going back to original quality from a backup copy

[joker380]

Hi guys forgive me if i sound dumb. Thing is my friend gave me a copy of spiderman2 and couple of other movies and he stuffed other extras in it as everyone knows that it degrades the quality since everything in one dvd will need more compression. What i want to do is take that junk out and somehow make the movie quality better. Is it doable and if it is than how.

I really appreciate for all your help thank you.[/img]

[BobK]

What you have to do is put the copy in your DVD player, run it into your TV, then to your VCR and record it. Then hook your VCR up to your DVD recorder or computer and play it back it. Then record it to a new disk... no, that won't work.

Maybe an analogy will help. Let's say that your friend bought a 16 ounce steak. Then he cut it in half and threw 8 ounces in the garbage. He decides to give you the other 8 ounces. You want to go back to the original size steak, so you go look in his garbage can, but the steak he cut off the original is not there. How do you replace it? The only way I can think of is that you go to the store and buy your own 16 ounce steak (or maybe just buy another 8 ounces, but that wouldn't really be the same quality since the original was one whole steak and now you'll just have 2 halves).

When video is compressed to fit on one disk, data is removed. To go back to the original quality you have to replace the data that was removed. The best way for you to do this is to go buy your own original DVD of the movie. Of course your friend could take the original DVD that he owns (because it would have been illegal for him to make a copy if he didn't own it) and make you a new copy without the extras. But then that still wouldn't be a legal copy if he gave it to you. Either way, you should throw the copy in the trash so that you'll no longer be in possession of stolen property.

[guns1inger]

What he said - No.

[888888]

Is it doable and if it is than how.

When you "compress" a DVD, all this means is that the little molecules of dye in the DVDR are shrunk to half size. This way, you can fit twice as many molecules and therefore put Spider Man 2 as well as extras on there. The problem lies in the fact that since the molecules are so small, the DVD laser sometimes misses a few and you get a bad, grainy, blocky pixelated image. This is what Blu-Ray is trying to fix, mainly make the laser smaller so it can pick up more "shrunk" molecules.

Luckily, you can "un-shrink", or "re-bigulate" a DVD, but for that you need special software. It is called DVD-UnShrink. Unfortunatly, because of patent issues, this software is not available in the US. Even if you are able to find it, I have read that a side-effect of the "re-bigulation" process is that giant penises appear throughout the movie.

Good Luck

BTW, is this thread gonna be locked? It seems like you are saying you are borrowing your friend's DVD to burn yourself a copy.

[CaZeek]

No no, there's nothing fishy going on here. He has a legal copy of Spider-Man 2 also.. his friend simply made copies for him.

[canadateck]

un-shrink

Does that run on XP?

[guns1inger]

un-shrink only runs on DVDLinux, I'm afraid.

[lordsmurf]

No, you cannot "unshrink" ... the damage was done. (All you other guys .... funny!)

Your friend is not allowed to give you copies of his DVDs. That is illegal/warez. But I'll forego giving you a warning (this time!), and we'll just call him the idiot.

Go buy your own DVDs. Perfect quality this way, nothing to complain about.

Locked.