How much before it looks bad???

[rmarquez5]

Greetings all.

I tried to make a backup of The Sound Of Music and I found the resulting DVD looked very blocky and pixelated. I have backed up many other movies before, some at 70% quality or so, and still been very pleased with the results. I forget how much CloneDVD2 wanted to compress it, but it was noticably bad.

From your experiences, how far have cut back in quality before it started looking less than acceptable? I know some of you are audio/video purists, so I need the opinions of the more average joes. But all are welcome to comment.

Please post your thoughts! Thanks!!
Happy burning.
R.

[canadateck]

I find it different from DVD to DVD. But have never tried under 60%. 60% with menu and everything most of the time looks OK for me..

[jimmalenko]

It depends a lot on the original bitrate that the DVD was encoded with, what you're playing/viewing it on, and what transcoding engine you're using, just to name a few possible reasons.

I've been mid-50's with DVDShrink and they look fine IMO on a 27" TV.

[rmarquez5]

Wow... there seems to be a lot more to it than just the quality at which the burning program wants to burn it at.

I am trying a second time, recording a two channel soundtrack instead of the six channel one. It bumped the quality up from 60% to 65%. So I'm hoping the extra 5% would make a difference.

I'm playing these back on a cheap Norcent player, on a small Citizen TV. If the 60% movie looked back on THAT, than it would certainly look bad on my 27" TV in the living room.

In any case... please keep posting more!! This is very helpful.
Thanks for your input guys.
R.

[monzie]

The Sound of Music has a run time of of 175mins (5mins short of 3 hours!!) making it a VERY difficult project to go from a DVD-9 (dual layer) to a DVD-5 (standard DVDr) regardless of extra's..............the av bitrate for a 4.3g DVD works out at 3256kbs (thats WITHOUT ANY EXTRAS and audio at 224 stereo).

So what I would do is go into DVDShrink and REAUTHOR topping and tailing all pre-amble and credits and choosing only one audio format...or

Use something like DVDFAB and split over 2 disks (hell a blank DVDr only costs around 25p/25c) so why waste years of enjoyment for the price of a a CHEAP cup of tea/coffee????

[steve2713]

I would do basically what monzie said, using DVD Shrink, reauthor with the movie only and chop off any if you can. Also, use deep analysis, and I would use maximum smoothness for a movie of that length on one disc.

As a rough guideline, I try to use 'sharp' for 2gb+/hr of video, 'smooth' from about 1.7-2gb/hr video, and 'maximum smoothness' if it goes below about 1.7gb per hour of video. This is not including audio.

[Capmaster]

I'll echo what jimmalnko said, and add that just because a DVD is a commercial pressing, that's no guarantee that it'll be good quality.

My wife has season sets of DVDs of Little House on the Prairie. They cannot be backed up because the bitrate is so low on the originals. Any attempt causes MPEG artifacts to start appearing, like leaves in the trees having motion of their own, blockiness, hesitation, etc.

It seems the studio crammed just as much as it could onto each one to minimize costs :P

Edit: Typo.

[bugster]

How about trying DVD rebuilder. It will take a lot longer but should produce better quality.

[rmarquez5]

Cool guys... 8)

All your input is great. I ended up using CloneDVD2, and splitting the project across two single layer DVDs. (Chapters 1-30 on the first one, chapters 31-61 on the other.)

Worked great, and copied at 100% quality, so no artifcats or anything. Not too shabby. And currently DVD+R DL's cost $15/disc here!!! So splitting them up across two DVDs isn't a problem for now.

Your application references are really helpful though. I'm going to be looking into them.

Thanks for all the help. Keep posting if you think there are even more ways to get around this...

Happy burning.
R.

[RickTheRed]

My comments.
When I decide to split in two DVD-R, I use DVD shrink. On the shrink web site you can download video files saying "please insert disc" there are 3 different templates to choose from. Pretty easy to add and I like it better when disc one is finished.

[Nilfennasion]

I'll just add a little anecdote of my own in order to demonstrate why I am hoping DVD+R DL will become a more compatible format in future.

One title that has frustrated my backup efforts no end has been The Godfather. Given that this title is not available seperately from its sequels, it makes sense to back it up. However, when you look at the quality of the original transfer, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why Francis Ford Coppola insisted that Paramount split the second film over the equivalent of three layers (one DVD-9 and one DVD-5). Paramount's MPEG encoding setup would have to qualify as one of the worst in Hollywood. In fact, I am willing to bet that if they put an uncompressed version of the films on my had drive, I could do a better job myself.

As a result, no matter what settings you use in DVD Shrink, any compression of the source files will show up as macro-blocking. In fact, using an earlier version of DVD Shrink, I split The Godfather over two discs, reducing the size of the first part to a mere 97.9 percent. Instantly, little green blocks kept popping up on the screen. In fact, given that I had similar problems with Addams Family Values, I would say that Paramount deliberately encode their titles poorly in order to make life difficult for those who want to make backups.

Point being that until DVD+R DL becomes at least as compatible as its single-layer cousin, there are just going to be some titles that won't be backed up. Myself, I never split things over multiple discs for the simple reason that I feel I should not have to get up and change discs. Anyone in Australia who has dealt with the featureless flipper release of StarShip Troopers, to name a classic example, will understand why.

