Best Quality?

[TheSeeker]

Ok I have a few questions mostly about applications to use and techniques. Now I am looking for what most consider to be the best program to produce the highest quality dvd backups while still fitting onto ONE dvd-r. Would it be best to go with a transcoder like CloneDVD or InstantCopy? Or does something like CCE 2.5 and an authoring program produce better backups? Also lets say i ripped a movie with dvd decrypter and the vob's are under the 4.5gb mark. what would be the best way (with no transcoding or encoding or doing anything at all to the video) to put them onto a dvd-r capable of playing on standalone players?

[insanescape]

Well, encoding seems to be better than transcoding, but takes more space and time to do it. SOmething like DVD-Rebuilder makes it quite easy. If you have something that is like only 15% compression, it might not even be worth it to fire up the encoders and just do a transcode.

If it's already small enough to fit on one disc, just iso read, iso write in dvd decrypter or do a file read and burn with whatever program you wish.

[TheSeeker]

Yea I figured that encoding would be a little better quality than transcoding... but its so much easier to use transcoding with dvds that are just barely too big like you said. thanks for the reply.. it seems that InstantCopy 8 is a favorite of most here on this forum. I will definately have to check out that and DVD REbuilder. Also i have heard good things about cce-sp.

is it possible to output to an iso with dvd decrypter using stream processing so I can say create an iso of a movie that includes ONLY the video track and the english 6ch ac3 track??

[wmansir]

12) How NOT to post on this forum:

5 minutes after your initial post you reply to your own post writing something like "Why is nobody helping me? I'm sure you know the answer". Once somebody replies to your thread but doesn't give you exactly the answer you've been expecting you insult them.

Do not ask "what's best" because this question cannot be answered objectively. Each and everyone has their own view about what's best in a certain area. The best is what works best for you!

As Doom9 says term, "what's best?", is often entirely subjective. It is even more subjective when asked in a very broad way, such as your first question. Keep in mind, this rule is in place to keep arguments in check, not because we don't want people to help you.

So for your first question I recommend you do a little more reading. There is a large thread in this subforum "DVDShrink vs CCE" or something like that, which will provide a lot of information/opinions on the differences between the two methods (transcoding vs re-encoding). You can search to find it, it's not that old.

Anyway, your second question is a well defined situation so I can help you there. As insanescape says, if the DVD is small enough to fit on a DVD-R it's very simple. Most programs that do CD/DVD Copying on-the-fly, like Nero, won't work on commercial video DVDs because the are copy-protected. So you have to use DVD Decrypter to make an .iso (Mode->ISO->Read), it will automatically remove the copy protection. Then you can burn that with burning program of your choice, or DVD Decrypter itself has a perfectly good burning function (Mode->ISO->Write).

[TheSeeker]

hey thanks for the repy. Actually what i was really wondering about the dvd decrypter thing is this. What if the dvd's vob files are only under 4.5 gb if you use stream processing to exclude everything except the video and the english audio. so can you use the iso>read or iso>write along with stream processing?

[wmansir]

No, DVD Decrypter only makes 1 to 1 backups in ISO mode, you can't change anything. If you use IFO mode w/ stream processing you will have to totally reauthor the disc.

If you think you can squeeze a DVD to DVD-R by just removing Audio/subs you can use DVDShrink. However, it is rare to find a disc over the size of a DVD-R, that will can be made to fit just by removing audio/subs, and DVDShrink cannot completely remove Extras.

See my post here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=484460#post484460) for some methods to strip junk out of a DVD without transcoding/re-encoding the video. The original post was about splitting mutli-episode TV DVDs to fit on 2 DVD-R, but the same methods can be used to make split a disc into Movie only and Extras only discs, if the movie is small enough to fit after stripping Audio/subs.

DVDShrink and DVD Remake are both good programs to get an overview of a DVD. The trial version of DVD Remake doesn't let you save your changes, but you can still use it as a viewer program to see what's on the disc and how big parts are. DVD Shrink is also good for this, but be sure to set the main movie to 'no compression' so you see how big it really is. By default DVDShrink is set to 'Auto compress', and so it displays the size it will be if you transcode it.

[gatormac]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
Yea I figured that encoding would be a little better quality than transcoding... but its so much easier to use transcoding with dvds that are just barely too big like you said. thanks for the reply.. it seems that InstantCopy 8 is a favorite of most here on this forum. I will definately have to check out that and DVD REbuilder. Also i have heard good things about cce-sp.

is it possible to output to an iso with dvd decrypter using stream processing so I can say create an iso of a movie that includes ONLY the video track and the english 6ch ac3 track??

