Re-encoding produces bad files

[Deep]

Hello all.

I am at the end of my rope. I have been happily ripping/authoring/burning dvd-r's for over a year now thanks to the great FAQ's here. As of late though, an annoying problem has crept into my life. I rip a dvd and the resulting video and audio files are perfect. I re-encode to shrink it and the resulting .m2v file is garbage. It is jumpy, has ghost images and HIGHLY pixelated. I have tested the factor amount on these bad files and the factor amount doesn't change anything. The weird part is it isn't every movie. I would say one in every 3-4 movies backed-up. It almost appears like the ripping proccess isn't removing the macrovision. Any thoughts?
I'm going to scream if I encode another movie for 6-7 hours only to have the resulting file end up in my trash bin.

Thanks for your help in advance.

[Deep]

Someone out there has to have an idea what might be causing this.

Any tip(s) to checkout will go a long way to keeping me from pulling my hair out. :P

[SydneyPup]

Is your drive defraged, and have you minimized your background processes?

[Gazorgan]

I'm willing to wager the ones you are having problems with are DVD9's over 7 GB? And your keeping the AC5.1 Audio intact? 2+ hour movies?

You basically cutting your bitrate in 1/2, you can expect some problems.

Here's a simple fix, encode to 1/2D1. You can't really tell the difference on anything smaller than a 30" TV. You can then keep the high bitrates needed to prevent artifacts. I did this for Gladiator (it's a 3 hour movie!) and the results were miraculos when compared to a straight shrink.

You can also play with the VBR settings, going with a maxed max, low minimum, and average as needed.

[jarvis1781]

Hello all.

I am at the end of my rope. I have been happily ripping/authoring/burning dvd-r's for over a year now thanks to the great FAQ's here. As of late though, an annoying problem has crept into my life. I rip a dvd and the resulting video and audio files are perfect. I re-encode to shrink it and the resulting .m2v file is garbage. It is jumpy, has ghost images and HIGHLY pixelated. I have tested the factor amount on these bad files and the factor amount doesn't change anything. The weird part is it isn't every movie. I would say one in every 3-4 movies backed-up. It almost appears like the ripping proccess isn't removing the macrovision. Any thoughts?
I'm going to scream if I encode another movie for 6-7 hours only to have the resulting file end up in my trash bin.

Thanks for your help in advance.

What encoder are you using? are you using ReMPEG2 by any chance??

[steptoe]

Just a quicky, have you tried one of the many FREE utils that can rip a complete DVD, or just the movie, and compact it to fit on a single DVD-R, regardless of the source DVD length, or if its a DVD-9, etc, etc

My choice,after trying a couple of these is DVD Shrink 3.0, and CopyToDVD to burn. It may not be super fast, but its perfect for my needs, and if you want, you can still play with DVD Shrink to get 2 complete movies on a single DVD-R

Defragging shouldn't make a difference then, unless you've never done it, andyou're drive(s) are way fragmented, then it will make a difference during encoding

By the sound of it, you're doing a lot, so, if you haven't done it, maybe now is the time to leave a day to do a defrag, and if you do that many movies, maybe do it once a month, or maybe every couple of months

[Deep]

What encoder are you using? are you using ReMPEG2 by any chance??

Yes, I am.



Thanks for the suggestions. Sadly, the problem still persists. I could understand if they all turned out like this. The hit and miss nature of it leaves me grasping at straws.