Is Clone DVD any good for a full DVD?

[CXChrisman]

Is Clone DVD any good for keeping the full DVD together?

How is the quality?

CX

[spiderman2k1]

I did movie only and it was good.Try it out for 30 day's do your own test to see

[Gurm]

CloneDVD is roughly equivalent to DVD Shrink or DVD2One. You could argue that these programs have better or worse quality, depending on the time of day, the price of tea in China, or whether Jupiter is in the Fifth House and we are headed for the Age of Aquarius.

My personal findings (which are nearly worthless since YMMV):

- CloneDVD excels in low-compression scenarios (ie when you go from 4.7GB to 4.3GB). Olli is working on beefing up its quality in higher-compression scenarios, but he himself admits that the transcoder in DVD2One and the new DVD Shrink are just better when you have to do 30% compression. The other problem with CloneDVD is that you don't have enough control over things like compression ratios and whatnot for my liking.

- DVD2One excels at hitting the target mark with CONSTANT compression quality. Its variable compression is useless - and that's too bad, because I'd like to see a transcoder with working variable compression. People say that DVD2One's output is better than DVD Shrink's output. I wouldn't know - they look the same to me.

- DVD Shrink is by far the best all-around program, especially with this beta v3. However, it is a bit slower than DVD2One overall.

--------------------

Now, some interesting characteristics:

- DVD2One is a featureless void. I really hate programs that make you start the process of whatever it is that they do before they present you with options. I _HATE_ it when a program pops up a window with a "filename" box and a "go" button. WTF? People may say "it doesn't NEED more buttons..." but let's face it - they want people to BUY the program, so it needs to be BETTER than DVD Shrink - and it isn't, at least not measurably.

- DVD Shrink is great. And it's free. Unless you have specific needs or like the Elby approach (I'll get into that in a minute) I can't see a reason why you'd use anything else, unless you find that DVD2One gives better results (and is worth throwing away money on).

- CloneDVD has two things going for it. The first is what I call the "Elby Approach". The "Elby Approach" consists of Olli silently (not publicly, that would be too rude) thumbing his nose at the establishment. AnyDVD has to be the most ingenious piece of kit I've seen in a while. I mean, it even makes DVD2One run faster, which is hard to believe! Realtime DVD ripping? To think! The other benefit is that CloneDVD offers something that NO OTHER TRANSCODER OFFERS (at least not yet). That is the ability to selectively drop features, extras, episodes, or what have you - and yet keep the menu structure intact. It rebuilds menus. A huge timesaver, allowing you to do things like back up episode DVD's to multiple discs, or make two-disc backups of a movie with the movie on one disc and the extras on another disc.

So which program do I use most? DVD Shrink at the moment. It gives me the level of control for what I do most of the time. But CloneDVD is also in my machine, and as it improves might supplant DVD Shrink.

- Gurm

[vric]

for full dvd over 6gig, Instant Copy 7 is the only real choice (or CCE but i don'T use it)

Quality wise for movie:

1. IC7
2. DVDShrink 3
3. DVD2one / CloneDVD (real close)

Quality wise for animation movie

1. DVDShrink 3
2. Clone DVD
3. DVD2one
4. Instant copy 7

[Gurm]

But Instant Copy 7 introduces MARK ERRORS.

- Gurm

[thayne]

But Instant Copy 7 introduces MARK ERRORS.

- Gurm

[red lion]

Having now tried a few of the programms i dont think there is much to choose from between them
clonedvd is an exellent programme and i would recommend it to anyone
(i think to many people spend to much time looking at there tv\computers with a magnifying glass looking for a block or fade then they call the programme usless when its not)
btw this is not directed at anyone just i think they are all great programmes but should not be slated because someone uses something else...............

[Gurm]

I think niggling over the quality of a lossy compressed transcode is silly.

The issue is that with the exception of DVDShrink these programs give you very little input into (or information regarding) the amount of compression they're doing. So it's really difficult to compare them at all.

IC7 on the other hand can be dismissed outright - mark errors and all.

- Gurm

[OldGuy100]

IC7 on the other hand can be dismissed outright - mark errors and all.

- Gurm

What are "mark errors" and why are they bad?

[Gurm]

Mark errors are a "feature" of IC7 that claims to be able to add errors onto your copy.

The fact that burners won't actually BURN errors is irrelevant.

Vance says it's a problem, and he's an EXPERT, so it MUST be true. ROFL.

- Gurm

[OldGuy100]

Ahhh, sarcasm. So I take it that you don't think there's a problem with mark errors?

[HideOut]

Ive never heard of Mark Errors, guess i'll need to ch eck my 500+ backups that were done with IC to see what it is...

