Has anyone ever successfully backed up a dvd-9, retaining

[jbenj01]

100% (or atleast most) of the main movie menu?? If so, what's the secret... ?? The movie in question is "..Clones".

I realize I'm trying to walk before crawling but I've got this 'obsession' with keeping the main movie menu (and retaining ALL the darned buttons..). But I'm intimidated---looks complex after reading some guides. Oh, I don't have Maestro either.. Thx.

[TeeeRex]

It's actually fairly easy - this guide is from IfoEdit himself ...

http://ifoedit.wh.fr0zen.com/menuidiot.html

However, most menu's are created LARGE and the vob (usually VTS_01_0) contains all the chapter video info as well. If you have room, then keep it - but it's usually the first thing to go !

Cheers,

TeeeRex

[musher70]

STAR WARS ATTACK OF THE CLONES....everythings gotta got to go

[JasonK]

Edit and recompress, or split to 2 DVDRs and retain full quality.

[lukesjr]

use dvdxcopy, its just easier, you will need two dvd-r's for about 70% of the movies, but its so much easier than ripping, reencoding, blah, blah. retains full menu and special features also.

[JasonK]

DVDxcopy has some issues also. See their website forums for any specific help with that program.

When I mentioned them splitting to 2 DVDrs earlier, I should have mentioned that this can also be done using some of the guides here and at doom9.org.

[thxkid]

If you can use the beta version of DVDxCOPY you won't have any problems, the newer versions 1.0 and 1.2 you could run into them, specially if using a Sony 500a or a Pioneer A05, but I use a HP DVD200i and have used DVDxCOPY beta version on over 80 DVD's without a hitch.
Even went so far as to split 2 discs, one disc using DVD2DVDR the main movie and the 2nd disc all the extras using DVDxCOPY.

[JasonK]

I have 1.3.1 of DVDxcopy, and there are definitely issues that I've mentioned in other threads. But most are discussed on the DVDxcopy webboard.

[baker]

WHY THE HELL WOULD SOMEBODY BUY A DVD BURNER AND THEN GO AND PUT THE MOVIE ON 2 ******* DISCS!!!

Come on man use your sense. ANY Film will go on a singal dvd-r retaining all the extras etc... in some cases like blade2 you may need a bit of knowledge to do a good job as the dts and ac3 tracks take up over half the dvd-r and then the actuall film is very very action based... but it is very possible (tip:528x576 resize )

so just cop on, buy a dvd burner or not.... but dont use 2 dvd discs. if you are going to go that route you could just use your cd burner to burn a kvcd to 2 cds that would look ALMOST like the dvd.

Baker

[JasonK]

WHY THE HELL WOULD SOMEBODY BUY A DVD BURNER AND THEN GO AND PUT THE MOVIE ON 2 ******* DISCS!!

Umm think about what you're saying. Many movies are still over 4.3G even after stripping away menus, extras, subs, extra audio streams, and credits. Therefore, to still fit it to 1 DVDR requires transcoding/encoding to a LOWER bitrate. (simple math) This causes quality loss. With my high end equipment and HDTV, and my good eyes, I can see quality loss with the best encoders and multipass settings using the most highly regarded techniques, including CCE encoding or Reempeg transcoding when retaining a high % of the original bitrate. I can still detect quality loss, especially in sharp low-motion scenes. And quality loss is the worst thing I want to avoid. OK, that's one reason. Another reason is that reencoding takes extra time that people like to avoid. Obviously retaining original quality and eliminating encoding time is important to people as there are various guides that tell you how to do it plus a commercial software package that works that way. It's very logical. And what's it cost? A measily extra 80 cents for a second DVD-R. Personally, I will backup most movies to 1 DVDR for playback convenience and a slight cost savings, but put selected ones on 2 DVD depending on the original DVD length, quality, and my personal rating of movie itself. If I like the movie enough and want to retain full quality, I think an extra 80 cents is probably worth it to prevent quality loss.

burn a kvcd to 2 cds that would look ALMOST like the dvd.

LOL Not even close with my equipment, eyes, and particularity. 2CDs only hold a fraction of what a DVDR holds, and I can tell the difference pretty easily with reencoding at 80% bitrates with the best encoders/transcoders and techniques. For those that aren't as picky or with crappy TVs, then maybe they won't care.

[baker]

I spent a day or two getting my system to its best, the sound and ESPECIALLY the picture is way up to par. I got a digital satellite system installed adn its unwatchable.... the quailty is terrible. But with these dvds I am re-encoding the quailty is fantastic. By the way the encoding on spiderman is awful

Baker

[baker]

LOL Not even close with my equipment, eyes, and particularity. 2CDs only hold a fraction of what a DVDR holds,

hmmm better then digi sattellite anyway!

