can dvd shrink do 1/2D transcoding?

[inuyasha]

Dvd shrink is great until the vobs are 7 or 8 Gig and the video rate will drop to the neighbourhood of 4kbps. I poked around but didn't seem to be able to find an option to do a 1/2 D conversion so that it might leave some room for the video bit rate to improve. Does anyone know if DVD shrink can do that or any other prog that will do it and do it as fast as Dvd shrink can with the full D transcoding?

[steptoe]

No, DVDShrink doesn't have a half height mode, I use DVD-RB now for DVD's that are well over 4.3GB, which in DVDShrink comes out as anything less than 90%

DVD-RB does support half-height output, and quite a few other options to tweak your video to get the absolite best quality possible

Its slow, and overnight job for a DVD that needs a lot of compressing, but the major advantage is the final quality is fantastic as it doesn't transcode like DVD Shrink or SlySoft DVD, both of which I use, it uses an MPEG encoder and encodes the video to a smaller bitrate keeping the quality as high as possible

Its freeware for the freely available version and as it now includes freeware MPEG encoders, so it still shouldn't cost you anything. You can also use it to clean up poor quality source video as it uses AviSynth to frameserve

Sounds complicated, but the latest version use a very efficient installer that does all the hardwork for you, and the GUI that manages all the hardwork of encoding the video is excellant.

Its well worth paying the tiny minimum donation fee to get access to DVD-RB Pro, and paying the small sum for what you get to get hold of CCE MPEG encoder. For less than $100 you'll have a DVD backup set-up that will blow away any of the competition in terms of the quality of the final backup



If speed is your issue, try SlySoft CloneDVD, it should backup any DVD within 30 minutes from being ripped, and the quality is pretty good for transcoding


If quality is your issue, go for DVD-RB, nothing can touch it in terms of final quality, and the latest versions are fully one-click

One-click will backup a ripped DVD, and now burn it, so leave it overnight, the next moring you have a fantastic quality movie or episode DVD

[inuyasha]

Thanks steptoe.
I will be giving DVD-RB a try.
It is going to be a challenge to fit 3.5hrs of handheld DV cam footage into one DVD and still looks good in fast moving scene (as in panning).
I appreciate your reply.

[Micker_C]

I took a different approach, as life seems to becoming more difficult

Use Decyptor 1st, won't always work and if it won't -Instead of 'Writing' the ISO I 'Read' and have it set to go to a hard drive partition -Then Use shrink, seems to work on these large files and at the same time take out all the extra's & foriegn languages via shrink.

Then use CopyToDVD to burn.

Starts out with almost 8g, ends up burned at 4.38g.

Cheers

[inuyasha]

Hi,
The thing is, mine is home dv and does nothave much to trim off. With DVD shrink, the compression ratio is like 55%,and the picture is grainy particularly when the camera pans. So I want to increase the bit rate at the expense of resolution.

I just downloaded Rebuilder, but I do not have CCE, so I am hoping the free encoders that came with it is capable of doing 1/2 D. Will findn out tomorrow.

Thanks for all replies.