Sliders s3 backup problem

[vampirexxi]

I'm trying to backup sliders s3. the originals are dual layered with 4 episodes.

my problem comes when i try to shrink it to a 4.7gig disc - the compression is bad and really pixilated.

there are 2 vts sets (one set for the show) and (one set for ads/warnings)
-using dvdshrink, or dvd2one, or even on my friend's nero digital, there are 5 video tracks:
1 through 4 are the 4 episodes at 45min each
5 is all 4 together for about 3hours.

(pretty much the episodes are on the disc twice - track 5 is the track played if you hit "play all" and titles 1-4 are what are played if you select an individual episode from the menu)

none of the programs will allow me to remove track 5 (or instead 1-4) so that the compression ratio will increase by only having one set of episodes on a single layer disc rather and 2 sets.

is there anyway that i would be able to take say title 5 and keep the original menu structure and pictures?

[waheed]

Use VOBblanker to remove any unwanted material. You can remove the second titleset that contains the ad/warning and strip out the fifth video title.

[Bjs]

May be the same as those stargate dvd's ... dvddecryptor should beable to pick these up ... the stargate dvd's actualy dont have four title's .. but 8 .

I used dvdxcopy to make a backup to hard drive , then dvdshrink was able to see what was going on .. each title reauthored to seperate folders , then I sorted the real one's out .

[AngusMacGyver]

(pretty much the episodes are on the disc twice - track 5 is the track

It's not true. The episodes are't on the disc twice. Disc has two vts. One plays episodes separately, the other plays the same episodes (the same files) in sequence.

Unless ratio is below 50% (what shrink is unable to backup), programs are understanding 2 vts and working right. I think you should remove some audio tracks to obtain a higher ratio. Try using deep analysis and Quality Enhancements of DVD Shrink.

Good luck.

[vampirexxi]

thanks for the ideas, i'll try and see what happens.

there is only 1 audio track, 3 subtitles, and one set of movie vts (that are read as 5 titles).

when i use dvd shrink (i can't remove title 5) and the compression ends up looking like a vcd quality.
(i alway use the deep analysis) - though i'll have to check out the quality enhancements.

[AngusMacGyver]

I'm curious. What's the compression ratio in DVD Shrink?

[mikiem]

Reauthor in shrink to get 4 titles, demux, reauthor 2 to a DVD? If you want the original menu background, extract it the same way. If you want a lead-in, same there. No recompression needed.

Alternate route(?), you *might* be able to use two copies of the orig., then use a combo of VobBlanker, muxman, & PgcEdit etc. to replace one titleset with a merged episode 1 & 2, the other with 3 & 4, but it'd be quite a project.

RE: title 5, perhaps it's just another reference to existing ep. 1-4? Playing individual vobs is possibly best way to tell?

[vampirexxi]

the compression ratio is 60%, which is usually fine, but for some reason, still very pixilated.

0i think title 5 is just another reference to 1-4 (VobBlanker shows title 5 as 0mb, even though DVDShrink shows all 5 as 5:59hrs).

i think i will look into downsampling the audio a bunch, which should make the quality of the video that much better - hopefully i can reach 70% w/ shrink.

[AngusMacGyver]

I think title 5 is just another reference to 1-4 (VobBlanker shows title 5 as 0mb, even though DVDShrink shows all 5 as 5:59hrs).

Almost 6 hours into a DVD? If you sum the times of episodes 1-4, how much time will you get?

I think 60% is good, but it's not very good. If you think quality isn't enough, I suggest you try DVDRebuilder if DVD Shrink Quality Enhancements won't give you acceptable quality. DVDReBuilder uses CCE to reencode all DVD and can give much better quality when ratio is below 70%. If you think quality it's not good yet, try half D1 or splitting into 2 DVDs.
Another question... How much does a DVD+R DL cost in your city? Here it's still expensive. If it wasn't, I would use it to backup. It's easier and quality would be the same as the original.

[ntscuser]

Something similar happened to me with LEXX. What I did was rip the episodes separately using DVD decrypter then re-authored. It meant losing the original menus but I could live with that.

[vampirexxi]

Angus - i'm not sure if it's actually 6 hours, or if the titles are reading it as such (45min x 4 only = 3hrs). when using dvd shrink it shrinks it down 60% w/ virtually nothing else to shrink down or remove.

when dvd decryptor sees it, it sees each of 4 45 min titles, and 1 3 hour title (title 5) - that's why i can't figure out if it's actually 6 hours of footage, or just 3.

what is this "Quality Enhancements" a few of you have mentioned?

dl dvdr are close to $4 near me. i'll try rebuilder, and if all else fails, i'll just end up reauthoring them and losing the original menues.

