Small Movie Only: Darkness

[aaron10]

I've been having good luck with Movie Only (No Menus or Extras) in conjunction with CCE, but ran into undersizing with Darkness (released last week, Region 1). No preprocessing whatsoever, by the way. The title set for the movie runs about 5.98 GB. (I had DVD-RB remove all subtitles but English and French Audio.)

I tried first with 2 Pass CCE basic and got a 3.70 final size. I then tried 2 PAss CCE SP Trial and got a final output of 3.71 GB...essentially the same. Both CCE versions were 2.70 variants.

I'm not sure what aspect of this DVD is causing the undersizing, but it might be worth checking out.

[jptheripper]

have you done none movie only backups successfully with this version?

could you try with cce 2.67 or 2.50, or with full backup?

[jdobbs]

There's a possibility there may be an issue or two still left with DVDs that use structure protection and movie-only mode. I'm looking at it. Also look closely at the original and the reported reduction percentage. If the reduction level is 100% it is better to stop the process and change to "No Compression" mode. There are a lot of films that when encode in "Movie Only" mode are smaller than a DVD-5.

[aaron10]

@jptheripper

Yes, I have used these versions to create Movie Only output successfully. I don't have the other versions of CCE to test.

@jdobbs

I took note of the DVD Reduction Level. In this case it was 74.5%.

[jptheripper]

just a side thought,

grab dvdshrink, reauthor just the movie only oversized with no compression, then process with dvdrb
use the same dvdrb settings (i.e. remove audi with rb, etc..)

see if that works

[aaron10]

@jptheripper

Thanks, jp. To be honest, I'm not so worried about getting this backed up as I am about reporting a problem with Movie Only Mode, so jd can track it down.

In the past, I did quite a few movies using DVD Shrink with no compression to pre-process. However, now that Movie Only Mode has been implemented, I give it a whirl first. It has performed well on the few movies that I've backed up since it was introduced. This is the first time I encountered what appears to be a porblem.

[jdobbs]

@aaron10

Thanks for the help. I'll pull out my copy of Darkness and run a movie-only rip against it and see how it comes out.

[aaron10]

Great! Let me know the verdict when you're finished...:D

[wazzup]

I have the same problem with Darkness except I left the menu intact but edited.
First I stripped with shrink, (audio etc..) no compression. Then I edited menu & fbi warnings etc.. with dvd remake pro. Then process with dvd rebuilder CCE SP 2.70.2.0 t. All my movies allways come out just fine except for this one movie. I've tried diffrent versions of cce with no change all come out at 3.70 or so.

[jdobbs]

What is the low/high/average bitrate? One thing I've noticed about CCE is that (and very correctly so) it won't waste bits to raise the bitrate when the Q is (near) perfect already. This can result in undersizing on segments where a higher bitrate is allocated than is needed. The good news in that situation is that making it bigger wouldn't make it better anyway.

If it appears tha this might apply, just as a test, you might grab a couple of .M2V files with high bitrates and run them through bitrate viewer. See what Q level it comes up with and what average bitrate it computes. I'd like to know.

[jdobbs]

Originally posted by jdobbs
What is the low/high/average bitrate? One thing I've noticed about CCE is that (and very correctly so) it won't waste bits to raise the bitrate when the Q is (near) perfect already. This can result in undersizing on segments where a higher bitrate is allocated than is needed. The good news in that situation is that making it bigger wouldn't make it better anyway.

If it appears tha this might apply, just as a test, you might grab a couple of .M2V files with high bitrates and run them through bitrate viewer. See what Q level it comes up with and what average bitrate it computes. I'd like to know. In addtion someone may want to try an OPV encode and see what Q value it predicts.

[aaron10]

[17:21:07] Phase I, PREPARATION started.
- CCE SP 2.70.2.0 encoder selected.
- "One Pass VBR (w/analysis)" mode is enabled.
- "Movie Only" mode is enabled.
- VTS_01: 3,119,906 sectors.
-- Scanning and writing .D2V file
-- Processed 147,148 frames.
-- Building .AVS and .ECL files
- Reduction Level for DVD-5: 74.5%
- Overall Bitrate : 5,541Kbs
- Space for Video : 4,151,220KB
- Analyzing VTS_01 for optimal Q factor.
-- TargetSize (sectors):2,106,744
-- Sampling 1476 of 147148 frames.
-- Predicted size (sectors) at Q=18: 838,009
-- Predicted size (sectors) at Q=3: 1,499,211
-- Predicted size (sectors) at Q=1: 1,682,277
- Q Value selected: 1
- HIGH/LOW/TYPICAL Bitrates: 5,931/3,627/5,541 Kbs
[17:28:29] Phase I, PREPARATION completed in 7 minutes.
[17:28:29] Phase II ENCODING started
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 0
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 1
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 2
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 3
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 4
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 5
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 6
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 7
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 8
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 9
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 10
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 11
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 12
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 13
- Creating M2V for VTS_01 segment 14
[18:20:58] Phase II ENCODING completed in 52 minutes.
[18:20:58] Phase III, REBUILD started.
- Processing VTS_01
- Rebuilding segment 0 VOBID: 1 CELLID: 1
- Updating NAVPACKS for VOBID_01
- Rebuilding segment 1 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 1
- Rebuilding segment 2 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 2
- Rebuilding segment 3 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 3
- Rebuilding segment 4 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 4
- Rebuilding segment 5 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 5
- Rebuilding segment 6 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 6
- Rebuilding segment 7 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 7
- Rebuilding segment 8 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 8
- Rebuilding segment 9 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 9
- Rebuilding segment 10 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 10
- Rebuilding segment 11 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 11
- Rebuilding segment 12 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 12
- Rebuilding segment 13 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 13
- Rebuilding segment 14 VOBID: 2 CELLID: 14
- Updating NAVPACKS for VOBID_02
- WARNING: VOB Count Old: 0 New: 2
- Updated VTS_C_ADT.
- Updated VTS_VOBU_ADMAP.
- Updated IFO: VTS_01_0.IFO
Correcting VTS Sectors...
[18:34:22] Phase III, REBUILD completed in 14 minutes.

Done.
[18:34:22] PREPARE/ENCODE/REBUILD completed in 73 min.

====

Final Output from OPV is 3.19 GB

[mrslacker]

Well that explains that. Q=1.

It makes me wonder what encoder and encoding mode the authoring studio used to make the VTS fill 3,119,906 sectors if CCE won't do it. :confused: Very interesting.

ADDED: Just a thought: maybe some content really is better suited for a transcoder.

[jdobbs]

If you are using CCE SP there are ways to make it do it... it's just silly to do so.

There are those who would raise that average bitrate just to make the DVD become dual layered and therefore harder to copy. Transcoding would probably do alright with a movie like that. But I personally would use an encoder as I don't believe in ever transcoding. It undoes decisions that were made by the original encoder.

[aaron10]

As a long past girlfriend once said, "Chin up...bigger isn't always better".

[Rockas]

Originally posted by aaron10
As a long past girlfriend once said, "Chin up...bigger isn't always better".
OT: And you believed her?!?!?! :D