Got a question for the masses?

[Kdiddy]

'sup people, I'm a oldie/Noob...meaning I use to make VCD/SVCD/miniDVDs all the time a couple of years back and visit these forums quite often (some might remember me). Anyways, after a few moves and a baby, I finally have free time to reenter this world for a bit. Just got me a DVD burner.

I mostly interested in opinions on best methods to encode home movies and/or put 2 to 3 movies on a 4.7 GB disk.

My old method would have me reencode the video using CCE, muxing streams, making vobs files, etc. But surely in my hiatus, a better method has been developed. I've perused the guides a little but nothing seem to be exactly what I was looking for. I've seen this DVD shrink thrown out a bunch.

So my question is, does using my old method with CCE provide a better quality picture over using DVD Shrink? Does DVD Shrink provide any assitance with the home movies aspects? Thanks

(double posted becuase I think I posted in wrong forum the 1st time).

[bugster]

So my question is, does using my old method with CCE provide a better quality picture over using DVD Shrink? Does DVD Shrink provide any assitance with the home movies aspects? Thanks

Your old method using CCE would probably give slightly better quality for DVD to DVDr than dvdshrink. How much depends on the amount of cpmpression required to fit the movie on one dvdr. As to wether it is worth the time and effort, well, only you can decide.

For putting home movies to DVD, using CCE (or TmpGenc) is the way to go. DVDshrink is only for compressing store-bought DVD's to fit on a DVDr.

[FOO]

Shrink is also good for when you screw up your bitrate
settings on home DVDs and get them slightly too big.

[bleemer2]

Hi from another old/newbie. Like yourself I got into the whole DVD thing from VCD/SVCD etc.

to fit 2 or 3 movies on one DVD I'd recommend re-encoding the movies to SVCD or VCD resolution ie 352x576(480ntsc) or 352x288(240ntsc) depending on the total run time (DVD res up to 2:30, SVCD res up to 3:30-4hrs, VCD res over 4 hrs). The reason I suggest this is that the slight quality loss is better than the terible pixelation you'll get using full DVD resolution with the low bitrate you'll need.

to build the DVD something like DVDMaestro is ideal (there are great guides both here and at Doom9's site.

If you are using the full DVD resolution I'd go with DVD shrink to transcode the VOBs and build the disk in DVDMaestro, as DVDshrink's "reauthor" mode seems to have no menu building option.
Probably the reason that folk get bummed over DVD shrink is that they try to squeeze 6hrs of movies onto a disk that is designed for about 100 minutes of high quality video.

Good luck, and have fun.
b!2

[FOO]

Last I heard SVCD was 480 x 480

[Webster]

Last I heard SVCD was 480 x 480

352x576(480ntsc)

I think Bleemer2 means 480x756....

[Nelson37]

Nice to see you back.

To get really technical, 352x576 is a valid PAL CVD resolution, and CVD is included within the SVCD spec, depending on where you check it. Or is it that SVCD is included within the CVD spec?

Anyhoo, depending somewhat on source quality and capture method, the CCE re-encode is probably the best method for home video. Personally I cap mine in full D1 MPEG-2 on my AIW, as I can't see any difference from re-encoded and real-time encoded.

[bleemer2]

Sorry - of course 352x576 (or 352x480 for ntsc) isn't SVCD (well - not technically, it can be done, but that's another story)

However 352x576 IS a valid DVD resolution, where 480x576 isn't.
Just for interest the valid PAL DVD resolutions are:

720x576
704x576
352x576
352x288