Hey guys I love the site, but I still have some newb questions: by the way I use clone and anydvd and love it. 1. If you have a Lightscribe dvd writer does that mean you can burn DL disks too? 2. As far as making back up disks what is the quality percenatge that you don't want to go lower than? ie. when a regular joe would start to notice that its not as good as the orignal? 3. where's a good site to get dvd pictures for lightscribe? 4. Also I notice most people here swear by Verbatin, I've been using maxwell's and haven't had any problems, are they fine or is Verbatin the only way to go? thanks in advance.
one more question: Is there a way to keep the menu's without having anything extra on the disk? For instance I just want the menu, with title search, but no directors comments, behind the scenes stuff? Is there a way to do that with clonedvd?
The BenQ 1655 supports DL+ and the Lite-on 165H6S DL + and -, so make sure you can burn the format before you buy any. Not sure on any others. I think 70% is the quality limit, could be wrong, though. You can get pictures here: http://www.cdcovers.cc/ Maxell made in Japan is great while those made in Taiwan are junk. Here is a guide to look at: http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm
I'm sorry my newberness isn't quite understanding. The burner came with my computer this is what the drive says. "Lightscribe DV+- Writer / Cd-Writer" Where can I look up on the comp to tell if it has that stuff you were just talking about???
I went to the properties and this is what it said about the drive, I dont know if this will help or not. HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GSA-H21L
I am not the best at this but I believe your burner is an HP: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...roduct=1127355&dlc=en&softwareitem=pv-41633-1 All I meant with being careful was that some burners only accept DL DVD + and I first bought DL DVD - for my BenQ that I can't use. As far as the Maxells made in Taiwan, they are probably made for Maxell by another company and from what I've read, are utter rubbish while those made in Japan are first class, The only place I know of to look up your drive is My Computer>Drive>Properties>Hardware or Nero or, maybe, Device Manager. Hopefully, someone can answer these things for sure.
GSA-xxx are usually LG, but I am not sure. It could be that LG made the burner for HP. First, I will answer the question about retaining a menu while getting rid of extras. In CLoneDVD2, there is a step where you can preview titles and decide which stays and which goes. Simply uncheck the titles you do not want to keep and then process the movie. It will retain a fully working menu, but get rid of the titles you do not want. This only works in Clone DVD mode since the other mode is for movie only. Now, you should also look into two tools: VobBlanker and Menushrink. These tools will help keep quality to a maximum. MenuShrink will convert menus to stills and reduce size to about 2MB. VobBlanker has the ability to cut movies, so you can cut out all or part of the ending credits. You will see that if you use these two tools, there will barely be any movies that compress so long as you do movie only. I can only answer questions 2 & 4 from the remaining (answer to number 2 will get complicated): 2. Quality percentage has nothing to do with visual quality. It only tells you that the size will be x% of the original. Also, any type of compression will result in a loss of visual quaility, and it is hard to determine at exactly what point this occurs. People always say 80%, 85%, etc..., but if you compress some movies to 95% they can look worse than another movie you compress down to 65% (Sony Movies come to mind, which start with a bitrate of around 3500 - 4000kbps). The reason is bitrate. Bitrate determines the size of the movie, but also the amount of information that the decoder has to decode the frame. Calculate bitrate using the following: (size of video * 1024) / ( time * 7.5 ). So, if a movie has a video stream (not including audio) that is 4400MB and is 90 minutes long, the bitrate would be as follows: (4400 * 1024) / (90 * 7.5) 4505600 / 675 bitrate is approx 6675kbps My rule of thumb is anything going under 5000kbps through a transcoder will yield visible artifacts or a 75% compression in the case above since: 1024x / 675 = 5000 x = .749 or 74.9% => 75% This means that a movie only that is over 115 minutes should always be run through an encoder (like TMPGEnc, Mainconcept, CCE, etc...) rather than a transcoder. This is regarding DVD Shrink/Nero Recode. For CloneDVD2, the number will have to be higher because it only does 1 pass. This means that high motion scenes will suffer, so the only way to correct this is by giving more bitrate. For CloneDVD2, my rule of thumb is 90% max only if the bitrate is over 5000kbps after transcoding. So for CloneDVD2, I would not compress anything with over 5600kbps original video bitrate, so that limits the size to movies shorter than 115 minutes. There are other limits to percanges due to the original quality being so high that they should always be run through an encoder. This is however extremely rare. The only thing I can think of are Superbit movies and maybe some Criterion Collection. This would have to do with GOPs again. 4. Verbatim are good discs because they are made by Mitsubishi (i.e. they make their own discs). They are better than any other Made in Taiwan Disc. However, Taiyo Yuden is the best. Those are made in Japan. I have never seen those Maxell discs, but people say they are almost as good as Taiyo Yuden. Verbatim made in Singapore are also very good and will be better than Verbatim made in Taiwan. For DL, Verbatim is the best and those are made in Singapore as well.
Awesome! Thanks MistyCAt and Jaguargod for the replys, you guys cleared up some of the haze! Keep the replys coming!
@Shaw1234 Answer #2: If "quality" is what you're going after, then I'll say dump CloneDVD and go with DVD-RB Pro + CCE SP or ProCoder 2. Both CCE SP and ProCoder 2 are inevitable when it comes to pure quality, some says CCE SP is better, while some preferred ProCoder 2. If you'd asked me, then I'll say I'm with DVD-RB Pro + CCE SP 2.70, if the compressions are 40% and higher. However, it all boils down the user's preferences and experiences -- overall both are great encoders. My second choice would be Nero Recode with "Advanced Analysis + HQSR + Assign Best Quality to Main Movie", if the compressions are only 35% and lower. With these settings via Nero Recode, you can't go wrong, especially it's fast and still produce the best "quality" in results better than any "transcoders" out there, in my humble opinion. Answer #4: Maxells are good if they're labelled as "Made In Japan." The M.I.J Maxells are manufactured by Hitachi Corp. in Japan and they're definitely rated as "1st class media" along with the famous Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim. I've used hundreds and hundreds of them and so far I've never experiences any playback issues whatsoever.
