New to DVD Rebuilder from DVD Shrink

[DRP]

I'm trying to backup one of the Lord Of The Rings DVDs. I've ripped it using DVD Decrypter no problems. I've been right through it with VobBlanker and removed as much rubbish as I possibly can and still have it work. I've loaded it up in DVD Shrink and found the compression required to fit to DVD-R5 is going to be 68.6%.

That's much lower than I've ever done before, so having heard about DVD Rebuilder in past postings, I've decided to give it a bash.

I now have a copy of DVD Rebuilder PRO v1.00RC5 and a copy of Cinema Craft Encoder SP v2.70.02.01 installed. Both I believe are the very latest versions available.

My question is... During install of DVD Rebuilder it says it uses Canopus Procoder as one of the MPEG encoders. I'm getting a copy of Canopus ProCoder v2.04.02.00 Retail but do I need it? DVD Rebuilder seems to have a multitude of encoder options available to it. I'm only interested in the best quality one. Is CCE the best or is Canopus better when used through DVD Rebuilder?

I'm not interested in how they work or how fast they are. I'm hoping DVD Rebuilder will act as a friendly frontend for them, so I don't have to re-invent the MPEG encoding world again after having spent much time learning the ins and outs of TMPGEnc Plus. I'm just interested in the best possible quality output DVD structure. Which one will give me that?

[thegeeman]

You asked 2 questions:-

1. No, you technically do not need Procoder or CCE. There are encoders with DVD-RB but not as good as these 2.

2. In MY opinion, CCE is much better than Procoder 2. But thats just my opinion. Your question re. using CCE or Procoder via DVD-RB will increase the quality-this will not happen. At the end of the day CCE and Procoder are still encoders and i cant see how using them via different program will all of a sudden increase the output quality as opposed to using them stand alone.

[DRP]

Your question re. using CCE or Procoder via DVD-RB will increase the quality-this will not happen. At the end of the day CCE and Procoder are still encoders and i cant see how using them via different program will all of a sudden increase the output quality as opposed to using them stand alone.

No, you misunderstood. I will only use CCE or Procoder via the DVD-RB frontend. That much is for sure. I do not have the time or energy required to learn how to use a whole laundry basket of additional tools to be able to use them standalone in order to eek out the last 0.00001% of quality that is possible.

So, given that in my situation it is only going to be used via DVD-RB I just wanted to know whether it was worth me installing Procoder as well if I already have the stated version of CCE installed?

[guns1inger]

$2000 is a lot to spend just to back up a DVD . . . . .

Given this is all you want to do, then no, you don't need to install procoder. However if you have just spent all that extra cash on procoder as well, you might as well install it and see which you prefer.

Having recently tested prodocder for a couple of backups, mainly because of LordSmurf's ongoing recommendations, I have to agree that it produces a slightly cleaner image than CCE, but runs probably 25% slower on my system for the same number of passes. That still makes it 2 - 3 times faster than tmpgenc though.

All that using DVDRB does is remove the need to learn the correct settings.

If, as you say, all you are interested in is quality, I would skip VobBlanker entirely, use Shrink in reauthor mode with no compression, and just take the main movie and key audio. No menus, no subs (unless required), no fat at all.

[thegeeman]

Guns1inger- I Can't agree more. Strip the thing until it almost squeaks. Even better still, try and seek out the guide whereby you can even chop off the end credits via DVD Shrink. Bit more complexed but 100% do-able. I saw the guide, got to be going on almost 2 yrs ago, it is there trust me!

[guns1inger]

You can take off 10 minutes a movie for the Harry Potter films, so LOTR credits would have to be equally as long. On the special editions they run close to 20 minutes or more because they list every member of the Tolkien Society or some such.

A guide to do it is over kill. Just do this;

1. Load disk into DVD Shrink
2. Click re-author button
3. Drag main movie from right-hand pane to left-hand pane
4. Click on compression settings tab, then select 'No Compression' from the drop down menu
5. Right-click on main title in left-hand pane and select Set Start/End Frames from popup menu
6. Adjust end point by selecting chapter or dragging slider
7. Write the results to a folder on the HDD for processing with DVD-RB

QED

[lordsmurf]

I already have own Procoder, so I use that with DVD-RB. I only do it every few months for something special, but it works well. Just takes a long time per disc, about 10-13 hours on a fast system (AMD 2700+).

Use that self-installer.
And don't forget AVISYNTH 2.55, install that first.

Remember that the ability to drop to HALF D1 resolution is one reason I use DVD-RB. Dropping res will allow the DVD9 to DVD5 compression to yield better quality.

[DRP]

Cool idea... thanks. I hadn't thought of being able to do it that way with DVD Shrink. I thought you *had* to have the menus in some form or another otherwise the disc wouldn't work at all. I'll try your suggestion.

[jtoolman2000]

Have you considered sinply backing up directly to DL media. The $5 a piece should be nothing after spending hundreds for those encoders

You can use Decrypter or Shrink to ISO and burn the resulting ISO with Decrypter. Bamm!!! It's done,,, and at 100% original quality.

Otherwise you will need to reencode or transcode, BOTH resulting in visible visual degredation. I have done all my three LOR discs and they all were about 60% with all the other quality preserving boxes ticked. They look OK on my 52 DLP though there are areas were you can tell there is a slight dorp in quality.

[DRP]

Remember that the ability to drop to HALF D1 resolution is one reason I use DVD-RB. Dropping res will allow the DVD9 to DVD5 compression to yield better quality.

