ones) but we will get rid of any additional spoken languages and those irritating warnings and logos. And of course we want the best possible quality for the main movie so we won't be using just a single-click tool.
STEP 1
To begin with, we will first backup the dual-layer DVD using a fast one-click tool. We will throw away any unwanted audio streams to gain some space and it would be nice if we could set different re-compresssion ratios for each title, so that we can give more space to the movie. So, DVD Shrink seems a wise choice, doesn't it?
After the tool does it's job, we have a new DVD small enough to be burnt on a blank, with all the menus and contents of the original. We have also kept subtitles (they don't take much space anyway) and chapters. But the main movie quality is just not good for us, we're CCE-heads...
STEP 2
Now it's the time to strip out warnings and logos because they bug us and possibly get rid of any unwanted extras like trailers and stuff to gain some more space. We could use DVDStripper (haven't used it but seems promising) or one of 2Cool's methods. If we need to, we can use MenuEdit to get rid of menu buttons pointing to those eliminated extras. The question here lies as to how much space we will really gain by losing some extra material we don't care about. If before removing the odd trailers and TV spots we had a 4.30GB VIDEO_TS folder and afterwards we have a 3.90GB one, then I believe it's worth the effort. We have to know how much space we gained, so that we can use it on the next step.
STEP 3
This is the fun part. In brief, we will use DVD2DVDR with CCE on the original VIDEO_TS folder. But it will calculate the optimal bitrate and this is not good for us since DVD2DVDR assumes we do movie-only backup and we have all the other stuff taking up space. So we have to know the target size of main movie video stream in our backup folder with menus etc. I know of no other way to do this but open the new VIDEO_TS folder we have ended up with after STEP 2, with DVD2DVDR and choose main movie. We take a note of the video size it reports on up right corner of the first tab and add any space we gained in STEP 2. So, let's say we calculated the new video stream size should be 3.200.000 kb. We'll use a bitrate calculator and we'll be informed of the optimal target bitrate for our backup. Now we open the ORIGINAL VIDEO_TS folder with DVD2DVDR, we choose main movie and on the second tab we input the bitrate our calculator gave us. After a couple of hours of fine CCE work, what do we have? A new m2v file, finely encoded by our trusted friend (that's CCE) and a complete backup with menus and extras and stuff in which we don't like the quality of the main movie. So, the next step comes logical...
STEP 4
All we have to do now is replace the "bad" main movie video stream our one-click tool gave us, with the "nice" one CCE made! I believe IFOupdate (or is it IFOedit?) can easily do this. After all these steps, we finally have a full-featured backup but with the main movie in true CCE quality. Of course a main-movie only backup would be easier to make and of even higher quality, but we have kept menus and subs and chapters and everything and we haven't lost a week trying to re-assemble them in Maestro or Scenarist. Fire up your favourite burning application and enjoy!
If anybody is still with me, I would very much like to know what do you think of the above proposed method. I haven't tried it yet, since the idea struck me last night just before I fall asleep, but I plan to test it soon on a difficult movie with nice complex menus like Star Wars. I just didn't like the single-click result of InstantCopy or DVDShrink in this movie and I don't like a main-movie only backup without menus either. So, to my mind, this is the best of both worlds. Results to be posted here soon(ish)...
Any comments/ideas heartily welcome
As always...
We will keep all menus and extras (except maybe the really crap ones) but we will get rid of any additional spoken languages and those irritating warnings and logos. And of course we want the best possible quality for the main movie so we won't be using just a single-click tool.
STEP 1
To begin with, we will first backup the dual-layer DVD using a fast one-click tool. We will throw away any unwanted audio streams to gain some space and it would be nice if we could set different re-compresssion ratios for each title, so that we can give more space to the movie. So, DVD Shrink seems a wise choice, doesn't it?
After the tool does it's job, we have a new DVD small enough to be burnt on a blank, with all the menus and contents of the original. We have also kept subtitles (they don't take much space anyway) and chapters. But the main movie quality is just not good for us, we're CCE-heads...
STEP 2
Now it's the time to strip out warnings and logos because they bug us and possibly get rid of any unwanted extras like trailers and stuff to gain some more space. We could use DVDStripper (haven't used it but seems promising) or one of 2Cool's methods. If we need to, we can use MenuEdit to get rid of menu buttons pointing to those eliminated extras. The question here lies as to how much space we will really gain by losing some extra material we don't care about. If before removing the odd trailers and TV spots we had a 4.30GB VIDEO_TS folder and afterwards we have a 3.90GB one, then I believe it's worth the effort. We have to know how much space we gained, so that we can use it on the next step.
STEP 3
This is the fun part. In brief, we will use DVD2DVDR with CCE on the original VIDEO_TS folder. But it will calculate the optimal bitrate and this is not good for us since DVD2DVDR assumes we do movie-only backup and we have all the other stuff taking up space. So we have to know the target size of main movie video stream in our backup folder with menus etc. I know of no other way to do this but open the new VIDEO_TS folder we have ended up with after STEP 2, with DVD2DVDR and choose main movie. We take a note of the video size it reports on up right corner of the first tab and add any space we gained in STEP 2. So, let's say we calculated the new video stream size should be 3.200.000 kb. We'll use a bitrate calculator and we'll be informed of the optimal target bitrate for our backup. Now we open the ORIGINAL VIDEO_TS folder with DVD2DVDR, we choose main movie and on the second tab we input the bitrate our calculator gave us. After a couple of hours of fine CCE work, what do we have? A new m2v file, finely encoded by our trusted friend (that's CCE) and a complete backup with menus and extras and stuff in which we don't like the quality of the main movie. So, the next step comes logical...
STEP 4
All we have to do now is replace the "bad" main movie video stream our one-click tool gave us, with the "nice" one CCE made! I believe IFOupdate (or is it IFOedit?) can easily do this. After all these steps, we finally have a full-featured backup but with the main movie in true CCE quality. Of course a main-movie only backup would be easier to make and of even higher quality, but we have kept menus and subs and chapters and everything and we haven't lost a week trying to re-assemble them in Maestro or Scenarist. Fire up your favourite burning application and enjoy!
If anybody is still with me, I would very much like to know what do you think of the above proposed method. I haven't tried it yet, since the idea struck me last night just before I fall asleep, but I plan to test it soon on a difficult movie with nice complex menus like Star Wars. I just didn't like the single-click result of InstantCopy or DVDShrink in this movie and I don't like a main-movie only backup without menus either. So, to my mind, this is the best of both worlds. Results to be posted here soon(ish)...
Any comments/ideas heartily welcome