Successful rip, shrink and encode. Pixilation in burns.

I have successfully ripped, shrunk, and encoded DVDs using RipIt4Me and DVD Shrink. I then tested the ISO files with Daemon Tools and the ISOs play perfectly on my computer. However, once I burn with NTI or Nero, there are issues of pixilation including green squares, freezing, skipping, and blurs.

Here are some of the main steps I have taken:

1) Upgraded my burner to Plextor.
2) Upgraded my laptop from a 1.3 ghz with 2 gig ram to a 2.4 ghz dual core with 4 gig ram.
3) Upgraded my media to Verbatim.
4) I lowered burn speed from 16X to 12X.

I still have issues with the pixilation. :-(

I have spent countless time and a lot of money to get this to become a successful project. I feel so discouraged and depressed after all of this. I really hope someone will be able to help me out. There is nothing worse than watching Forrest Gump for the 6th time in a week to check for pixilation and then about 1 hour 15 minutes into it, suddenly I see blurs and then the green squares again.

By the way, I have tested these discs on more than 1 player too.

Seriously, if someone helps me to overcome this, you have no idea how meaningful that will be.


Thank you for taking time to read my post,
Joe

 

Try any of these.
Set DVD Shrink to 4400MB.
Set burning speed to 4x.
Burn disk with IMGBurn.

 

Attar,

Thank you for your response. I am in the process of trying some of your suggested ideas. However, I have a few more questions now.

1) Is it reasonable for me to burn DVDs without any pixilation issues, even if I keep applications open in the background? Again, I upgraded to a 2.4 ghz with 4 gig of ram. Ideally I won't need to close any applications but I will if necessary.

2) Do even the people who claim they have no issues burning occasionally have a square of pixilation here and there, or will I likely have perfect burns once I get this all sorted out?

3) I have been burning my ISOs off of an external hard drive with USB 2.0. Might this be part of the issue?

4) If I can play ISOs perfectly via Daemon Tools, doesn't that mean I will not need to tweak anything in DVD Shrink?

5) Verbatim is good enough that I do not need to switch to the more popular Taiyo Yuden, right?

I wish the DVD I was having issues with wasn't the nearly 2 1/2 hour Forrest Gump. This is so time consuming LOL.

Thank you!

 

I multi-task while burning.I don't feel that burning is particularly onerous on a modern PC.

Don't think it's unreasonable to expect no pixellation on a routine basis.

I doubt the external drive issue is relevant -you could copy the ISO to the internal HD before burning.

The fact that the 'ISO' plays ok may not signify if you are burning at high speed up to the outer edge of the physical disk - hence tinkering with DVD Shrink might be a solution.

Verbatim is good - unless you are archiving for the ages there is no compelling reason to switch.

The symptoms you describe (freezing, skipping) suggest some combination of burning too fast or too close to the edge or poor media and you don't have poor media - but it's certainly too fast.

 

I got about half way through the disc where I moved the ISO to my internal hard drive, and then there was a flash of pixilation. While it did not skip or freeze, I still prefer no pixilation issues.

Now I am on to IMGBurn. I will first try a disc using the max burn speed (default) and then if that does not work I will go down to 8X and then 4X.

The thing is, even when I find my first perfect burn, I will be hesitant to believe the issue is perfectly resolved. I mean, I have been "burned" too many times feeling the issue was fixed and then several discs later come to realize I have burned many discs with issues.

Out of curiosity, why might IMGBurn work better than Nero?

 

how big was the dvd before it hit dvd shrink? 2 and a half hour film sounds massive to shrink! so the out come doesnt look rosy tostart with.

did you try maximum sharp coupled with deep analysis?

 

I do not recall the size of the original DVD offhand. However, I did have the 2 options selected that were mentioned; the deep analysis and the sharp option.

 

no chance of ripping again then?

