DVD-authoring software encoder vs. Cinema Craft Encoder

[mltwitz]

Has anyone ever tested the quality of Ulead DVD WS internal encoder (or DVD-Shrink's) vs. DVD-compliant encoding with CCE? I wonder if it is really necessary for me to encode hundreds of mpeg-2 files created with Sony Vegas in CCE (already DVD-compliant but need to reduce their size) vs. just using them directly as assets in Ulead DVD WS and have the final job reduced in size there. Another option would be to author on the hard drive and then use DVD-shrink to reduce the size and burn so that it fits on a DVD. From what I have heard/read, CCE is superior to any DVD-authoring software (or DVD-Shrink, CloneDVD etc.) when it comes to encoder quality and speed.

[guns1inger]

If they are only slightly larger than they need to be, Shrink my be the better option. Certainly faster than encoding, it depends on how compressed the originals are as to whether it will look good, bad or indifferent.

What is the total combined running time of the movie on each disc ?

[mltwitz]

I don't know yet. Basically I have 195 episodes. Each episode is about 10 minutes, so that's approx. 30 hours. It would be great if I could reduce the filesizes such that I can put them on <= 10 4.7GB DVDs.

[lordsmurf]

DVD Shrink is NOT an encoder.
Ulead uses a MainConcept engine for the encoder.
Reducing the size is not a good idea in most cases. What about DL media?

[mltwitz]

DL is an option. How does DVD Shrink adjust the project filesize if it doesn't re-encode?

[lordsmurf]

It transcodes. It alters the data without decoding or encoding.