[TheUnknownComic]

I was walking past a big screen TV in a store recently that was playing one of the "Lord of the Rings" movies. They were playing from a DVD which was likely an original factory pressing. The scene I saw had a very noticable amount of blockiness. Again, that's a movie that's over 3 hours long.

The longer the original, the less you're likely to be able to shrink it without seeing problems. Drop the extras or put them on a separate disc. Drop the alternate soundtracks, too.

[adam]

TheUnknownComic. Let me guess, it was a widescreen tv and there was no letterboxing present right? LOTR is 2.35:1 which means that even on a widescreen tv there should be a decent amount of letterboxing present. In most of the electronic stores they zoom in to remove the letterboxing, because their average customer thinks that the tv isn't widescreen if you can see the "black bars." The result is course that that quality looks like utter crap.

There has to be some explanation because both the regular and the DC versions of all of the LOTR movies have been some of the highest quality transfers available on DVD.

[guns1inger]

Nilfennasion

The Godfather has been available in Australia as a seperate disk for at least 2 months. My backup of the godfather, from the box set, including commentary, was done using DVD Rebuilder. As much as I like Shrink, there as somethings that are just too big an ask. The results are very good, although if you put the two disks side by side you would easily pick the backup.

As far as a Paramount goes, I think they make lousy DVDs, period. They have the same, poor crappy opening screens that you can't skip over, they don't embed their 16:9 flags properly, so widescreen kit doesn't switch automatically, and just feel like they don't really get the whole DVD thing.

And yeah - I imported Starship Troopers years ago for just that reason.

[Nilfennasion]

Adam, I've seen enough MPEG hazing on the TTT TE (on a 200+cm projector screen) to absolutely gag when someone describes it as one of the best transfers. Although maybe the Region 1 version is different, I don't know... Given how much space is wasted on these discs, I doubt it.

Never knew that about The Godfather, gunslinger. Having said that, though, with the crap quality of Paramount transfers, I wouldn't buy it for more than a bargain basement price, anyway. I've never tried DVD Rebuilder.

Paramount's attitude to DVD was shitty from day one. First, they ignored the format totally, claiming it would never last in spite of the fact that Columbia Tristar were bringing out titles that had not been available on VHS in over fifteen years on it. When they woke up to how big the market had become in America, they began releasing shitty discs. You forgot to mention the subtitles. In one review I did, I mentioned how "Just because I'm carrying around the joy of killing your family around inside me doesn't mean we can't be friends", becomes "I enjoyed killing your family, but it doesn't mean we can't be friends" in the hands of Paramount's subtitler. Not to mention that they released numerous titles from their biggest-name franchise (Star Trek) without 16:9 Enhancement, leave alone properly-set flags. If ever there was a studio that deserved to be bankrupted by piracy...

I have now imported StarShip Troopers a total of three times. That's how mad a fan I am of Paul Verhoeven. So to call Beuna Vista's versions a slap in the face is putting it kindly.

[adam]

Nilfennasion yes I am referring to the region 1 disk and it is a beautiful transfer. If you read any amount of reviews on the region 1 releases of the LOTR DVDs then you will see that they get exceptional ratings in their transfer quality. And yes, they are some of the best I have ever seen. You are right there is alot of wasted space on the disk with the huge menus and some unused capacity on the second layer, but studio's are not concerned with this. They aim for a certain Q because that is what their matrices are custom built for. If they reach that Q then they may actually decrease quality by throwing more bitrate at it. The LOTR films are extremely compressible, probably due in large part to the fact that they were mastered entirely in the digital realm. This has only ever been done on a handful of movies. These movies look great from where I sit, and if you are watching the extended edition it is even better.

I've read that Australia often gets some horrible quality DVD releases and that some are in fact re-encodes of DVDs from other regions. I think you've just got some very poor distributors in OZ.

[jntaylor63]

My 2 cents.

Almost all transcodes to ~ 60% will look watchable on a standard TV. Moving up to a big screen HDTV its an other story. I thought that a 70% Main Movie Only looked OK on one HDTV, but looked poor on an other. For HDTV use, I think 90 to 85% might be the cap. Even some 100% back-up's can look bad, its all about the DVD quality you start with.

One thing I found in the world of back-up's is how good DivX / XviD can look. I set a XviD bitrate to half the DVD bit rate and coded with AutoGK. Hooked an IBM laptop's DVI out to a DLP TV and it looked equal to the orginal DVD. So, if you need to do a single disk movie that would require a lot of downsizing, give it a try. You just need some of the little things like a machine to play it back on.

[Nilfennasion]

adam, not to be insulting or anything, but the only review of discs that I trust these days is that which I make with my own eyes and ears. Now, given the givens, LOTR is a very good transfer, although the Region 1 equivalent is better by default because the audio hasn't been mucked with so much. Pitch conversion artefacts are very unpleasant.

This is to say nothing of the fact that a lot of reviewers will simply stop short of the truth in order to curry favour with distributors. My review of the TTT TE disc had a lot of footnotes added to the effect of "we did not notice this", to which I eventually told my editor that he'd have to be deaf. Given that he conducts orchestras as a hobby, he saw it for what it was, a rebuke of his ability to set aside integrity to tell the readers and distributors what they want to hear.

Now, having said all that, I don't believe there is much wrong with the LOTR DVDs, the actual film on them notwithstanding. However, I do not think that Region 4 gets more than its fair share of rotten transfers unless you mean what the indies put out. The big-name distributors bend over backwards to ensure their product is looking and sounding good, most of the time.