What is your compression "limit"?

[kethnaab]

When burning/authoring DVD movies, wehat limit have the experienced folk found to be the "mostest compressedest" that still makes for a good quality movie?

For example, if you include enough stuff so that the DVD movie is compressed to, say, 75%, is that acceptable quality? But once you pass 70%, the artifacting just seems to get too much?

that type of thing.

Just curious what everyone has been finding out as the limit.

thanks!

[deh707]

dvdshrink - up to 60%

anything below 60%, i go to dvd-RB.

[redwudz]

70-75%. BTW, this has been asked numerous times before, Did you do a forum search?

[jyn999]

It all depends on the TV type you'll be watching the movie with ... regular TV, HDTV, big screen projection, etc.

Artifacts will be more apparent on the better screens and less noticeable on your ordinary TV.

My primary set is a 15 year old 27" SONY and is fed via S-Video from my DVD players. I've played movies compressed at 48% and the video quality was still very good. Would I find the video quality equally good with a 40" SONY HDTV? I doubt it but then that could be my subconscious rationalization working to justify spending $1300.

[daamon]

Hi kethnaab,

"acceptable" is subjective and so only you can decide - that said, a commonly accepted compression is around 60%.

The only real answer is to experiment as artifacts can be seen on one film compressed at 70% while not seen on a film compressed at 60%.

[johns0]

Also depends if the film is action or a talkie,you can get away with more compression on slow moving films where as action movies will have more arifacts,just experiment on different types of movies.

[thor300]

I think it depends on the movie, for ex Ice Age i couldnt notice any difference between the original and the backup, on other movies it sux at much lower compression rates.

[guns1inger]

If the source is very good, or it's a movie I'll watch often, DVD Shrink down to 90%, under that DVD RB. If the source is older and grainier, or is TV based, then I might use DVD Shrink down to 75%

[dfluke]

This is a secret so don't tell anyone but . . . the video on the DVD is already compressed.

The amount of compression that you can apply so that you get an 'acceptable' video also depends on how much compression has already been applied.

[SatStorm]

Depends what you transcode...
I could say that the average on this is something close to 88%. Less compression yes, more compression no.
But I have music DVDs for example impossible to compress them more than 95% without picture distortion and I have movies you can go low as 70% and still look great...

[energy80s]

As has been said above, a lot depends on how high the original bitrate of the DVD was. A high bitrate DVD will compress better than a low bitrate one. Also remember that DVD Shrink reports the compression the wrong way round so, say 65% is actually 35% compression.

[daamon]

Also remember that DVD Shrink reports the compression the wrong way round so, say 65% is actually 35% compression.

Interesting way of looking at it - I've always looked at it as "65% of the original" (roughly speaking)...

[fritzi93]

Also depends if the film is action or a talkie,you can get away with more compression on slow moving films where as action movies will have more arifacts,just experiment on different types of movies.

Undoubtedly. Try DVDShrink on "Master and Commander", then DVDRebuilder, and compare with the original. Some movies will give you blocking at much higher compression ratios than others.

A bit of a tangent here: The only reason I don't use DVDRebuilder exclusively is CCE seems to subtly alter some colors, scarlet in particular. DVDShrink sometimes looks better to me (colorwise) when compression is above 90%. This is very subjective, but I wonder if anyone else perceives it as I do?