Compressing ripped DVD video

[sanosuke]

Hi
I recently ripped a movie from a DVD into an 700mb avi. But i wanted to compress it even more without affecting its quality. So i tried to re encode it into an 400mb mkv with x264 codec with mpeg4 AVC video and AAC audio. I used mediacoder (With 3 pass encoding), handbrake, avidemux and i did get a good output but still i can see the reduction in quality. So is there any way in which i can keep the size around 300-500mb without losing the quality? Are there any changes i should make to my codec selection or any other settings to attain this output? Many people on the net say that you will lose quality if you re encode an already encoded video so you should only encode it once directly from DVD. Is it true? Or is there any way to compress it even more without quality loss?
Thanks in advance.

[guns1inger]

Short answer : no.

Long answer - you have squeezed about as much life out of it as you can. Any attempt to make it smaller will affect quality simply because there isn't anything else to remove. Things that may reduce the quality loss :

1. Go back to your original source and recompress that correctly. Compressing something that is already heavily (and noticeably) compressed will only produce substandard results.
2. Reduce the resolution. This way what little bitrate you are giving it will produce the best effect. Note : the lower the resolution of the file, the more it will have to be enlarged on playback, and the greater the visibility of the damage you are doing.
3. Get more space so that you don't have to pursue such folly. Personal view - 700MB for a movie is far too much compression, even with H264 AVC video compression. To try to get even more compression, unless it is for a 320 x 240 portable screen, is just asking for low quality.

[sanosuke]

Thanks for the quick reply.
So no other way huh...
but another question...Blu ray discs have significantly superior quality than regular dvds but how are some people able to rip them to much smaller sizes compared to dvds? Cuz some of my friends have some blu ray rips (mkvs) with only around 400mb-500mb size but really good quality. Is it because blu rays can usually be compressed into mkvs much smaller than dvds into avis?

[guns1inger]

First, BluRay is (usually) mush higher quality that DVD.

Second, you would have to provide proof that your friends videos are high quality at that size. Start with mediainfo Tree view output of some of these files so we can see what they have done. Personally I find it difficult to believe that they are getting quality at those sizes unless they are using very small resolutions. If they are that much better than your attempts then perhaps you are using really bad encoding settings.

Third, why not ask your friends to share their secrets with you ?

[lordsmurf]

First, BluRay is (usually) mush higher quality that DVD.

Oh yeah?

[guns1inger]

If I could type, I wpo9ud h nhags jlgdsj l

[Supreme2k]

Where are they being viewed? I've seen 350MB BR conversions that looked fantastic on an ipod touch, but look like complete and utter shit on even a 32" LCD.

[creamyhorror]

A 500mb BR re-encode is going to look like shit, unless it's at a really low resolution. Your friends' encodes are probably crap.

[Bonie81]

as said by guns1inger short answer again is : no

more you compress the video, more blurred or pixlates result you get. Just for my own satisfaction i have tried same ultra high quality source video file to compress with different bitrates and different encoders but i found that video gets visibly blurred or pixlates if you go below 700kbps. Below 700kbps one looses the interest to watch and background gets more blurred.

H264 AVC and x264 will give you better quality of video over compression, in otherword 700MB HVAC or x264 video will be bit sharper than 700MB XViD considering same setting of audio encoder.

[hech54]

Hi
I recently ripped a movie from a DVD into an 700mb avi. But i wanted to compress it even more without affecting its quality

How many times are you going to ask the same freakin' question?
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/318978-High-Quality-At-Low-Bitrate?p=1975098#post1975098