image quality question

[sade]

Hi,

I always rip the movie only if the DVD is a DVD9 one, but sometimes the VOB's for the movie are over 4.5 GB. Is there a way to know how much space the sound tracks + subtitles take ? my question is if I only kept one audio track and no subs would it preserve the image quality (with DVD2ONE for example) ?

Thanks !

Sade

[sade]

Any comment please ?

[garryheather]

Patience... there are a lot of one-finger typists out there, and a few who probably can't read without using their finger, too !

OK - there are several variables as to how much space things like alternative soundtracks take up, like the overall bitrate and how many channels there are. They vary from disc to disc and there are tools to assist you in working this out - for example, SmartRipper will tell you how much disc space will be required when you rip, and this figure changes when you deselect the subtitles and audio that you don't want.

You are therefore correct in saying that if you can do without those extra soundtracks, you can use the space for other things, like re-encoding the video at a higher rate than you could have done if you included all the other audio tracks.

Don't forget that you can probably strip the odd CELL ID as well - some movies have say an opening credit / splash screen, then the movie, then maybe some extras all in the same chain of VOB's. You can use something like DVD2AVI to preview the ripped VOBs and isolate any cell ID's that you will not require in the final rip, thus saving even more space that can be used for better things. For example, the retail R2 version of Monster's Inc duplicates a cell at the beginning of the film - if you don't cut that out, it won't fit on a disc without re-encoding, AND the film starts again from the beginning after it's been playing for a while !


HTH.

[sade]

garryheather,

Thanks for your response ! it seems that DVDDecrypter won't let you rip the dvd with the audio channels that you want (usually I do that when using DVD2ONE). I will give Smartripper a try.

I'm confused about that odd cell ID you mentioned, is it found in a lot of DVDs ? and how can one tell if there's one (without previewing the whole movie with for example DVD2AVI) ?

Thanks !

Sade

[garryheather]

I have seen quite a few DVD's that have this extra cell - mainly Warner Bros. titles, where they have their logo clip before the movie, which usually has the film's house advertisment too. I'm not interested in all that so I usually chop them out.

My method for identifying these is by using DVD2AVI as mentioned previously, and doing the following:

Rip the DVD's VOB files for the movie.
Open the first VOB file in DVD2AVI. It will automatically load the rest.
Go to the Option menu, and select preview.

The movie will begin to play in the picture window, and show you the statistics on the right - one of which is the Vob's cell ID.

Press escape.
You can now SLOWLY drag the slider along the "timeline" while watching the VOB cell ID's change - the first figure is the one you're interested and shouldn't change much, the second figure are like chapters and can be ignored.

So say you've got a WB movie, you see the following as you drag the slider:

Warner Logo: Vob cell ID's: 1:1
Movie Starts: Vob cell ID's: 2:1
Movie continues... ID's: 2:2 etc...
End credits ID's: 2:12 THEN...

What's this ? A trailer for a forthcoming release ?! ID's 3:1

So if all you wanted was the movie, you would select the VOB ID 2 ONLY.

So for example, if you strip with IFOedit or DVD2ONE, you can select to only use ID 2. The resulting DVD will then comprise of the movie only.

I hope that helps.

Garry.