Episodic discs - is there a better way than big3?

[Wensleydale]

I've made a backup of the first of the two extras disc of Two Towers EE using the ol' big3. The results were not good. When there is the slightest movement on the screen the image kind of blurs.
I'm close to relenting and putting it on two discs, but that's no fun!
Is there a better way to backup these discs? I've had the same problem with other TV-series discs.

[echooff]

Try using ReJig (http://www.rejig.org) to reduce the size of the video portion. If you are wanting the original menus ect. Demux with rejig, reduce the video size mux with submux.

[Wensleydale]

Never heard of that software. I'll give it a try!
Thanks for replying!


edit: I read this on the software's website:
ReJig is a Windows GUI based MPEG-2 transcoding
utility using compressed domain transcoding (as
used in other one click tools).

Does that mean that it is a technique similar to DVDshrink?

[echooff]

There is a hugh threat on this in the forum. That question was asked and answered there. I would tell you directly but I'm drawing a blank at the moment. I use this to reduce all of my tv rips. Works like a charm. I just used it to reduce the movie only rip of little giants by 60% with no noticeable atrifacts. Hosannas to Nic.

[Eyes`Only]

wensleydale: It sounds like some of the extras were probably encoded using the 'extras' bitrate (default is 1850) instead of the main. Try setting all the VTSes to main and you should get an equal amount of bitrate for each.

[Wensleydale]

Eyes,
Ahhh! Didn't know about this function! I'll try fizzling it that way straight away. I did however not use the default 1850 bitrate but I'm sure I did SOMETHING wrong.

Thanks!

[Wensleydale]

This baby is waiting to be burned when I get home, can't wait! Have a lot of "episodiscs" in queue so I hope this will be a break.

[Wensleydale]

It didn't go well. It was a bit better than the last try but I still got the same blurry/shaky effect. I guess the disc is just too big and that the bitrate is simply to low.

Do you guys really get good picture quality on these discs? I really don't see how...

[Eyes`Only]

What was your bitrate? I'm guessing those discs had "Play All" features on them and you ended up reusing valuable space on the disc. Did DoItFast4U! tell you that there was duplicate PGCs?

[Wensleydale]

I don't remember what bitrate I got but I will demux it again and check in RA. *Pressing Do It* This will take some time, I'll get back!

Yes that's right, the disc has a play all feature.
Yes, DIF4U told me that "PGC's with Duplicate VobIDs were unchecked and logged to notes file. (Possible manual use of Scenarist required)

Wait...*curseword* I think I just discovered the problem... This is embarrasing... It's so embarrasing that I won't even say what I did! :) All I can say is that I, from your advice, first didn't understand that you ment pushing the 'm' button, that was my second move. and I should really have undone my first one...

I'll report back!

[Wensleydale]

Ok, RA gave me different bitrates on every pgc (why is that?) but I calculated the average bitrate to be 2680. So I punched this in on every pgc and checked "Fix bitrate and bias".
I don't know how good a picture I will get from that bitrate (I'm guessing not very good...) but I will start encoding now, and sometime tomorrow I will see the results.

Going back to the big3 guide I saw that I had accidentally changed the default setting on "Image quality priority" from 15 to 1. Was this a very very very bad mistake?

[Eyes`Only]

Hmm I was actually recommending that you go straight from DoItFast4U! to DoCCE4U, instead of ReAuthorist. I know my app gives decently correct bitrates if you set the VTSes to Main. RA doesn't have this feature, so hopefully what you did will work. Check the CCEData.txt file that DoItFast4U! created. You might have gone over on the bitrate, or a little bit under.

Changing the image quality to 1 does this according to the CCE guide:
As the value becomes closer to 0, a higher bitrate is allocated to complicated image areas. As the value becomes closer to 64, a higher bitrate is allocated to flat image areas. When the value is close to 0, the mosquito noise at the edges is less outstanding, but the contouring noise is more outstanding. The opposite occurs when the value is closer to 64.
For more information, see your CCE manual.

btw: 2680 should give you very good results. At the very least, much better than a transcoder.

[Wensleydale]

Hi there,

Finally I've gotten around to report the result, which was again a little better than the try before this one, but it was still shaky and blurry. Maybe I could live with it but it just doesn't look good, so I will probably have to swallow my pride and put it on two discs. I just hope I won't have to do this with every "episodic". Is there anyone else out there who has backed up the TTT extras discs?

edit: I think I'm gonna try DVDfab.

Thanks for your help Eyes! As soon as I get a better cashflow I will donate.

Oh btw, regarding your proggy. When I run the 1.4.0 version it freezes at the end of the process before going to RA. Just to let you know...

[Wensleydale]

Hahahaha it was interlaced!!!

I also had to do pulldown.