Reduce Audio Bitrate When Ripping

[KnobJockey]

I've been using DVD shrink for a while, normally I demux the files and re-author with DVD-Lab Pro. I now want to rip and burn a DVD directly. There is no setting on shrink to adjust the audio bitrate.

Any other rippers have this feature ?

Any other rippers better than DVD-Shrink ?

Cheers

[wayne421]

I'm not sure it's possible to alter the audio bitrate... I think it's a fixed rate to meet DVD spec? Not sure. I'd be interested in other opinions.

W

[jman98]

You have to re-encode to alter the bit rate. I wouldn't advise that. AC3 is a very efficient format and re-encoding to a lower bit rate would be a lot more hassle and result in less space savings than re-encoding the video. If you have LPCM audio only, you could encode it to AC3 to save some space.

DVD Decrypter was a great ripper, but the guy who wrote it refused to release the source code. Macrovision shut him down and since he kept the code to himself to try to make a little money off it, it's difficult to find copies of it.

[mats.hogberg]

Any other rippers have this feature ?

No.

Any other rippers better than DVD-Shrink ?

No.

/Mats

[Noahtuck]

Any other rippers better than DVD-Shrink ?

No.

/Mats

DVD Decrypter
DVDFab Decrypter
IsoBuster
8)

[mats.hogberg]

In what way are they better than DVDShrink?

/Mats

[FulciLives]

It is well known that using DVDShrink to RIP a DVD is a bad idea.

One should use either DVD Decrypter or on some newer DVD discs you may have to use DVDFab Decrypter since only DVDFab Decrypter can deal with newer forms of copy protection.

After the RIPPING stage you can then use DVDShrink to do what it is made to do ... transcode the DVD to a smaller size.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Forget about audio bitrate adjusting on AC-3 files. It is not worth doing and will cause more harm than good.

[guns1inger]

They are better rippers than Shrink. Personally, I have never used Shrink to rip, although I still use it to reauthor.

[mats.hogberg]

Personally, I've found the diff between DVDDecrypter and DVDShrink (when it comes to what discs they rip or not) to be miniscule, if any at all.
Admittedly, DVDFab Decrypter (since neither Shrink nor Decrypter are updated) is better at ripping today, but it's the slowest of them all, and provides no other option than to rip the entire disc 1:1.
I guess it's all up to what you put into the word "better".

/Mats

[hech54]

On my system at least...it is MUCH faster to rip the entire DVD to a HD....then use DVDShrink to do it's magic.
Ripping to the HD with DVDFabDecrypter, opening that with DVDShrink...then outputting again to the HD is much faster than doing everything from the original disc in a drive with DVDShrink...especially when deep analysis is involved.
I don't have a ROM drive...I have two burners so maybe that is why there is such a speed difference...but that is what works fastest and best for me.
That is another reason why I have no use for stuff like AnyDVD.

[KnobJockey]

Thanx for the replies, I just wanted to wanted to know if I could speed up the process by not re-authoring. The current dvd I'm ripping, dvd shrink rips the audio as an ac3 file with a bitrate of 384kbs, I wanted this to be 128kbs, thus saving around 200mb, to improve the video quality.

[guns1inger]

I wouldn't take AC3 below 192 kbps, and I would only go this low with 2.0 channel audio. I would not take 5.1 below 384 kbps.

If you want to reduce the bitrate of the audio, you will have to demux and re-encode. At 128 kbps, the audio would be very average for 2.0 channels, and completely crap for 5.1. And the 200mbs you saved would make almost no difference to your video. If you are that concerned about video quality, do not use a transcoder, re-encode with DVD Rebuilder and either HCEnc or CCE/ProCoder.

[jimmalenko]

With the obvious exceptions of DTS and LPCM, there is normally not a helluva lot to be gained by changing the bitrate on your audio as the file-size savings are minute in comparison to transcoding the video stream. I believe this is why most of the more user-friendly transcoders / rippers don't bother with altering the audio.

DVDShrink has been dormant for quite some time so a lot of people are now finding that they need an alternative method to bypass things like Arccos.

Back in the day I always used DVDDecrypter to rip as I felt that it was better for the longevity of my DVD-ROM to just rip the disc to my hard drive and get it over with (around 10-20 minutes), as opposed to DVDShrink accessing the drive on and off whilst it operates. This also has the benefit that DVDShrink will run faster as it will get the data supplied quicker from a hard drive than if reading on the fly from a DVD drive.