dvd decrypter/dvd to one or just dvd shrink? opinions?

[ridergroov]

just wondering from people's experience for encoding....do you think the quality is better when you use dvd decrypter and then dvd2one or just to use DVD Shrink for both processes....what do you guys think?

[mkelley]

I can't comment about DVD2One since I've never used it, but DVDDecrypter doesn't change the quality any -- it "simply" rips it (well, it can do other things as well, but none of them change or affect quality). The ripping part of Shrink doesn't affect the quality either.

DVDShrink can coexist quite well with Decrypter -- indeed, many of us use Decrypter first and then Shrink from the files (for one thing, this removes RCE protection, which Shrink does not. For another, it allows you to try different encoding schemes without having to rerip each time).

I suspect your basic question is more like how does the quality of DVD2One compare to DVDShrink. If so, there are LOTS of threads here that address that issue -- do a simple search.

[ridergroov]

actually i believe you are wrong about one think, Shrink does do the same job as dvd decrypter and DVD2ONE in one package...it removes the coding and shrinks the size....i guess my question is, i nkow that you can use the dvd decrypter and then dvd2one or just use Shrink by itself...but which method will give better results....

[mkelley]

As I said previous, Decrypter and Shrink both rip -- but Shrink does not remove RCE protection (Decrypter does). The author of Shrink has written many times he would like to do this but can't find an RCE protected disk to program this from (I guess the region of the world he lives in don't have these disks). So they don't do the same job in ripping, although RCE protection isn't too much of a concern unless you intend to play your DVDs in your computer or on a modified (all region) player.

Shrink and Decrypter both remove the *encryption* (which is not the same thing as RCE protection).

As I said (but I'll repeat) if you are looking to see what quality difference (if any) is between Shrink and DVD2One you should do a search here and see what many others have had to say in the past (no sense rehashing it, although the new DVDShrink offers better quality at even higher compression rates, IMHO).

[ridergroov]

okay..gotcha...i thought RCE protection was the same thing as encryption, but i guess that is the regional protection....thanks for your help....sorry for the confusion...

[mkelley]

Just to be crystal clear here (at the risk of sounding pendantic) RCE is not exactly regional protection -- it is a peculiar regional protection that Warners (I believe -- could be wrong with the studio) experimented with early on, in the days before DVD burners became common (yep, like a year or so ago :>).

It is still found on some disks nowadays (I note that the Paramount Star Trek series disks have RCE on them) but isn't the same as regional protection, which Shrink *will* remove. What's ironic about RCE is that it usually has no effect on any standalone player (that I know of) but prevents you from playing a copied disk in your computer. The theory was that people would rip these disks to a hard drive -- the thought of actually burning a DVD hadn't occurred to anyone back then. So it somehow checks to see if it's playing on a hard drive and prevents this, while the same exact files burnt to a DVD play just fine.

Very odd.