Yeah, I wouldn't consider that an option to be honest. All my DVD players have no trouble with DVD-SVCD so if I was going to consider dropping resolution, I would do it manually to SVCD instead and re-author myself with DVD-lab PRO rather than go straight down to CVD resolution.

In any case, these discs are not that big. I should be able to get away with DVD-RB

[DRP]

Have you considered sinply backing up directly to DL media.

No I don't consider that a sensible option. All DL writeable media I've tried is quite unreliable in my DVD players. Quite often the menus don't work or stall crashing the player and the layer jump is very slow to occur and it takes a while for the picture to stabilise again fully afterwards.

I only use DL media when there really is no other option at all as a very last resort. To date the only DVDs I've had to duplicate to DL media have been music concerts where multiple camera angles are used. At the time I copied them there was no software I was aware of that could handle the multiple angles in the VOBs. That may still be the case, but it was a while ago.[/quote]

[guns1inger]

The advantage to half-d1 comes when you want to keep extras, but minimise the space they take up. Simply dropping the bitrate can/will degrade the image, but combining a lower bitrate with half-d1 can give you a reasonable return. DVD-RB will not allow you to encode at SVCD resolution, so you can't use that as an option while preserving the DVD structure.

[Jester700]

Have you considered sinply backing up directly to DL media. The $5 a piece should be nothing after spending hundreds for those encoders

CCE Basic is $60 and works very well, if you only need 2 pass VBR. and there is a free encoder available - "Hank's encoder". It actually works very well, though not as fast as CCE.

[steptoe]

You want the latest release of DVD-RB Pro which is RC6 as this fixes some serious errors that occur with RC5 and RC5.1 with some DVD's

Then if you already have CCE (assuming its not the basic version), set it to say 4 passes, some say 2 is ample others say making it 4 or even 6 passes on seriously long or complex movies with plenty of action like LOTR or Star Wars does make a difference in the final quality

I haven't tried HC encoder thats included with DVD-RB as I use CCE, but some say its nearly as good as CCE, apart from the fact its free, try the 'Best' setting and see what the output looks like



Also do what you can with DVD Shrink in chopping the start and end titles off if you wish and also removing any extras you won't need like extra languges, audio tracks and subtitles to give you the maximum possible for the movie

Just save it with 'No Compression' and ignore the error about it being too big, making sure you save the output as DVD files, then point DVD-RB to where its been saved and just use DVD-RB Pro's 'One Click' mode and leave it running, come back to a burnt DVD if you set the 'Create DVD' option, again assuming you have DVD Decrypter installed to burn the DVD



I do this myself for large films or films with crap I don't want

[DRP]

You want the latest release of DVD-RB Pro which is RC6 as this fixes some serious errors that occur with RC5 and RC5.1 with some DVD's

Where can I get this RC6 from? I can't find it. I have DVD Rebuilder PRO v1.00 RC5.1 at the moment.

Then if you already have CCE (assuming its not the basic version), set it to say 4 passes, some say 2 is ample others say making it 4 or even 6 passes on seriously long or complex movies with plenty of action like LOTR or Star Wars does make a difference in the final quality

I've got it set at 3 passes at the moment. I read a few comments from a few different people that 3 passes was more than good enough to produce a result indistinguishable from original. To be honest on my computer even at 3 pass VBR it is taking quite some time to do the first disc, so I think greater might be overkill.

[lordsmurf]

The advantage to half-d1 comes when you want to keep extras, but minimise the space they take up. Simply dropping the bitrate can/will degrade the image, but combining a lower bitrate with half-d1 can give you a reasonable return. DVD-RB will not allow you to encode at SVCD resolution, so you can't use that as an option while preserving the DVD structure.

I've had to do this on several tv show discs that were just completely crammed full with 4-5 hours of shows at Full D1, and barely had adequate bitrates. There was no room to shrink it. This has nothing to do with "extras". These were my backups, so I went ahead and spent the 10-13 hours per disc to properly shrink them. The presses were either suspicious looking (flimsy) or had some spots where the DVD player froze. The copies work better than the originals, go figure.

For movies, I don't see the need for DVD-RB, just use DVD Shrink.

[soundforbjt]

You want the latest release of DVD-RB Pro which is RC6 as this fixes some serious errors that occur with RC5 and RC5.1 with some DVD's

Where can I get this RC6 from? I can't find it. I have DVD Rebuilder PRO v1.00 RC5.1 at the moment.

Then if you already have CCE (assuming its not the basic version), set it to say 4 passes, some say 2 is ample others say making it 4 or even 6 passes on seriously long or complex movies with plenty of action like LOTR or Star Wars does make a difference in the final quality

I've got it set at 3 passes at the moment. I read a few comments from a few different people that 3 passes was more than good enough to produce a result indistinguishable from original. To be honest on my computer even at 3 pass VBR it is taking quite some time to do the first disc, so I think greater might be overkill.

If you donated to DVDRebuilder to get the version you have now which is the only legal way to get it, you should have the new version.

[Bigdaddybrat]

If I could give my 2 cents on this issue, I have used shrink to separate the movie and the extra stuff. Typically by doing this, I have been able to get the movie to burn at 78% to 100% compression!

The only down side is that you end up having to double the disks use use during the back up... but for me... I typically watch the movie more than the extras anyways... I just back up the movie only to watch.

[CBC]

Just another suggestion for backing up only the main movie w/ good quality
DVDREasy + CCE. DVDREasy only works on main movie, audio, & subs if needed. Can set up to process a disc in seconds. If you DO need the extras, then this isn't for you. And it is freeware to boot. (needs/uses DVD Decrypter to rip)