Half-D1?

[Eleanor_Rigby]

A little background first, then my question…

Backing up DVD to VCD was a very laborious and lengthy task years ago. Then came DVD to DVDR. Well, initially, that was laborious and lengthy too: ripping, demuxing, re-encoding, muxing, authoring, and then burning. Next, the introduction of very fast tools such as CloneDVD, InstantCopy, DVDFab, and DVD Shrink. These tools reduce what used to take days down to about an hour… this is great for most situations and I don’t want to go back 2 years in time. You will never hear me complain about how long any of these take. Furthermore, these tools allow me to retain the chapter points and retain or reject streams without a bunch of work. In using these new tools I have discovered something missing in my toolbox however.

When I was using the lengthy method of demuxing and re-encoding, I was able to take a long movie and re-encode the video stream in Half-D1 resolution, mux, and get it on one disc and have it look good. Although not as sharp as Full-D1, it did not pixilate and block which is worse in my opinion. I would rather have a slightly softer picture than have the movie on 2 discs or 1 disc and blocky, just my preference. These tools such as CloneDVD, DVD Shrink, and InstantCopy seem to only reduce the bit-rate when “transcoding” (maybe that’s the key word!) For long movies the results can be blocky and pixilated and not the desired result. The bottom line is; I found that when I reduced the bit-rate to a low rate I got the best results by also using Half-D1 resolution.

Now to my question… I have a handful of flippers (I hate ‘em!) and I would like to be able to back them up onto one DVDR in Half-D1 resolution. But, I want to be able to use a quicker tool rather than revert back to an old laborious method. Are there any tools out there similar in features to CloneDVD, DVD Shrink, and InstantCopy that also contain an option to re-encode with a Half-D1 resolution in addition to reducing the bit-rate?

Adding a little more time to the process is not a concern, however, I don’t want to add days to the process.

[Talus]

DVD-RB has this option. Not sure the length of time it takes with this option activated. My full movies take 4 hours using CCE as the encoder.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Beautiful. Thank you, Talus.
I tried my first, it took about 2 hours from rip to burn using CCE.

[andyp1]

There is a guide for DVD Shrink to do that HERE

[Eleanor_Rigby]

I don't see an option in DVD Shrink to change the resolution to Half-D1.
I've used DVD Shrink and don't see any such option, otherwise, I would not have posed the question. Where is it??? How???