Many movies are still over 4.3G even after stripping away menus, extras, subs, extra audio streams, and credits

yes but by reencodiung the extras to shite.. they usually dont matter if they look crap or not... then we get a pretty high bitrate.

Baker

[JasonK]

I dont have digital sattelite to compare. But I can believe it from my experiences with it. I haven't seen Spiderman, but I agree that there are plenty of DVDs that aren't the best quality.

[musher70]

Man, I dont care what any of you guys say, I WILL NEVER...
EVER, split to 2 discs, that what the whole VCD thing is about

Now, i sometimes re-encode, but not very often, everyone can
do their own thing, give 321 their money etc...but i want one
movie,one discs, cause lets face it, after its been out awhile,
you aint gonna watch it anymore anyways...

Now, go to the guides, and figure out what suites YOU...
Drop the menu's and all that other crap, hell i even drop
chapters if that's what has to be done.....

[JasonK]

Man, I dont care what any of you guys say, I WILL NEVER...
EVER, split to 2 discs

You missed the point. No one cares if you split to 2 discs. Some of us are simply talking about maintaining 100% quality with absolutely ZERO reencoding.

that what the whole VCD thing is about

Absolutely wrong. VCD "thing" requires reencoding. And as I said multiple times here, splitting to 2 DVDR does NOT require it. Completely different.

Now, i sometimes re-encode, but not very often, everyone can
do their own thing

You just it was like the VCD thing. Now you're saying you don't reencode. But as I said earlier, if you strip everything but the main movie and a single audio stream, and even cut out the credits, you will still OFTEN need to reencode to fit a single DVDR. That's just a physical fact. A DVDR has a limited capacity. And most people rather not cut out the movie itself!

give 321 their money etc...but i want one

Who said anything about giving your money. I specifically said you can do it with FREE guides and tools. Have you ever heard of IFOedit?

movie,one discs, cause lets face it, after its been out awhile,
you aint gonna watch it anymore anyways...

One disk, ok, so you can save 80 cents.

Now, go to the guides, and figure out what suites YOU...
Drop the menu's and all that other crap, hell i even drop
chapters if that's what has to be done.....

Yes, and with MANY movies. even after you rip out and cut all you can, you're going to have to reencode to make it fit a single DVDR. That's a fact. Rip some newer movies and see this for yourself. Splitting to 2 DVDR is a the 80 cent solution to retaining ALL of the movie and ALL of the quality. Trailors, menus, etc are options without affecting the movie that way.

And to reiterate, I NEVER said someone should rip EVERY movie to 2 DVDRs. But sometimes, it is the only way to retain 100% quality, even if you are keeping only the movie.

[jbenj01]

2 discs is fine BUT I want the main movie AND the main menu on 1 disc.. period. I probably did it wrong, but I'm transcoding Clones right now with the main menu and movie to fit onto 1 disc.. My calculation turned out transcoding at 79%.. does that sound right??

All the extra features, trailers, etc.. could go on the 2nd disc (that's if I even decided to keep them).

[JasonK]

If you want the entire movie on disc one and have to reencode to fit it, you defeat one of the key advantages to using 2 discs.

My calculation turned out transcoding at 79%.. does that sound right??

Without knowing the size of the movie files and menus, it's impossible to say. It also depends if you're keeping all the credits, multiple angles, etc. But if I was to venture a guess, 79% sounds reasonable. I reencoded Matrix at 76% to fit just the movie files on a single DVDR.

[jarvis1781]

ok...a little something to shut all you complainers up...

if you want to keep the original quality then watch the original disc...you do own it after all don't you???? unless you are doing ILLEGAL copying...think about what you say before you type it people!

[KaoS]

2 discs is fine BUT I want the main movie AND the main menu on 1 disc.. period. I probably did it wrong, but I'm transcoding Clones right now with the main menu and movie to fit onto 1 disc.. My calculation turned out transcoding at 79%.. does that sound right??

All the extra features, trailers, etc.. could go on the 2nd disc (that's if I even decided to keep them).

There is a tutorial on www.doom9.org in the guides section that tells you how to rip out the main movie, re-encode it and then stick it back into the original menus.

This way you can shrink it enough so that it all fits on one dvdr and you can still keep the original menus

You can also shrink extras instead if you want to do that and it makes it small enough

[Vejita-sama]

There's a good guide on how to do this at doom9.org

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/maestro2.htm

You need to d/load some software but it's all fairly easily. The 'problem/hard part' is if the movie is made up of several PGC or the VOBs contain extra PGC beside the main movie. Then you've got a lot of cutting/pasting to do to put everything back together.

