Hello. I've been using DVD RB with CCE SP for a while now and have been impressed with the results compared to the previous tools I have used to back up my DVD's. However, I have recently bought a few TV series on DVD and the compression is quite high. Both of the series with no extra are roughly 7.25gb in size, and after my first attempt of backing the DVD's up the loss of quality is noticeable. I've read the Expert settings tutorial on this website and in particular the sections relating to CCE Advanced (Expert) Settings relating to the VBR_Bias and Quality Prec values. Currently I have these set to the default of VBR_Bias - 25 and Quality Prec - 16. Could anyone offer advice on what the best settings for the above would be for such a high rate of compression?. Would it also be in my interest to use the "Undot" feature with Avisynth?, my reading of the guide seems to indicate on a DVD with such high compression it would be best to use this option, but I’m not 100% sure. One final point as well (Bit of a more general question really). In the guide it states that for TV series DVD's it's best not to use the "Steal Space from Extra's" option as DVD-RB can only recognise 1 main movies. But 1 of the series I’m backing up has numerous large VOB files (VTS_02_0.VOB to VTS_02_7.VOB and VTS_02_0.IFO) which are all the episodes, does this mean that DVD-RB will recognise that all these files are the main sections and only steal space from the menu's etc?. Thanks in advance for any help, I appreciate it. Cheers.
happily tell me to shut up as i've not actually got down and dirty with this RB/CCE lark yet, even though i'm sort of following an epic thread here - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/97052 Plus someone can probably answer you in a simple couple of lines instead of 6000 pages of (excellent) thread, but just in case it helps...
the problem with episodic dvds is that the original discs are usually not encoded up to par with regular movies you'd buy in a store. Therefore, 30% compression will look different on an episodic dvd vs. a "movie" for example. I personally did notice a slight decrease in quality using DVDRB/CCE but once I started using the Undot plugin I didn't notice a difference anymore. So I would definitely recommend it, especially with episodic dvds.
I have done some heavy compression with Rebuilder with excellent results, but I never changed the VBR_Bias or Quality Prec. I added filters Deen and Undot and made a couple more passes with SP. More passes with a low bit rate can make a big difference, the most passes I do is 4. When you enable steal space from extras Rebuilder will recognize the singal largest VOB as the movie and all other VOBs as extras so the other episodes, beside the largest would suffer
Besides squizzle's point about episodic DVDs tending to be of lower quality to begin with (generally accurate in my experience) they also tend to be interlaced which also generally requires a higher bitrate to achieve the same quality. How long are all the episodes together when you add them up?
