I've been ripping/burning for a couple of weeks now and I notice that a lot of the copies have some pixelation, escpecially TV series' (Alias). I'm using MTR, DVDRemaster and Toast with a PB G4, after using MTR I usually play the file before shrinking and even then I seem to notice some pixelation. Here are a couple of questions: 1. Do TV series differ from movies somehow? 2. If I want a better picture from a movie am I better off using a different file size than the one provided by DVDRemaster? 3. Why does everyone seem to think that DVD2OneX is so much better than Remaster? 4. Are there any tricks to getting rid of this pixelation?
Question: Are you taking a disc with say, 4 episodes that are 1 hour long each and just compressing the whole thing? So you're taking over 7gb of data and compressing it to fit in 4.3gb, right? Think about it. Good quality dvd video usually takes up about 4 gigs for 2 hours or so of video. If you have multiple episodes that are more than 2 hours long there would HAVE to be some data loss to fit them on 1 dvd. In fact you'd be nearly getting rid of 1/3-1/2 of the data! You NEED to use dvd2oneX in "Join" mode. You can rip the whole disc and then select 2 of the episodes and join them. You'll make a 4gb dvd containing two episodes with NO quality loss at all! Sopranos, Star Trek etc are all the same. This is a BIG feature that remaster can't do. You could experiment with leaving out certain VIDEO_TS foders and do it that way too, thus keeping your menus. But if you tried to navigate to the missing data on your dvd player you may freak it out. MG
guru, do you mean I can take the first two episodes from the DVD- join them and put them on a disk and then take the other two and put them on another disk? And have a menu on both disks? Does this involve a lot of trial and error with the VOB files?
OOPS. I miss typed. I meant to type that you can take out VOB files not VIDEO_TS files! Yes you can experiment. Say you have 7 VOB files. You could try to take out the last 2 or 3 vobs, then open it up in DVD player and try it out. If it contains the proper episodes and menu, and is under 4.3gb then you are good to go. Problem is if you try to play the missing files. Then you could take out the first 2-3 vobs and test it the same way. If your last two episodes are fine, and you are under 4.3 then you are good to go. OR an easier way is to use the JOIN feature of DVD2ONEX. You don't get a menu that way though. I have tons of episodal discs with no menus and I don't care. In fact it is quicker to get to the movie without having to wade through all the fbi warnings and other crap. Good luck. MG
MG, when you use DVD2oneX do you break the four episodes into two seperate disks or do you put them all on the same disk? And do you do the same with movies as far as cutting out the menu and junk or do you copy the entire disk?
Take Star Trek Voyager for instance. They usually have 4 episodes. I put two episodes on each dvd. That way there's pretty much no quality loss. You do loose the menu. On a disc 7 of star trek sometimes there is just 1 episode and some extras. I'll do the whole disc in that case. When I get a movie that is on a DVD9 (over 4.7gb) I'll use dvd2oneX and select movie only. This takes out all extras and stuff that is not needed. I pretty much want the film at the highest quality. If you keep all the extras and deleted scence and general BS, this takes up space that could be used for a higher quality compression level of the main feature. Basically the best thing to do (which means dvd2oneX and not remaster) is to give the main feature as much space as possible for better compression quality. Good luck.
seanymac: did you really READ the rip/compress/burn thread at the top of the forum? Check it out again as your questions should be answered there: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/125996
Use the "M2VDownsizer" recompression module at the "Best" quality setting in DVDRemaster. It takes quite a long time because it completely re-encodes the video but you will get very good results and you keep all the menus and options of the original DVD. I use this method for big DVDs such as TV series. Just run it overnight.
The M2VDownsizer mode re-encodes the video which takes a long time (it is not just compressing as the M2VRequanizer mode, DVD2OneX, Popcorn or FastDVD do) and that is why you get better results than with any of the others. I have a 1.8 DP and it takes depending on the DVD from 4 to 7 hours. In a G4 1.25 DP it can take from 9 to 13 hours. So even if you have a 2.5 DP it is going to take some time.
