DVD2One/DVD Shrink/DVD2DVD-R / 17 second movie clip test

[ddlooping]

No more captured frames. We're talking 17 second clips here!!

This idea came from a suggestion by Swin.
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=164026&start=40

"The Majestic, R2, PAL".
All the backups were made in the exact same conditions:
Movie-only (6.85GB); AC3 5.1 English only; English, Italian, Spanish, French subtitles; no start/end cropping.
The DVD2DVD-R/CCE backup was made using 2vbr passes.
DVD Shrink 2.3 at 30% compression.

Using DVD Shrink's "Start/End" feature in the Re-Author mode, I cropped the same 17 second clip from both backups.
It took about 5 second to re-author, as no compression whatsoever was applied.
The resulting files can be viewed with WinDVD, PowerDVD, etc etc, as they are fully DVD compliant.
I guess you could even burn them to CD to view with your set-top player.

I tried to apply the same procedure with the backup I had made with CloneDVD, but I couldn't re-author it in DVD Shrink.
I guess it was not fully compliant; I noticed that the audio and subtitle streams I had chosen to remove when I did the backup were still there, even though showing 0Mb in size.

http://www.poker-faces.com/temp/truncated-dvds/majestic-original.zip 12.5MB
http://www.poker-faces.com/temp/truncated-dvds/majestic-dvd2one.zip 9.35MB
http://www.poker-faces.com/temp/truncated-dvds/majestic-shrink.zip 8.76MB
http://www.poker-faces.com/temp/truncated-dvds/majestic-dvd2dvdr.zip 11.2MB

I will soon post the same 17 second clip from the IC7 backup, and the CloneDVD backup if I get it to re-author in DVD Shrink.
(I'm on a modem connection so it takes a while to upload them)

Edited: added DVD2DVD-R/CCE to the test, and the same clip from the original DVD.

[Triple_Helix]

Did an A/B comparison of one of the early frames (no zoom). The tabletop detail of the 'shrink frame is dramatically better.

LTA

[ddlooping]

Thanks for checking this out, Triple_Helix.

To see an even more striking difference, watch John Landau's face, his left side, towards the end of the clip.

Info: Triple_Helix's post was made before I added DVD2DVD-R/CCE to the test, and the same clip from the original DVD.

[ddlooping]

I have just done another test, this time with "Armageddon, R2, PAL (Bruce Willis)".
I wanted to see how DVD Shrink would fare with explosions/effects and at a higher level of compression, 35%.

I also used DVD2One and CloneDVD as part fo the test.

On action/explosions heavy scenes, macroblocking is now much more apparent.
To see a difference between the 3 different backups I had to capture frames and zoom in to 400% in Photoshop.
At that level of zooming, DVD2One and DVD Shrink might have a slight edge (almost identical, pixel for pixel), but in normal viewing conditions, even on the best TV/HDTV/Plasma screen in the universe, I don't think anyone could differentiate between the 3 of them.

My conclusion would be the more you go over 30% compression with DVD Shrink, the less difference in quality you will find with DVD2One, and even CloneDVD.
Above a certain level you might even find that its quality is not as good as the others (test coming soon).
But then again, the degradation would be so important that I would normally use DVD2DVD-R/CCE.

Keep in mind that due to the nature of compression-levels selection in DVD Shrink, about 3% of the available space was unfortunately lost.

My next test will be to crop some of the film companies animations at the start and the end credits.
This will enable me to compress the movie to a lesser 30%.
I will then be able to confirm, or not, the results from my test with "The Majestic", which was that DVD Shrink is better than DVD2One and CloneDVD for compressions equal to or lower than 30%.

I'll keep you posted.

P.S: the same level of compression might have yelded different results with a less demanding movie.

[ddlooping]

After having been justifyingly criticised for not having included DVD2One v1.2 in the test (was it available at the time?), I gave it the "The Majestic" treatment.

Same testing conditions:
Movie-only (6.85GB); AC3 5.1 English only; English, Italian, Spanish, French subtitles; no start/end cropping.

Using DVD Shrink's "Start/End" feature in the Re-Author mode, I cropped the same 17 second clip as in the previous test.

DVD2One 1.2 variable bitrate mode:
No perceivable improvement when compared to v1.13; even while viewing in WinDVD pan & scan mode to zoom in.

DVD2One 1.2 constant bitrate mode:
An extremely disappointing result.
For lack of a better way of describing it, the movie clip looks like a series of heavily compressed jpg images.

Here is the zip file for the constant bitrate version (not sure if I'll bother with the vbr one).

http://www.poker-faces.com/temp/truncated-dvds/majestic-dvd2one-1-2.zip

Tomorrow I'll do the "Armageddon" test.
(as if anyboy cared, lol)

P.S: I was really hoping for DVD2One to fare better.
I'm in it for quality of backups (hence my time consuming tests), not to promote DVD Shrink at the expense (not pun intended) of DVD2One or any other software.
I am the first to admit that DVD Shrink has its limit in terms of compression/quality ratio (I use DVD2DVD-R/CCE when I believe this limit has been reached).
It only looks to me that it does a better job than the other compression-based softwares.

[Gurm]

I find that CloneDVD does a substantially better job when you don't need massive compression. At 10% I think CloneDVD is "da bomb". Olli himself says that the focus in their optimization (it's only been out for a week!) has been in the "higher bitrate" area thus far.

- Gurm

[ddlooping]

Hi Gurm

Have you had any chance to compare DVD Shrink ouput to the Clone DVD one, at 10% compression?

[ddlooping]

I had to check, sorry.

"October Sky", Movie-only, English AC3, all subtitles, 5.21GB.

Clone DVD >> 4.30GB.
DVD2One 1.2 vbr >> 4.36GB
DVD Shrink 2.3 >> 4.25GB (15%)

I won't bother to create a clip, zip it, and upload it.

The backups look identical in all respect!!
I compared a few scenes and couldn't see any difference in WinDVD widescreen/pan&scan mode (17" EIZO LCD 1280x1024 as usual ).

Gurm, what movie did you use when you concluded CloneDVD does a substantialy better job?
What viewing equipment are you using?

Thanks in advance.