[AngusMacGyver]

what is this "Quality Enhancements" a few of you have mentioned?

If you are using DVD Shrink 3.2, you can access tab "Quality Settings" after backup button, and then you can select the second option ("Compress video with high quality...). Under that option you will have 4 options. I usually select "Smooth", but you can try them.

[mikiem]

"i'm not sure if it's actually 6 hours, or if the titles are reading it as such (45min x 4 only = 3hrs). when using dvd shrink it shrinks it down 60% w/ virtually nothing else to shrink down or remove. "

FWIW...

Probably have around 7 gig of data on your orig. DVD (just check in Win Explorer). Getting it down to 4 something is going to force a big quality hit, unless you split over 2 dvds. You can recompress the video with cce etc., you can cut out credits and stuff, but at the end of the day you're still pushing it with anything over about 2 hr 15-20 min on a single layer DVD, and you will notice the quality loss unless your player handles DivX and you go that route.

[AngusMacGyver]

Just for register.
I usually back up all DVDs I bought. If somebody ask me for one, I give them the backup one. Specially series that come in non pratical carton boxes.
For example, when I backup Smallville, I usually get a ratio between 58 and 65% and the result is acceptable to me. It's true I remove Spanish and Portuguese audio and keep only English audio and Portuguese subtitles.

[vampirexxi]

thanks for the pic of the quality settings.

i know pushing 7 gigs to 4 is tough, but if in fact the episodes are on there twice, they should conceviably fit on one disc with almost no compression.

dvd decryptor says it's 7.2 gigs. when i put it in any shrinking program, i get something like:

title 1-5 : 5:59hrs

but when i don't use shrink's option to combine files, each of the titles 1-4 are about 1.7gig each and title 5 is the combined sizes of titles 1-4

i realize i don't have to back up my originals, or have to be satisified with the 60%shrink quality, but i'm one of those that must conquer a problem. i have become interested in the way the programs are reading titles 1-5 of this particular set.

thank you thus far for all the suggestions. i will eventually try them all and see if any of them work. (60% usually is good enough, in my past experience, but these particular ones look really bad).

[ntscuser]

4 episode compilations are normally spread over two layers - 2 episodes on each layer - so 7+ gig is perfectly normal. You cannot usually backup all 4 episodes with quality equal to the original. A popular trick is to manually allocate more bit space (ie: least compression) to the better episodes on the disc. Shrinking animated menus also helps a great deal.

Always choose "maximum smoothness" when using DVD Shrink otherwise you will end up with stil frames which are sharp but motion which is jerky. It is best to start the backup just before going to bed so that the job is finished when you wake up in the morning.

[mikiem]

FWIW....

My personal opinion is that it's often just so much quicker & easier to just reathor. It takes longer if you're doing chapt. menus etc., but then I'm not the patient type and just use the remote - have yet to use a chapt. menu when it was there.
Working from complete DVD on HD (using 1 HD), shrink/copy 4 titles = ~ 2min ea. Shrink/copy intro vid < 1min. Shrink/copy menu vid < 1min. ChapterXTractor = 1-2 min. PGCDemux = ~ 3-4 min ea title. Authoring time depends on software, but ~ 5 - 10 min. Authoring = ~ 10 min. per 2 title layout. Burning/verifying at 4x = ~ 20 or 30 min ea.

[jman98]

vampirexxi - I would like to politely point out that you're not really paying attention to what others have posted about this. The episodes ARE NOT on your DVD twice! They are on there once. The VTSes are making it look like they are on there twice, but it's really only once.

You are trying to squeeze 3 hours worth of video, spread out on a 2 layer DVD, into a single layer DVD. You're really asking DVDShrink to do a lot here. If you know what you are doing and you really care about the quality, it should be relatively easy to use IFOEdit to split the episodes into 2 new DVDs without re-encoding with 2 episodes per DVD. If you insist on doing this with DVDShrink to a single layer DVD, it will end up re-encoding to approximately SVCD bit rates to get 3 hours of video on a single layer disc and I just don't see that working out too well. Either split it with IFOEdit (go to http://www.doom9.net for some very detailed guides on doing this), use DVDRebuilder or some other tool that re-encodes with CCE, or just learn to live with DVDShrink doing the best it can.