SoundScape
4th January 2005, 00:18
Dear friends,
Hi! I am using DVD Shrink v3.2.0.15 and DVD Decrypter v3.5.1.0 so that I can fit DVD movies (along with the menus and sometimes the bonus material) onto a single-sided recordable DVD. I have noticed some strange stuff when using particular features of both programs that I would like to share it with you. I hope someone else has noticed them so that he can give me an idea of what's going on. Having said that let me explain in short what the problem is: I made 2 movies using the programs mentioned above before I realise that something went wrong. These movies are "Garfield The Movie" and "Looney Tunes Back In Action". They contain an English track as well as a Greek one. Same goes for the subtitles. Of course they contain other languages as well but obviously I got rid of them. Let me now explain what steps I followed to prepare these movies for burning. First, I ripped each DVD using DVD Decrypter, in file mode, i.e. copied everything to HDD. I used no stream processing whatsoever (I'll come back to that later on). Then, I opened the whole movie in DVD Shrink using the "Open Files" command. Since I wanted to keep the original menus and ALL the extras, I applied the necessary compression, first to the menus, then to the main movie and finally to the extras. Then, I removed unwanted audio tracks and subtitles by un-checking the respective checkboxes. I only kept, as I said before, the English and Greek audio and subtitles. Then I hit "Backup!", burned it using Nero v6.6.0.0 and tested the resulting DVD using PowerDVD v6.0. Everything seemed perfect. Menus operated properly, movie and extras looked fine. Switching between English and Greek audio was done without any problems as well as switching between subtitles. The real problem was revealed when I tried playing the 2 DVDs on 2 different standalone DVD players. One made by Sony and the other by Samsung. In "Garfield The Movie", when trying to change activate English or Greek subtitles nothing happened. The message I got from the Sony player was just an "Off" indication. Audio switching was done normally though. I even tried to activate them through the menu (and not during the movie playback) but again the same results were observed. On the other hand, when played the same movie on the Samsung player, exactly the opposite happened! Switching subtitles worked but different audio could not be activated. Now, with the movie "Looney Tunes Back in Action" the following was observed: with the Sony player, audio switching carried out normally but Greek subtitles could not be selected, only English. But when trying to select Greek audio and subtitles for example through the menu, there was absolutely no problem. On the Samsung player, audio switching was not possible but subtitles were activated in turn normally. I don't know what to say, except this: GO FIGURE!!! What I don’t really understand is why when these 2 DVDs are played in PowerDVD, audio and subtitles can be activated using all combinations but when played on standalone DVDs the above strange behaviour is observed. Am I doing something wrong during the ripping and transcoding process? Please, help me figure out what’s going on. Now, I noticed something else when using DVD Decrypter or DVD Shrink to get rid of unwanted streams. When using “stream processing” through the former and then trancoding using DVD Shrink, PowerDVD displays ALL audio tracks in the “Audio” menu. If, for example, we have 3 tracks, English-French-German and get rid of the 2nd and 3rd through DVD Decrypter, all tracks are displayed but if we select French audio nothing is heard of course. Same applies for the subtitles. On the other hand, if we rip the whole DVD without stream processing enabled and choose to get rid of certain audio and subtitles in DVD Shrink, PowerDVD displays the non-existing audio tracks greyed out and displays ONLY those subtitles that really exist. My guess is that DVD Decrypter does not alter the IFOs in any way when stream processing is enabled but DVD Shrink does re-write the IFOs when stripping unwanted audio and subtitles. So, what’s the best thing to do when we need to get rid of certain streams? Do it through DVD Decrypter or through DVD Shrink? Also, is it better to use TMPEGEnc or another MPEG-2 encoder to reduce the size of a DVD or just let DVD Shrink do the transcoding? An encoder gives more freedom in setting the compression parameters or applying de-noising/sharpening than DVD Shrink. But the latter calculates precisely what the compression ratios should be so that a movie can fit onto a single-sided DVD compared to TMPEGEnc for example, where you have to calculate manually the resulting size of a movie. And if you want to keep menus and extras and compress them as well, things get a little tricky.
That’s all for now guys, I hope that you get back to me and share your thoughs with me. Thank you all in advance and take care!
