DVDShrink Quality Test

[louv68]

Interesting....

http://dvdshrinktest.shows.it/

[handyguy]

The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer. Visit our help area for more information.

[thor300]

"Sorry, this site is temporarily unavailable"
Can you give a short summary of the interesting stuff?

[louv68]

It shows you the image of a movie and allows you to compare the quality of the movie shrunken down to 90%, 80%, 70%, 60% and 50% It also shows the amount of bitrate at each compression level. You can scan and zoom in on different areas of the image and see the quality for yourself.

I shrunk a movie the other day that had excessively high bitrate (Dual Layer) with no extras other than the trailer. It also had one audio stream and subtitles. The movie ran to about 121 minutes. I compressed it down to about 56.6 % I honestly could see no difference. I've compressed extras of other movies at comparable rates and they looked like crap. They must have had a low bitrate to start out with, hence the crappy quality.

[thor300]

Good quality at 56.6% is interesting. I have felt that reencoding with CCE is always better when the shrink goes way below 80, never thought of that it depends a lot on the source. Makes sense.

What about the test, at what point did shrink start to suck seriously? (site still not available)

[louv68]

It started to get a little noticeable at 70%, but still pretty darn good. I'll take it over VHS any day.

[thor300]

LoL, i said suck, but not suck like in VHS, thats too bad . Anyway, as your experience at 56.6% showed, it is very individual from movie to movie. DVDShrink is fast enough so doesnt hurt to give it a try and reencode if the result is too bad, thats my plan from now on. Look forward to see the test still. Thanx.

[louv68]

Looks like the site is up and running right now.

[thor300]

It was up for a while, i was in but then it stopped JUST before i could look at the 70% quality....

[Timmychuck]

They need to stop using Yahoo GeoCities for there websites. Yahoo GeoCities just SUCKS

[Cecilio]

First of all DVD Shrink sucks. even if you use little compression, you might see macro blocks on some fast action scenes. so using it at 56.6 compression probably looks terrible. what size is your TV 13" ? no a good program for transcoding has to be Nero Recode hands down. i got bad boys 2 and i did a 2 pass using DVD Shrink and i got some alot of pixels. Then i used Nero Recode using one pass and i had almost a perfect copy. so then i did a 2 pass VBR and i got a perfect back up of the movie nothing but sharp crisp clear colors.

[jtommyj]

I use Nero Recode for every thing 2:20 or less and get great results on an HDTV .

Anything longer, i use a 5 pass CCE recode and that looks pretty good also.

[thor300]

Was finally able to have a look at the test now, 80 is good and 70 bad, nothing new maybe, but nice to see HOW much the difference is and in what way the degrading occurs. Cool test.

[cheeseheadjed]

I noticed he talks about the bitrate of the original movie. how can you figure that out?

[cheeseheadjed]

Wait...is he just talking about the overall file size of the original movie? That i know how to figure out. I guess i just didn't understand why he would discuss the quality in terms of original bitrate, instead of just using percentages. I mean, a bigger bitrate movie is going to need a larger compression, hence lower quality. So why not just talk in terms of compression percentage? anything i'm missing?

[jtoolman2000]

If we assume that recode and shrink are the same, how then, could there be a difference in final quality?

[jtommyj]

If we assume that recode and shrink are the same, how then, could there be a difference in final quality?

I don't think we make that assumption. We go by the widely held view that the creator of DVD Shrink has quit working on it for the most part, and has moved to Nero to work on Recode. So Recode would have later fixes,etc, and "maybe" better quality algorithms.

And as for something as subjective as quality, I don't think I could ever say anything is better. Only thing I can state is my opinion of what looks best to me.

Give 100 people both and who knows how many would like what better.

I just like Nero Recode.

Tom

[Chip718]

I got an OEM copy of Nero 6.0.0.20 that came preinstalled on my machine. Does anyone know if I can download the update package that contains Recode? TIA

[noki]

I got an OEM copy of Nero 6.0.0.20 that came preinstalled on my machine. Does anyone know if I can download the update package that contains Recode?

it will not work without a serial from the Ultra edition of Nero. your OEM version does not qualify for the update. you get a discount though.