HideOut

[Greenspock]

Gurm makes a lot of good points. But to answer your question...

Yes! CloneDVD is great for a full DVD. (IMHO)

Cheers.

[Gurm]

Yes, it was DEFINITELY sarcasm.

- Gurm

[spiderman2k1]

Well here is my two cent's I did a laser Disc capture of Star Wars. and the MPEG 2 file was almost nine gig's. Then I did DVD Author of the MPEG 2 file. and want to shrink it down. MY first try was DVDshrink it cashed at the end of views the DVD it never transcode the file. Then used DVD2ONE and burned the disc. Movie was very block with DVD2ONE. THen tried CloneDVD came out very good all those block's went away. And this is a good seven feet away from my TV and I wear glasses and I did not have them on LOL.

WHen I did Xmen DVD test dvd2one dvdshrink and clonedvd all look the same. But when I did a Harry porter 2 clonedvd and dvd2one looked the same and dvdshrink look very good. Cheep in mind I only transcoded for about a minute and just look at the vob file with powerDVD then took picture's and look at them side by side. Again with Star Wars capture I did it was so clear that cloneDVD was the winner.

I think some time's one program might be better at some movie's then other's. If there interlaced A or B or other setting. I have not done more testing but I would say you should test about five movie's before saying what program is the better of them all.

[Gurm]

The tough thing is that they're all using different transcoding engines, so they're all going to shine under different circumstances.

IC8 is now replacing CloneDVD in my estimation, because IC7 was well known to produce superior results (albeit with longer execution times), and IC8 now offers removal of titles just like CloneDVD. The added benefit it confers is the ability to control compression levels, something SORELY lacking in CloneDVD.

- Gurm

[vric]

The tough thing is that they're all using different transcoding engines, so they're all going to shine under different circumstances.

IC8 is now replacing CloneDVD in my estimation, because IC7 was well known to produce superior results (albeit with longer execution times), and IC8 now offers removal of titles just like CloneDVD. The added benefit it confers is the ability to control compression levels, something SORELY lacking in CloneDVD.

- Gurm

in fact, IC8 will be better than CloneDVD for title removal and quality.. IC8 is the best trascoder now. DVDShrink 3 is a really nice free alternate software

[Gurm]

"Best" is a hard word.

IC8 is... the SLOWEST transcoder. Is it the "best"? Well... maybe. It is certainly high quality. But if you want results in LESS than an hour and a half... it's not the "best".

- Gurm

[Thunder In Paradise]

I just started using this program because my version of DVD X Copy wouldn't copy "Urotsukidoji" correctly. And i have to say, that it has performed flawlessly. I couldn't detect any video or audio loss, and I was like maybe 5 or 6 ft. from the screen. Very easy, and also very helpfull if you want to drop all the needless junk of the copy.

[vric]

"Best" is a hard word.

IC8 is... the SLOWEST transcoder. Is it the "best"? Well... maybe. It is certainly high quality. But if you want results in LESS than an hour and a half... it's not the "best".

- Gurm

well, with DVDSHrink and full analyst, it take over 1 hours now... so I don't know why IC8 should be blame for speed.. btw you have an option to make a faster rip which is supose to be 30minutes or so, but I don't really see why I would use it.. I can wait 1 hours for my backup..

[BODYBUILDER]

yeah. nothing beats DVD2one simple.

its easy and fast and i dont see a difference in quality to the other programs, DVD2one has never crashed on me, other programs have. so ofcourse DVD2one rips them all.

it only takes 10 minutes transcode a movie like im going to wait 1 hour and then see no bloody difference i dont want full disc mode its stupid you only really want to watch the movie and thats where DVD2one kills them all.

[lordsmurf]

I use full disc mode in DVD2one, and it's great. I used to use DVD Shrink and remove extras subs, audio, etc.... but the quality difference was nominal and DVD Shrink was twice as long to finish. The extra audio doesn't take up a large amount of space anyway, and DVD2one goes really fast. It uses the ENTIRE disc space available, which others didn't do. And I never see macroblocking.

I used Clone DVD in trial mode. It was fine. Not my preference, but yeah, it works. (And I think it HAD to use a DVD disc, not file from the HD, which I didn't like. Don't remember, so don't take my word on that.)

[tonyk23]

I have had the best success with CloneDVD. Generally I like to keep the menus and remove some of the extras and Directors commentary. I like to use the create ISO file output and then burn with DVDDecrypter. Generally when a DVD9 has bitrates in the 6000-8000 range the DVD5 end up in the 4000-6000 range. But even when the final output is in the 1500-3000 range the DVD is still very watchable.