DVD Burning Help
 

I am trying to backup a DVD.

I used DVD Shrink to backup one of my daughters DVD's butwhich shrank it to 4.4 GB

I put in a blank DVD-R which should be 4.7 GB I use Nero Express which is usually fine, when it came to write it said disc is too small put in one with more space. Huh? Never had this problem before and I don't have any funny software installed.

I tried one of my 4GB home vid files and it would allow me for that as a datafile WTF.

Backed up DVDs before without this hassle.

Can't remember the exact set up as i havent got access to my pc atm.

But, set DVDShrink to save the image file to disk (.iso file)
This can then be checked with explorer before burning.

Once finished, open nero and cancel the pop-up menu box.
Select "recorder" (i think) menu and then "burn image"
Select the backed up image you just made and it should work fine.

DVD's are 4.37 GB, not 4.7. Remeber that a k, and a m, and a g are all based on 1024 - which means, that it really is only 4.37 GB, but calcs out to 4700000 k.

By the way, DVDShrink has ugly output - very low quality even on its best settings.

-S

PS. The reason DVDShrink is of poor quality is that it is a transcoder, not an encoder. It is using technology developed to transmit cell phone videos from reporters in the Iraq war and was never intended to be of decent quality.

Hmm very odd as I copied a couple of DVDs and playback was fine.

Your explanation explains a lot too.

Are there any better progs out there?

If speed is the issue, not much beats DVDShrink. I use professional tools and have for years, but I do know there where some GPL licensed MPEG encoders on the way and they probably work pretty good by now. Let me look and I'll get back to you.

-S

PS. DVDSHrink works - just that the clarity is all washed out - nothing will have a sharp appearance. I will also post some pics for you to look at so you can see what I mean.

DVDShrink test
 

I apologize for the recompression to JPEG as there is some additional loss in these files from that. However, it will still show what I am talking about. These pics are zoomed in from one of my recompressions (King Kong).

Here is the source:
http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/7747/source0ec.jpg


Here is the results of cutting the file size in half using a professional encoder (CCE Pro):

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9571/cce4tp.jpg


Here is DVDShrink taking a stab at it using its best encoding options. One thing you will notice right off is the ugly 'blocks' that it has chopped the image up into:
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/4...dshrink9uy.jpg

I have never used DVDshink.


You can always use a double-layer DVD and DVD-decryptor. That's what I use. It's nice because I can fast foward and play PAL movies, which are sometimes significantly different than the one released in NTSC. It's reported that DVD-d can't handle some movies but I haven't come across any of those.

And then you can re-code the thing with a better coder than what (apparently) DVDshink uses. Tmpgenc "DVD Author" has an excellent multithreaded MPEG-2 encoder and will ouput a DVD-video folder. There's regular Tmpgenc which will output a MPEG-2 video file. You'd have to get the AC3 plugin, or convert and mux it manually. I believe Nero will stuff a MPEG-2 stream into the proper VOB's and IFO's, but there are tools which will also do it. It's been too long since I've messed with that. Getting the audio over to either Layer-2 or AC3 is a must, because that really saves space for video bitrate. AC3 sterero does well at 160kbps, giving you another ~280kbps for your video.

Tmpenc works great, but is rather slow. Quality is not as good as CCE Pro but it does a way better job than DVDShrink.

I was thinking more along the lines of 'free'. Here is an alternative and is as good as Tmpenc - http://www.bitburners.com/HC_Encoder/

Another alternative - http://www.bitburners.com/QuEnc/

As for dual layer - media is still way more expensive than 4.37 GB, and it has compatibility problems on many stand alone players. I guess if you player sees it fine though, that is a good thing!

-S

<Part removed, read the forum rules - Gizzmoe>