[VicodiN]

What version of DVDShrink did they use for these tests?

[lenti_75]

I encoded a FULL movie "pearl harbor" using Shrink, at 56%...and amazing, the quality is perfect. I did not see any differenc on a 27inch tv.....
I used to believe that if you drop below 70% you can see teh difference...NO. It's amazing, especially if you want to keep the movie intact, ALL of it.
maybe this is relative for each movie, but I doubt. AND I did not use "deep analyse", just regular encoding.

Hope this helps.....

[louv68]

No freakin' way! Somethings gotta give for a over 3 hour movie at that compression and without DA? If you played it on a larger screen, you'd definitely see some pixelation and/or macroblocks, but if it works on your current setup; more power to you. The movie I backed up at 56.6% w/ Deep Analysis was much shorter (121 mins) and I only copied the movie.

[Cecilio]

yes DVD Shrink and Nero Recode might be somewhat very similar, but i have tested both of them out, and i know quality when i see it. DVD Shrink has good colors and is an ok program, but it can not compare to Nero Recode. Infact a single pass using Nero Recode is similar to a Deep Analasis scan using DVD Shrink. yea i tried it. oh and i didn't shrink it much it was just like 83 % and DVD Shrink was starting to get bad quality, so you can't say you transcoded a 3 hour movie using DVD Shrink and you got a perfect quality. it might look bad, you just aren't paying good attention to the artifacts.

[Paul Simmel]

Thanks folks. I qualify for the Nero update, and will be trying ReCode out.

I have been using DVD Shrink for some months now and feel it has been a great program w/very good quality.

I've been recently putting together a series of DVDs of 'Keeping Up Appearances' recordings, taken from from Tivo. I have been transfering the shows from the Tivo unit (already encoded) to my computer via firewire, editing the commercials out in Vegas, and re-encoding to mpeg2s for burning. Using the standard Templates in Vegas, I'm getting approximate mpeg2 file sizes of 1.3 megs for about 28 minutes of video. Using DVD Shrink, I been putting 5 shows on each DVD. That's about 6 megs to re-compress (about 68% compression). I have to say the quality on a 31" tv is fantastic, and the original source was shot in analog during '92 through '95. I am a quality freak, and can't tell the difference from the original recordings.

Now, if Nero Recode is better as some are saying, that would be sweet indeed!

Take care people!

[energy80s]

I only use DVD Shrink and have no quality issues with it. Wouldn't touch anything with the NERO lable on it to burn DVDs. I have shrunk Raiders of the Lost Ark down from over 7 gigs to 4.3 with no quality loss but have had bad results on stuff with just 10% compression used. It all depends on the original bitrate of the video file. If it is less than 5Mbps then it won't take kindly to being shrunk. Most discs seem to be up around the 8Mbps mark, so have no problems with bitrate reduction. Of course once dual layer burning becomes the norm, DVD Shrink will be out of a job.

[Baldrick]

any mirror? "The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer...."

[louv68]

No mirror that I know of. The creator of this test says that he plans on looking for a different hosting service with better bandwidth and no file size limitation.

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32660

[Jester700]

yes DVD Shrink and Nero Recode might be somewhat very similar, but i have tested both of them out, and i know quality when i see it. DVD Shrink has good colors and is an ok program, but it can not compare to Nero Recode. Infact a single pass using Nero Recode is similar to a Deep Analasis scan using DVD Shrink. yea i tried it. oh and i didn't shrink it much it was just like 83 % and DVD Shrink was starting to get bad quality, so you can't say you transcoded a 3 hour movie using DVD Shrink and you got a perfect quality. it might look bad, you just aren't paying good attention to the artifacts.

It's the same encoding engine. Shrink had been updated until a few weeks ago, so it's certainly as up to date as all but the late April update of Recode. Basically, Shrink with Deep Analysis = Recode. And IMO, it's very good, given its speed. Each version has its own slight pros & cons.

Slightly better IMO but more hassle & time is Pinnacle's Instant Copy.

Best yet IMO is DVD Rebuilder with CCE basic. VERY nice.

These opinions are based on full disc backups, no stripping (except for DTS & non-English audio).