DVD Shrink question: Compression percentage

[Dkreaky]

just wanted to get what everyone who uses DVD Shrink, what there opinion was..

what is the maximum compression you use before you start to notice that it doesnt look quite as good as the original?

I read people throw around level8 (40%) and anything more than that they see some serious blocks or pixels..

[FoolishBrett]

If people respond, this is a huge can of worms.

Some people can say that even at 5% they see a difference.

Personally I can tell at about 10-15% but I have to be looking for it. Depending on the movie, I will go to about the 40% level. If I really like it, then it better be a low % or go the IC7 route.

[jxsam1@yahoo.com]

I usually would use DVD Shrink for movies that have the black bar (widescreen) issue with IC 7. In other words, DVD Shrink is usually my backup when IC 7 can't compress widescreen movies that use up 4.3 GB.

Most of the time using DVD Shrink for these kinds of situations, I would use either 5% and 10% is my max. I use a Sony 36" Wega TV and as FoolishBrett mentioned, this is very subjective and it can open a can of worms as different people perceives quality in different ways.

10% is still mighty good and I really have to look for the imperfections to find them. Usually happens on very dark scenes or movies with a lot of dark scenes.

[andkiich]

I'm still using DVD Shrink 1.3 and I can tolerate level 4. Aything less than that and I seriously question if I want this video compressed or not. I've got the 36" Sony Wega and it is a lot less forgiving than the other TV's in the house.

[macleod]

I am using v2.3 of dvdshrink and did a back up over the weekend of Star Wars II full screen. I set the level on 8 and was shocked at the quality of final product. It was great. I sat back and watched it and it looked fantastic on my 32" toshiba. I had heard people say that dvd shrink looks bad at higher (and sometimes lower compression), but I am VERY impressed by dvdshrink.

I had used other products out there (not going to name them as I hear the can opener) and I have thrown them out in favor of using dvdshirnk to backup my movies.

I just finished pearl harbor and put it at 8 or 9(cant remember) and it looks really good. I test mine by looking at low motion and high motion scenes. Very impressed by it!!!

[ddlooping]

Hello all

As previously said, it is very highly subjective.
It depends a lot on the type of movie you're backing up as well.

A few days ago I burned a test DVD containing movie clips extracted from backups made with DVD2One, DVD2DVD-R, CloneDVD and DVD Shrink 2.3.
I then took it to local shops to see what they would look like on the some of the most expensive screens available in the UK.

The screen used were a few widescreen Sony Wega, a £12.000 Bang & Olufsen 40" plasma, and the latest 40" Pioneer plasma.
Of all these screens, the most revealing was the Pioneer, followed by the B&O, and the Sony(s).

On a clip from "Armageddon" (explosions, smoke, fast moving objects), DVD Shrink had visible macroblocks at 30% compression on the Pioneer.
DVD2One and CloneDVD gave the exact same results.
DVD2DVD-R was better even though macroblocks were still present.
The same clip from a DVD Shrink backup at 25% (I cropped the last chapter to achieve this) was better, and at 20% was extremely close to the original (included on the test DVD).
It has to be said that macroblocking, at a faint level, were also visible on the Pioneer when playing the original (SuperBit might have its "raison d'etre").
On the B&O, the difference in quality between the backups was "smoothed" out a bit.
On the Sony(s), even the 30% compression looked very close to the original.

My conclusion for that particular test was that you can achieve a fairly good level of quality at 25% compression with DVD Shrink on fairly demanding movies. You can even push it to 30% in some cases.

The next test was with a clip from "The Majestic"; a quiet scene in a bar.
The Pioneer was still showing the differences the most.
The original looked extremely "noisy".
DVD2DVD-R looked even "noisier".
DVD2One was "noisy", and some macroblocking was very apparent.
DVD Shrink, at 35%, had smoothed-out some of the original noise, which in this case was beneficial. It was the most pleasant to watch on the Pioneer.
On the other screens, the original looked better, the extra noise added by DVD2DVD-R was less apparent, DVD2one still fared the worst.
The smoothing effect that DVD Shrink had induced was more apparent, but some could still be seen by some as beneficial. That becomes a question of personal taste.
DVD2DVD-R adding noise (grain), DVD Shrink removing some. None were the perfect solution, but which one would you choose? LOL

Enough rambling from me.

[bartman]

I've used DVDShink on a few movies now and have to say that the end result really depends on how the DVD was mastered. I have some DVD's that could probably have been put onto a DVD-5 but for some reason the people that made it decided to use the extra space of a DVD-9 to up the bitrate. Those type of movies shrink down quite well.

Other movies (like The Godfather) are already getting close to the bitrate limit to fit on a DVD-9...when it get's too close they stick it onto 2 DVD-9's (like they did with LOTR and Godfather II). These type of movies do not shrink well.

Having said that, I shrunk Godfather and when I view it on my PC it looks crap, however is quite watchable when viewed on my TV....and by Watchable I mean that the atrifacts are not all that visible. If I had a hi definition plasma screen I'm sure it would be a diferent story.

[Vejita-sama]

I'm not up to the HDTV widescreen plasma units, yet; but I just got a 36" a while ago. The larger screen makes a huge difference. VCDs, which were always hit and miss, look like CRAP on the screen. My dad has a 120" digital projection system and xVCDs (352x240 at 2520kbit/s) look like crap on his setup, but are 'watchable' on mine. Show the same VCD on a 20"...

If quaility is your main concern you should use CCE or TMPGenc to re-encode the movie, spilt the DVD9 to 2 DVDRs, or just use your original disc (these are backups after all )

[vric]

20% is probably the max I use... if I need to compress more, I use IC7

[bartman]

I just did a test using The Time Machine. 7.7GB of data compressed using DVDShrink 2.3.

I remove the French and Italian Audio (each 5.1 and around 260MB each) and compress the movie at level 4 (20%) and the extras at level 7 (35%). The movie runs in at 92 minutes.

I burnt the movie using Nero and here are the results:
On my PC the main movie looks excelent. I watched a minute or two of each chapter and I could see no artifacts. The Extras do have visible artifacts but only in scene where there is high motion. The "interview" type scenes look fine (no artifacts).

On my TV (59cm) the entire disk looks almost the same quality....I say almost because of the higher compression I used for the extras. The main movie was, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the original.

I'll look at doing a test with IC7 using the same compression levels and compare the results if anyone is interested.

[Faustus]

5% or maybe 10% if the movie appears to be bloated to start with. If it needs more then that I fall back to the longer more reliable CCE method.