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View Full Version : TV show DVD's -- worth using DVD-RB, or better to split?


raddygast
11th May 2005, 20:40
Just a question here for people who have much more experience in using DVD-RB to backup DVD's of season episodes. I am quite confident with using DVD-RB and CCE for movies now, since I have a fair bit of experience (or at least much more than when I started).

But TV show DVD's have me baffled. Granted, I've only tried one series so far, so maybe it's anomalous. I am seeking advice from the veterans.

Are newer shows pretty much mastered in higher resolution (does that make any sense?) Like, do they use HDTV sources when they make the DVD's? I know it'd still be interlaced and would likely look bad on my monitor, but maybe with the higher resolution of HDTV it would look passable. Perhaps newer shows are worth re-encoding with DVD-RB and CCE (or perhaps HC).

Older shows, like the one I'm doing, appear to have terrible quality sources. They seem to be on the edge of quality. What's more, it looks like there are four episodes per disc, which pushes video content to something like 7500MB at least. Re-encoding would require something like compression to 55% of the original size, and since the quality is borderline to begin with, that would suggest that splitting is probably much wiser than re-encoding. Anyone agree or disagree?

I just haven't seen a lot of the newer boxed sets for modern TV shows. What about things like Family Guy, Futurama, Friends, Seinfeld, 24, etc? Do they come with four hours of video per disc?

The thing is, DVD-RB/CCE has been quite good for me when getting video content down to about 65% (better at 70% and up). But with TV sources it seems that things look much worse -- first disc I did at 73.9% looks quite bad. So is it just not worth it to re-encode episodic TV?

Advice greatly appreciated.

raddygast
12th May 2005, 23:44
I'm sure some forum members here have experienci backing up episodic TV. No friendly advice?

Fishman0919
13th May 2005, 01:07
A lot of the backups I have been doing lately are season stuff(I do alot of them)... 24, CSI, The Shield, Seinfeld, King of the Hill, Family Guy...and most of the time I find I like the results of HC Encoder better on them then CCE... I love CCE but on the interlaced stuff (24, CSI, Seinfeld, The Shield) HC just looks better on my 65" HDTV. The cartoon stuff (King of the Hill and Family Guy) I like CCE but both give me great quality.

As for the older stuff, haven't done any but it's probably over encoded so some reduction wouldn't hurt.

raddygast
13th May 2005, 07:33
Well the one thing I tried wasn't over-encoded. I think the bitrate was barely adequate.

By the way, all these new shows that you've worked on -- are they 4 eps per disc, or 3 per disc? (assuming 1 hr show, multiply the question by two for half-hour shows).

Also, where on earth can I get HC? I've been looking for a working homepage for it and can't find one. Is it easy to switch to HC from CCE for a given project? Like do you just select HC in the Mode menu of DVD-RB?

Fishman0919
13th May 2005, 10:53
All the the new ones are 4 eps per disc, a few odd ones.

Also, where on earth can I get HC?

Other MPEG1/2 encoder, HC encoder, first post..or Here (http://hank315.dyndns.org/HC_014.zip)

Is it easy to switch to HC from CCE for a given project? Like do you just select HC in the Mode menu of DVD-RB?

If you have DVD-RB Pro, you just point to it in DVD-RB setup and select HC Mode under mode options but you will have to start any previous projects over... once you start a project with an encoder, thats the one you need to finish it with.

jdobbs
13th May 2005, 12:45
I do series discs all the time and I've been very pleased with the output of DVD-RB and CCE. The vast majority work great. There are some low-end original DVDs in which the authors just tried to fit too much on one DVD (one example is some of the old "Bonanza" episodes). No amount of redoing is going to make them acceptable. They already look bad on the dual-layer original.

Also, be very careful that you don't select any kind of "Extras" reduction on series discs. DVD-RB always assumes the largest VTS is the feature, even if it is only 1 minute longer... if you turn on reduction you can end up with 3 out of 4 episodes that look terrible because of reduction in bitrate.

JohnG
13th May 2005, 14:28
What does your AVS filter editor look like? It's often possible to actually improve quality from the original if you utilize avisynth filters. A great option would be the Dialhot V4 script which is originally intended for avi's but does a fantastic job cleaning up inferior DVD sources.