Any programs better than CloneDVD?

[kelman3]

Hi,
I really like Clone DVD.
I just pop the DVD in, tell it to clone and I've got a backup.
Lately it's been giving me backups of DVDs with significant loss in video quality.
Usually around 40% of the original.
Is there anyway to get around that?
Would I have to go through some elaborate process of re-encoding the video with XVID then recreating the DVD with those files?
I Hope not.

Thanks,
Kelman3.

[Jeremiah58]

Might be helpful to mention version of CloneDVD.

[johns0]

Dvdshrink.

[Heff]

DVD Rebuilder should do the best on signatificant reduction as it doesn't transcode like the others but reencodes. DVD Shrink would be a 2nd choice. Both are free Rebuilder is a bit of a pain to set up and takes 3 hours to do a movie vs Shrink's one hour. Actually you should be asking this question in the DVd to DVDr forum.

[kelman3]

Thanks.
I'll try those programs.
I original posted that message in this forum because I was going to ask if DVD9 DVD-Rs are available to the public.
I'm guessing that's a hardware, not a software question.
I think copying to a DVD9 would be the best way to make a flawless copy on one DVD.
Somebody told me http://www.tapeonline.com had them, but I couldn't find any there.

Kelman3

[Gurm]

There's no such thing as a magic program that will keep all the information on a DVD-9 and make it fit on a DVD-5.

That said, try losing some of the extras. No transcoder on the planet does well with a compression rate above 25% (75% of original).

[Cunhambebe]

I realy like Clone DVD and have no problems at all with the video quality. By the way, trying to fit a Dual Layer DVD into a Single Layer DVD might be the problem.
If that's the case, and since Dual Layer media is still not available yet in many locations ($$$), I would suggest you go through a more complex process (that works!!) than simply asking Clone DVD to do it all. Use DVD Decrypter to ripp the files you want (your own video files - that means no commercial DVD files).
After this, open DVD Shrink, selecting the DVD folder where the backup is. Hit re-author, choosing only what you really need such as the intro, the teaser (if you have one) and your main movie. Make sure not to compress anything, otherwise there's gonna be a loss of quality. Anyway, if compression is a real must, you can choose to do it, but as far as I know, up to 80%. That means, the original video quality at 80% and the compression at 20%. Or you can do somehting else: split your DVD (DVD Shrink can do that for ya). this way, half of the files will be in one disc and the rest of the movie in another one. Hit backup for each folder. Finally, with Clone DVD, select your backup folder(s) and burn your DVD(s).

[monzie]

DVD Rebuilder should do the best on signatificant reduction as it doesn't transcode like the others but reencodes. DVD Shrink would be a 2nd choice. Both are free Rebuilder is a bit of a pain to set up and takes 3 hours to do a movie vs Shrink's one hour. Actually you should be asking this question in the DVd to DVDr forum.

Well I thought 'transcoding' WAS re-encoding but keeping the format (ie.mpeg) and the resolution of the original source.....but transcoding can also mean (the logical term) converting (encoding that is...not re-encoding) one format to another from a previous format (ie avi to mpeg).

Anyone got any ideas about 'transcoding'? Is it magic? Is it some kind of techno-whizzbang method of just changing bitrates etc without doing ANYTHING? Does anyone ACTUALLY know?

The term 'transcoding' MUST be THE bullshit term of the last few years (imo).

Tell you what lets GOOGLE for ' DVD transcoding'....oh dear 72,000 pages and NOT ONE CLEAR ANSWER (I went thru 10 pages/200 possibles.....and they ALL contradict each other on the use of the term)...hmmmmmm the term is BULL. PERIOD. CRAP. POINTLESS. USED BY NOB'EADS. STUPID.SILLY and PATHETIC.....no-one can decide what it REALLY means ....so does anyone know WHAT TRANSCODING REALLY DOES (ie DVDSHRINK) if it DOESNT re-encode???????????..other than giving silly answers that is??

Oh, and the one DEFINITION that did make sense had F-all to do with the likes of DVDShrink et al.

[skebenin]

Transcoding is an overloaded term. It means many things.

In the realm of DVD transcoding applications like DVDShrink, DVD2One or Instant Copy, it's short for Compressed Domain Transcoding. In other words, changing the compressed bitstream without fully decoding it.

Specifically these DVD transcoders change the MPG quantization on the video data while it's still in the DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) domain. Increasing the quantization results in improved huffman compression, and thus a smaller file size. Staying in the DCT domain means the processor doesn't have as much work to do, and thus Compressed Domain Transcoding is faster than fully decoding and re-encoding.

[ddlooping]

Transcoding: derived from the french words "trance" and "codeur".

During the Indochinese War ("guerre d'Indochine"), French military intelligence services experimented with hallucinogenic drugs ("champignons magiques").
Their goal was for their test-subjects to reach a state of trance, hoping the so-called "mind expansion" would help them develop hard-to-break codes.

A few of these "trance-codeurs" did start appreciating the Grateful Dead, but otherwise these experiments failed quite miserably.

How the term "trance-codeur" crossed into the video world is still unknown and subject to many speculations.