More often than not it's easier to just put the moive on the DVD-R w/o extras/menus.

[jbenj01]

Yes, I've read that guide.. just one problem that I noted in my original message.. I don't have DVD Maestro..

Any other program in lieu of Maestro?? Or a guide that doesn't require Maestro? It seems you need that damned program for every 'menu retention' guide! Thx.

[TeeeRex]

Maybe I'm missing the poit here but in your original post you said that you wanted to keep the original menu - so why is this thread going into 'maestro' and authoring issues ? - If you author it, then it's not original ?!

Like I said in the first reply - if you want to keep the menu in it's ORIGINAL form (without the need for Maestro etc) then you just need to do a bit of IFO playing as in the link I provided. Keep the origional menu and associated vob on disc1 - but strip it for disc 2. (there is no way you are going to fit the original menu and reencoded film on one dvd-r (well with any decent quality anyway..)

?

[JasonK]

That's what I was saying in my last post. If you want to keep everything from a DVD9, you're going to have to go with one of the following:

1) quality loss involving reencoding (quite noticable on decent HDTV even at 4MB+ bitrates.) Encoding times can be lengthy (dependent on system, encoders, VBR passes, etc.)

2) split to 2 DVDR (retains full quality, but costs extra 80cents+ and requires switching DVDs in middle of movie - changer preferred.)

if you want to keep the original quality then watch the original disc...you do own it after all don't you???? unless you are doing ILLEGAL copying...think about what you say before you type it people!

This doesn't make sense, and doesn't really even fit the topic of this thread. The whole idea of a backup is to make it an acceptable substitute for you in the event that something happens to the original. And if there's poor quality on the backup, that's not exactly what I would call a good backup. If you are 100% sure nothing will happen to your original, then what are you doing here?

[jbenj01]

Well, I gave up on keeping the menu for Clones. Thanks.

That said, I used ReMPEG to scale the film at 79% and it's skipping and jumping like crazy.. I don't get it?? I'm almost positive I followed the guide to the 'tee' (not to mention I've successfully backed up couple of my movies with this method, using Decrypter, IFOedit and Nero).

Is Clones an 'anomaly'? If so, can someone give me some clues.. ? Thanks again.

[JasonK]

Try reencoding with TMPGenc or CCE instead.

[jbenj01]

Jason, thanks but..

That's what I did last nite--used TMPGEnc loaded with the DVD-NTSC template from Antonio S.'s site. But while re-encoding, TMPGEnc screen displayed the damned text-scroll at the beginning of Clones (eg, "In a galaxy far, far away...) in English first, then in French... ?? I know I only stripped 1 language/audio stream (English/AC3).

Any ideas where I went wrong? (Sorry for repeating this question here.. I just posed it on a different thread.. but...)

[kwag]

burn a kvcd to 2 cds that would look ALMOST like the dvd.

LOL Not even close with my equipment, eyes, and particularity. 2CDs only hold a fraction of what a DVDR holds, and I can tell the difference pretty easily with reencoding at 80% bitrates with the best encoders/transcoders and techniques. For those that aren't as picky or with crappy TVs, then maybe they won't care.

Look again : http://www.kvcd.net/redplanet-cq78-faery-c3d.mpg

And that's a target for one disk. So just imagine what it looks like if you target for two

Read here: http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2339&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

-kwag

[gobama]

Geez, this re-encoding stuff sounds way too complicated and too time consuming. Not everyone has a super-fast system. I'm working with a 450 Pentium 2 and just do not have the time nor the patience to wait 25-30 hours to fit a DVD-9 onto 1 DVD-R disc. Dvdxcopy works great for me, and it's DVD quality. Just my 2 cents worth

[JasonK]

Kwag, I checked out that mpeg. You can't be serious if you think that looks anywhere near as good as a DVD.

Sorry, but with my DVD encoding reencoding, it's tough to tell the difference from the original when encoding with CCE 4Mbs+ and viewing on my HDTV, but with the kvcd mpeg you linked to, I could see the terrible artifacting even when viewing in a small window on my computer. And it is even more noticable when scaling the actual video content to full screen, a lot of blockiness. These things are much more noticable on my HDTV. Why use this method now that DVD-R is available? You can make such better quality backups now using higher bitrates.

[kwag]

Kwag, I checked out that mpeg. You can't be serious if you think that looks anywhere near as good as a DVD.

Play it on your standalone. DON'T use WMP, you WILL see artifacts. Try WinDVD. If you target that for 2 CD's, I guarantee you won't see an artifact on your HDTV, and it will look like your original
That sample is what the complete movie looks like on one CD.

-kwag