If you have the latest version of DVD Shrink and you want to keep the movie only, and the movie will fit onto a DVD-R without compression, and you want to use only the 6ch AC3 track (I think this is your question).....You CAN do it. Simply open up the disc in DVD Shrink, click on the re-author tab, drag over the main movie segment, click on the compression tab, select no compression, un-check all audio and subtitles that you don't want, and then save to iso file. This should leave you with an iso file that is the video and audio track that you want without any compression taking place....the whole process taking just a minute or two.....you can then write to DVD with DVDDecrypter.

[ookzDVD]

Simple guides :

1. Original < 4.7Gb, just do 1:1 ISO copy :)
2. Origianl 15-20% > 4.7Gb, just use transcode app, DVDShrink, CloneDVD, etc.
3. Else : use DVD-RB :)

[Kedirekin]

@wmansir,
I must say, that's one of the "best" 'don't ask what's best' posts I've seen - very even-tempered and helpful.

[Teegedeck]

Have to agree here. :) As a newbie in this section, I thoroughly enjoyed this thread.

[zamarky1]

here , here

i'll third that

Mark

[wmansir]

Originally posted by Kedirekin
@wmansir,
I must say, that's one of the "best" 'don't ask what's best' posts I've seen - very even-tempered and helpful.

Thanks. I try to be nice to first time posters, plus that rule is very specific to this forum, so it is easy to miss if you scan the rules and see most of it is your standard BBS stuff.

@all

In my second post I said No, DVD Decrypter only makes 1 to 1 backups in ISO mode, you can't change anything.On re-reading that I must admit it is not entirely true. And so for completeness, and because I'm bored I'll correct it.

There are actually (up to) 3 things that Decrypter changes when ripping an ISO, all related to copy protection/control.

1. Remove CSS. This is the basic copy-protection that is removed. This has to be removed to burn onto DVD(+/-)R because the media is physically unable to use CSS encoded material. Just like with those special Audio CD-Rs we all know about, there is a special section on the disc to tell your DVD player it is CSS encoded, and your DVD burner cannot change that section.

2. Remove MacroVision. This is a special protection against making analog copies. It works by scrambling the video output from the DVD player slightly. TVs can fix it, but VHS recorders corrupt the signal. The interesting thing is this corruption isn't actually in the video itself, it's just a flag that tells your DVD player to tweak the video output.

By removing MacroVision you can make (S)VHS backups of your DVD-R. So if you want to make one for your kids or RV/boat, you can.

3. Remove Regional Coding. We're probably all familiar with this. It's a simple control mechanism by the studios that means a DVD player can only play discs which match it's regional code. It's what people are referring to when they say R1, R2, R4, ect. The reasons the studio put it in place is so that a movie released on DVD in, say, the US (R1) can't be imported into the UK (R2) and hurt theater ticket sales, since movie releases are staggered between regions for various reasons.

By removing Regional Coding your DVD-R can be played in all DVD players from all regions. So if you backup an imported DVD it will play in your DVD player, without having to by an expensive Multi-Region DVD player.

[Kedirekin]

Don't forget (if I'm not mistaken) it can also remove PUOPs (Prohibitted User OPerations), like fast forward on those irritating mandatory previews.

[insanescape]

I believe it can, but it's not set to checked in the settings by default. Anyone know why (or any drawbacks to getting rid of PUO?)?

[wmansir]

You can 'break' a disc during playback if certain PUOPs are removed (and you try to do them).

For instance, if you have a menu that you shouldn't be allowed to hit "Next Title" on, but you remove the PUOP and do it anyway. Or you hit the Angle button on a movie that doesn't have angles. Or you hit the Subtitle Menu button on a movie with no sub menu defined. Depending on the player, several things could happen, the most common one is that the player freezes up or restarts.

Unless you have a specific PUOP you want to remove (like un-skippable trailers, or you cant change subs/audio with the button) it is best to leave them alone. And if you decide to remove them, it is generally better to just remove the one that is in your way. Most PUOPs are just in the IFO, so they can be edited with IFOedit (You'll find them at the very beginning of the PGC's page). Here's a pic:

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/3303/PUOPs.jpg

You'll notice a "Remove P-UP" button at the bottom. That will remove all PUOPs from all PGCs in this VTS set.

However, some restrictions can be placed in the VOB itself, which is where DVD Decrypter's remove VOB PUOs comes in handy. You can also remove them from the VOB by doing a 'mock strip" of the VTS in IFOedit, where you go thru a VOB Extras strip, but keep all the assets.