 

Quote
There are issues of pixilation including green squares

Do you get this in dark scenes only when watching a movie? Also it might look good on a computer monitor reason being most people have say only a 20 inch computer screen watching the movie on your TV mine is an Lcd 42 inch and you will see there are issues of pixilation including green squares especially if you’ve shrunk a 2hr film to fit on a single layer DVD when I rip a movie for a single layer disk I use clone DVD and after I’ve stripped out all the garbage I don’t want i.e. trailers extras etc if the final rip is going to be any thing under 75% quality of the original I don’t bother I put it on a dual layer disk then you get 100% quality of the original

 

Well, I just watched the entire DVD after burning with IMGBurn. I was thinking we finally got it but I decided to watch the credits at the end and of course there was a pixilation issue there. Even though I will never watch the credits, I know now the issue is not yet resolved.

Pixilation occurs in both dark and light scenes, and it appears quite random.

My current TV is only 19 inches and my laptop I watched some ISOs on was 17 inches.

I can rip DVDs again and I have tried that a few times as well.

So, at this point I just need to try burning at 4X with Nero, NTI, or IMGBurn or try changing the DVD Shrink size? Any other ideas?

 

all i can offer is if the films are quite large rip main movie only and/or look into dvd rebuilder, said to be the best for big movie compressing...

 

Finally; I think I've got it! I am sure my first steps helped as the pixilation tamed down a bit after upgrading my burner, laptop, and media. However it appears using IMGBurn at 12X sealed the deal.

For the larger sized movies that I shrunk, there are some white and black specks throughout, but I can live with that. I understand if there is a movie I don't want those in, I will just go the dual layer route and not shrink, or just have shrink remove the extras.

Of course I am jinxing everything by posting this. Hopefully the first 6 DVDs I burned weren't flukes and this is all taken care of now.

Thank you for your help with all of this. I especially appreciated the suggestion of IMGBurn. I still cannot figure out why that would work better than Nero or NTI but I believe it made all of the difference.

 

sounds good! enjoy ;-]

 

I knew I should have held off on posting. I burned 6 discs just fine but now #7 had a spot half way through. It was only a second worth, but it looked bad. There were a couple green squares and also a blur across the bottom of the screen. I am now going to try 8X and see if that fixes everything.

 

Now I burned Platoon at 8X and it completely froze 1 hour and 12 minutes into the movie. There is no reason I should be having significant issues burning at 8X with the computer, burner, programs, and media I use, is there?

On a side note, I am starting to consider re-doing this all once I get this issue figured out. So far I have just used Shrink and shrunk the entire DVD including extras. At first I thought the little black and white spots throughout wouldn't bother me all that much, but they do. I wanted to have the entire DVD in tact but for how rarely a person ever watches the extras compared to the actual movie, it makes far more sense to keep the movie at 100% and just get rid of the extra stuff. This means re-ripping about 100 DVDs already but it is better to get this sorted out now than later.

Maybe these two issues are somehow related too?

 

what size you shrinking it too? i use 4300meg (keep away from outer edge of dvdr) = no freezing/skipping at end of film!

what is the media used now?

did you know you can set no compression for main movie in dvd shrink and compress the rest.

i never keep menus or extras.

 

I use verbatim. If I tweak the setting in Shrink to 4.3 gig with no compression on the movie, won't the quality of the extras be pretty bad? So far none of my freeze/skip issues have taken place near the end of the films, but a few people have now suggested changing the size to shrink to.

Does anyone have experience with AnyDVD and CloneDVD?

 

Like I said I use clone never used shrink well I did years ago gave me poor results not sure if its got any better over the years but since clone dvd worked for me stuck with it does it tell you in shrink what the compression rate is going to be before you shrink it i.e. is it 70% of the original quality in clone if the movie is going to be 70 – 75% of the original I don’t bother I stick it on a dual layer dvd then you get an exact copy of the original which is 100%

 

If I keep only the actual movie and get rid of all extras, can I always fit it onto a single layer DVD, or will some movies alone still be too large for single layer?

 

On a single layer dvd you can get 120 minutes of video so if the film is 2hrs long no problem very few films are longer even if its say 2hrs 20minutes the compression would only be about 85% of the original like I said if the compression is going to be under 75% I don’t bother I stick it on a dual layer dvd but very rarely this problem arises even if you like the extras just stick them on there own on a single layer dvd up to you