Fitting a 9.4 DVD onto a 4.7 without losing 5.1 sound

[craigwojo]

How can I take a DVD that is on a multi-layer disc and convert it to a DVD-R with still having the original sound quality in 5.1. I understand this will be losing the picture somewhat (how much?) but would like to know. Also is there a way to just lower the bitrate on the sound. The answer I'm looking for is what is the best conversion to use to transfer 9.4 to 4.7. The standalone player I have does not play SVCD. Also was looking for the trick to play SVCD with a VCD header (I believe I read about this somewhere on this site).

Thank you,
Craig

[tonyp12]

I understand this will be losing the picture somewhat (how much?)

Loosing the extra bonus material maybe, but loosing the picture?
No, you don't.

[peecasso]

Yep , i do this with every dvd because i am a 5.1 freak.
First i back up all the files on the disk with smart ripper using files option and selecting all files
once i back it all up , i then take the dvd out and start smart ripper again , it tells me that no dvd is found but opens anyway. then in the upper right hand corner click the file folder button , select the folder you backed up to.
this time select movie instead of files option. select your main movie and then click on stream processing uncheck all except the 5.1 file and the vid file. on each of those select "demux to separate file". then go to settings and under file splitting setting it to max file size and set the size to 7 or 8000.
then stream away. author it in spruce up - if it is still too big to fit on a 4.7(4.3) gig disk. figure out how much smaller it needs to be to fit, then open up the vid file in ReMpeg and decrease the size that much then render the new vid file. make sure you rename the m2v file and ac3 file to the same name to import into spruce.
Most movies can be rempeged with great quality this way and it preserves the 5.1 sound which to me is more important than pristine vid quality.
Have fun!

[bartman]

I used to use the same method peecasso describes (rip two streams, ReMPEG if necessary and Spruce it), however I now use a slightly modified version.

I no longer use Spruce because it is a pain in the bum for 16:9 movies. After authoring you need to edit the IFO's in IFOedit and change the aspect ratio (Spruce author's everything in 4:3 ratio). Also, you have to go in and re-do all your chapters if you want to keep them.

Now, I Use IFOedit to to generate a chapter list off the DVD. Rip the DVD to a m2v and an ac3 file. Use ReMPEG2 to re-encode the m2v if needed. Use the DVD Author feature of the new IFOedit to import the m2v, ac3 and the chapter list and author away.

Works every time for me. 8)

The most I've ever had to reduce video quality is around 70% but with most movies you can't tell the difference...even on a big screen TV.

[ghoster]

well what i do is rip the main movie to my hard drive. then i extract the ac3 file using dvd2avi and set it a side. then i encode the video to a smaller size. after that it use ifoedit to auther it, so i load up my video file and that ac3 file to make dvd files. finally i use nero to burn the new files to dvd......

[craigwojo]

Thank you for the replies.
I'm using Smart Ripper and you say to rip it to a m2v and as ac3 file. Does Smart Ripper do this. The files I got were all the files on the DVD (.vob, etc.). Are there settings to save as two streams? Also I would like to use CCE for the encoding. Is it good? The link for ReMPEG is broken.

Thank you again,
Craig

[ghoster]

i heard cce is really realkly fast but i am to lazy to learn how to use it . don't use ReMPEG that is slow as hell. use TMPGEnc instead of Rempeg......

[craigwojo]

Still really don't understand on how to fit the contents of a 9.4 to a 4.7 without losing audio. If someone could spell it out for me (being a newbie) I would greatly be thankful for it.

Thank you,
Craig

[tonyp12]

First you said losing the picture and now you are saying losing the audio.?

DVD are not always 9GB, they are many times 6-7GB.
And that is with all the bonus extras.

And after some audio stripping but keeping one 5.1 stream,
the movie part will be 4.37GB or less.
Around 50% of the time it is.

[bartman]

If you are using smartripper, click on the "stream processing" tab and enable stream processing. Select the streams you want to keep and to the right you will be able to select to either keep in in the extracted VOB (the default) or demux it to a seperate file...which is what you want.

Take the total amount of space on a DVD and subtract the space used up by the AC3 file (I use a value of 4,600,000,000 as my DVD space just to be safe). The remainder is the amount of space left for the movie. Divide this by the total space taken up by the M2V file and multiply by 100...this is the percentage you need to decrease the movie by. If it is greater than 100 you don't need to worry as everything will fit as is, otherwise use the percentage score in ReMPEG to re-encode your movie (this will take some time...as in hours...I do my re-encoding overnight)

Take the final AC3 and M2V files and create your DVD with it... 8)