I just got my burner 02/14 (Valentines gift from the wife) so I'm still learning. The method I've been using is NeroVision 4 to decode downloaded .avi movies and then burning them automatically. I've noticed that Nero leaves a *lot* of space when it's calculating and always offers to shrink the file to fit, but it will take it down to extended or long play, while leaving almost a gig of space. The last burn I used Nero to decode, but at the highest level (best quality) but told it to write the file to the hard drive, then I used DVDShrink to get it to DVD size, then burned it (automatically offered by DVDShrink) to a DVD, using the entire disk. TO my way of thinking, decoding it at the highest quality settings, then shrinking it down will used space more efficiently and result in a better looking video, correct? As I said, I'm prety much a novice at this, so I'd welcome any opinions on this matter. TIA
Well maybe, but that's not so simple. If you shrink it directly with nero (even with lower bitrate), you only encode the video once (from a lossy format to other lossy format). If you first encode it with nero, then you compress it two times (lossy to lossy conversion always reduces the quality, after lossy->lossy->lossy conversion the change is quite noticable). Even if you use higher bitrate when converting again with dvdshrink, the information that was lost in earlier conversion won't come back. So you'll just have a higher bitrate video, but with weaker quality. I apologize my explanations, they're quite confusing. Check this to get the idea of lossy compression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy
BINGO! I found that out last night with the one that I tried this method on, Raiders of the Lost Ark. I understood your explanation, somewhat, it's sort of like a double compression thing, correct? I've been satisfied with the quality of the video that Nero puts out, I was just looking to see if I could maximize the disk space usage *and* bump up the quality a bit. Guess I'll leave well enough alone. Thanks for the information and advice.
Yup. Every time you compress to lossy format to other lossy format, the quality suffers. Yeah, the quality is ok, but in my opinion they could put an option that would fill the whole dvd.
