Is there actually a way to backup an "episode" dvd

[jthompson99]

I looked in the guides and in google and everyone is wishy-washy on whether or not you can do it. Some of the guides say that it still hasn't been perfected yet. Does anyone know if this is possible or what?

Thanks.

[lordsmurf]

Sure. Just another disc.
Copy 1:1, shrink, or split.
Or use DL media or buy more.

Peak at this:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/dvdcopy/dvdshrink/dvdshrink.htm

[waheed]

dvd2one can do episodes

[jimmalenko]

Sure. Just another disc.
Copy 1:1, shrink, or split.
Or use DL media or buy more.

Exactly.

Whoever is wishy-washy about it doesn't know what they're talking about


The only real consideration is that on Episode Discs, just about everything is the "Main Movie", so it's not as easy to get a better compression % in DVDShrink by discarding Extras and such. Also, each episode generally has been encoded at barely enough bitrate, and most discs are 6-7GB or more. This means that results are generally poor when shrunk, and require compression levels of around 60% (give or take) in DVDShrink to fit a SL DVD. This is why splitting is generally a good idea with Episode discs if you only do SL DVDs, or 1:1 if you do DL burning.

But when considering the essentials, it's no different to any other disc

[blackmagic]

dvd fab gold is perfect for this, it has a specific feature to split an episode disc leaving menus on both discs and just splitting the episodes. download the trial version and give it a spin.

[kip]

So many possibilities; I have only backed up the 1st through 5th season of the spranos. Using CloneDVD2 with AnyDVD in the Clone Disk Mode, yes it requires a considerable amount of compression, however works perfectly with my system and plays great in my eyes (60 year old eyes) on my 42inch TV and a Sony standalone player.

I loaned most of these backups to some of my coworkers seeking their opinion and playablity on their sets and not one complaint; so speeking just for the "Sopranos" I would recommend the above. Oh yea, I have used several types of discs from supermedia 4X, TY, Verbatim, and have burned with either Nec3520A or Benq1620 pro and printed all disc with my European Canon iP4000 and not a single coster.

Hard to beat CloneDVD2 for just about any backup project.

[sholmes202]

Lately I have been using DVDFab Express and Shrink for this...I have used AnyDVD and Clone, and also DVD Decrypter with Shrink and never had a problem. When i want to rip a single episode for conversion to the PSP I use fair use so that I can create separate AVI files that can be converted to PSP compliant Mpeg 4 files.

Holmes

[ROF]

What's an "epidose" DVD??

[churchie04]

What's an "epidose" DVD??

Correct spelling is "Episode". A TV series released on DVD.

[ntscuser]

I looked in the guides and in google and everyone is wishy-washy on whether or not you can do it. Some of the guides say that it still hasn't been perfected yet. Does anyone know if this is possible or what?

Thanks.

I've done it often and it's pretty straightforward. Many of this type of disc have elaborate animated menu transitions which can be shrunk to minimum size without significant loss. Don't be tempted to remove or replace menu items altogether as this can cause severe playback problems.

Picture quality will suffer if all four episodes are compressed equally to a single layer. A common compromise is to reserve as much bit space as possible for your favourite episode on any particular disc. It is seldom that all four episodes are equally interesting.

Another important factor before transcoding is to perform a deep analysis in "quality settings" and set the adaptive error compensation setting to "maximum smoothness". This stage takes a lot of time and patience so is often skipped but is well worth the effort.

[jthompson99]

Thanks for the replies from everyone, I will give it a shot and see what happens.

[toryamos]

i used tmpgenc dvd author+anydvd when backing up the sopranos. was a cinch. if you go a bit over the 4480MB limit of a DVD-5 then just run the whole output through dvd shrink. got 3 episodes/dvd-5 that way

[Rockas]

Sorry... I must insist... DVD Rebuilder is what you are looking for... just don't forget to disable every "removing quality from extras" feature if you're making "Episode DVDs"... read the help file

[lordsmurf]

DVD Rebuilder is very good, but it can take 10 hours per discs sometimes, even on 1.x-2.x P4/AMD CPUs.

[Rockas]

10 hours!?!?!?

I usually make my encodes on an AMD XP 2000+ with 512mb RAM two IDE HDD 80GB 7200rpm (this is not a dedicated machine) and it takes three hours... 10 hours!?!?!?

Well, anyway... I could easily wait ten hour for a pretty woman, why not for a perfect backup? at least the backup is for life lol

[rkr1958]

DVD Rebuilder is very good, but it can take 10 hours per discs sometimes, even on 1.x-2.x P4/AMD CPUs.

I use DVD-RB (Pro) with CCE-Basic all the time to backup both movie and Episode DVDs (Band of Brothers & 24-Season 1). It took, with my current system (2.6-GHZ P4), around 150-minutes per disc to backup. So I'm not seeing 10-hours per disc but 2.5-hours per disc to backup. Of course, with CCE-Basic you're limited to 2-pass VBR.

The times I gave do not include ripping the disc to my harddrive. This adds another 20-minutes or so.

I just backed up 24 the first season. Up to now I've use DVD-Decryptor to rip the disc to my harddrive. I'm currently trying out AnyDVD, I have 19 days of my 21 days trial left. With AnyDVD the disc appears unencrytped. I then "rip" it to my harddrive using Vobblanker to blank out the warning and movie studios intro screens. So far, works like a charm.

I really becoming a big fan of AnyDVD and Vovbblanker.