Hi! I am using DVD Shrink v3.2.0.15 and DVD Decrypter v3.5.1.0 so that I can fit DVD movies (along with the menus and sometimes the bonus material) onto a single-sided recordable DVD. I have noticed some strange stuff when using particular features of both programs that I would like to share it with you. I hope someone else has noticed them so that he can give me an idea of what's going on. Having said that let me explain in short what the problem is: I made 2 movies using the programs mentioned above before I realise that something went wrong. These movies are "Garfield The Movie" and "Looney Tunes Back In Action". They contain an English track as well as a Greek one. Same goes for the subtitles. Of course they contain other languages as well but obviously I got rid of them. Let me now explain what steps I followed to prepare these movies for burning. First, I ripped each DVD using DVD Decrypter, in file mode, i.e. copied everything to HDD. I used no stream processing whatsoever (I'll come back to that later on). Then, I opened the whole movie in DVD Shrink using the "Open Files" command. Since I wanted to keep the original menus and ALL the extras, I applied the necessary compression, first to the menus, then to the main movie and finally to the extras. Then, I removed unwanted audio tracks and subtitles by un-checking the respective checkboxes. I only kept, as I said before, the English and Greek audio and subtitles. Then I hit "Backup!", burned it using Nero v6.6.0.0 and tested the resulting DVD using PowerDVD v6.0. Everything seemed perfect. Menus operated properly, movie and extras looked fine. Switching between English and Greek audio was done without any problems as well as switching between subtitles. The real problem was revealed when I tried playing the 2 DVDs on 2 different standalone DVD players. One made by Sony and the other by Samsung. In "Garfield The Movie", when trying to change activate English or Greek subtitles nothing happened. The message I got from the Sony player was just an "Off" indication. Audio switching was done normally though. I even tried to activate them through the menu (and not during the movie playback) but again the same results were observed. On the other hand, when played the same movie on the Samsung player, exactly the opposite happened! Switching subtitles worked but different audio could not be activated. Now, with the movie "Looney Tunes Back in Action" the following was observed: with the Sony player, audio switching carried out normally but Greek subtitles could not be selected, only English. But when trying to select Greek audio and subtitles for example through the menu, there was absolutely no problem. On the Samsung player, audio switching was not possible but subtitles were activated in turn normally. I don't know what to say, except this: GO FIGURE!!! What I don’t really understand is why when these 2 DVDs are played in PowerDVD, audio and subtitles can be activated using all combinations but when played on standalone DVDs the above strange behaviour is observed. Am I doing something wrong during the ripping and transcoding process? Please, help me figure out what’s going on. Now, I noticed something else when using DVD Decrypter or DVD Shrink to get rid of unwanted streams. When using “stream processing” through the former and then trancoding using DVD Shrink, PowerDVD displays ALL audio tracks in the “Audio” menu. If, for example, we have 3 tracks, English-French-German and get rid of the 2nd and 3rd through DVD Decrypter, all tracks are displayed but if we select French audio nothing is heard of course. Same applies for the subtitles. On the other hand, if we rip the whole DVD without stream processing enabled and choose to get rid of certain audio and subtitles in DVD Shrink, PowerDVD displays the non-existing audio tracks greyed out and displays ONLY those subtitles that really exist. My guess is that DVD Decrypter does not alter the IFOs in any way when stream processing is enabled but DVD Shrink does re-write the IFOs when stripping unwanted audio and subtitles. So, what’s the best thing to do when we need to get rid of certain streams? Do it through DVD Decrypter or through DVD Shrink? Also, is it better to use TMPEGEnc or another MPEG-2 encoder to reduce the size of a DVD or just let DVD Shrink do the transcoding? An encoder gives more freedom in setting the compression parameters or applying de-noising/sharpening than DVD Shrink. But the latter calculates precisely what the compression ratios should be so that a movie can fit onto a single-sided DVD compared to TMPEGEnc for example, where you have to calculate manually the resulting size of a movie. And if you want to keep menus and extras and compress them as well, things get a little tricky.
That’s all for now guys, I hope that you get back to me and share your thoughs with me. Thank you all in advance and take care!