Which Transcoding Tools Produce The Best Picture Quality.

Sophocles, using the beta version is the whole point.
I'm just trying to show the improvement over v3.1.7 - improved to the extent it now rivals IC8 - and share my excitement.
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?postid=180034#post180034

This whole thing actually started after a request from a DVD Shrink user...

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?postid=178910#post178910

You will have ample opportunities to try v3.2 Final out very soon, as it should be made publicly available in a week or less.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small]~ ddlooping~
For DVD Shrink and related softwares guides and downloads, please visit http://www.dvdshrink.info[/small]

 

P.S: the clips are indeed very short, but playing them at a very slow speed will show the quality degradation even more and will make them last longer.

 

Well bigo it looks like your going to have to spend some money to get your new software fix.

 

ddloop

Could you give us a screen shot showing some of its new features?

 

P.P.S: DVD Shrink has often been compared to DVD2One in terms of quality.
It has often been said DVD2One was actually better.
I decided to include DVD2One in the test mainly to show how v3.2 beta now compares to it.

If I have enough space on my hard-drive I might backup "LOTR- ROTK" with v3.1.7.
I'll then make compilations that will really show DVD Shrink improvement with v3.1.7.

 

Sure, there you go.

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37998

http://www.dvdshrink.info/temp/Quality.htm

No new features as such though (except the ability to output as "split" ISOs, for peeps using FAT32), only added "Quality" options.

 

Gee, I am just so excited that ddlooping is so excited. Doesn't help me see the new version any sooner or check out it's supposed new abilities. Much as I expected, A trip around the forums to promote the new Shrink. The prog sure has a strong following. Wonder if one could say to cult proportions. Even the author said improvements needed to be made because the program was falling behind in quality. Yet, if an 'outsider' said something along those lines, the Shrinkees would be out for a lynching. I'll give the prog a fair chance, but I'm not going to rave if there is nothing there but some minor option changes and a new version number.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small][bold]'brobear'[/bold]

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I have another question, why was DVD Shrink used to prepare the movie only version and then that file used as a comparison test for the other software. That skewed the whole comparison for me in the beginning. A more fair test would have been to rip with a program such as DVD Decrypter and let all the programs handle the same files with their movie only setting. I have induced problems into files using the same method you describe. If editing needed done before the testing, why not with a separate program such as DVDReMake. There again to remove any chance for bias for a single program.

And just so you know, one of my first programs was DVD Shrink and I think highly of the program. I just never became a member of the cult. I left myself open to the suggestion there could be a better program. Shrink is better than a lot of the retail offerings and is a hands down winner in the free department. [bold]However, there are some reasonably priced retail options, as mentioned in our forum, that exceed the quality of DVD Shrink.[/bold] That is why (falling behind)the author of the program devoted some time to do the improvements. To date we have hype and no program to check. Hope the program comes out soon.
_
_X_X_X_X_X_[small][bold]'brobear'[/bold]

[/small]

 

Thanks DDlooping for the new screen shots and the "promotion" of this, potentially, excellent new "free" version of Shrink. I greatly await it's release so I can try the thing out. If it rivals Pinnacle IC it will be a massive step forward. I think Mr Shrink is 100% correct on improving the ONE thing that many shrink users have asked for IE QUALITY of output.

The beta testers can spend as much time as they need to test & tweak. I, for one, am patient.

Just one question. Can you give me an idea of the process time comparisons between the new shrink & Pinnacle IC using the max quality settings of each app ?

PS It;s good to see you here on AD. Long may you stay.

PS2. I am not a member of the "cult" following for shrink. I am simply a great admirer of this unique free software.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small]"Beware of the flowers, cos I'm sure theyre gonna get you, yeah!" John Otway, Wild Willy Barrett[/small]

 

Hum, greatly await, potentially excellent, guess we wanted a few superlatives there. Hope all didn't take me wrong. I enjoy having members of the other forums here with us. With software programs they are familiar with, they are a great resource of information. Over the past months we have been graced by various software authors and developers. All are welcome and their presence appreciated. It is just that I and a number of others try to keep comparisons as unbiased as possible. No insults intended and no offense meant. Don't even mind a good promo on occasion, it gets more people involved. Let's just not get promos involved in comparisons until we have the program to actually compare. Maybe Shrink should have handed out a few Betas to some of us critical thinkers (or is that stinkers).
_X_X_X_X_X_[small][bold]'brobear'[/bold]

[/small]

 

brobear, I am on the same page you are. I think your comments were well stated.

I, for another, hope it lives up to the hype. However, I will not blindly be led down the primrose path. I do have the feeling if I went to digital video and said anything negative about shrink my box would be full of hate mail. I've already seen one post that claimed it blew CCE out of the water.(A freeware blowing a 2,000.00 encoder out of the water? hmmm....)

I too am rooting for the program,,(it was my 1st, and as brian said it is at the top of the heap in freeware, I don't think there is any argument there.).

The test was fun, but I am far from convinced. I do believe ddlooping when he says he tried to make it unbiased.

I also welcome input from other forums, there are a lot of video heads out there that know far more than I do.

In the end it all comes down to performance and how you percieve it's output. This is highly subjective in nature and no matter how the new shrink performs, the debate will rage on.

That, however, is a good thing. We should always strive for a better (as you put it once, brobear) mousetrap. Complacency should be avoided at all costs.


I will miss Mr. Shrink and his contributions in the freeware department. I do wish him all the best, he deserves it. I feel as tho it is the end of an era.

Burn baby burn!

 

bigorange, brobear, brian100, this reply will be in two parts, as it's rather long.

The first part of this statement is true, but the second is in my opinion an over-generalisation.
The same could be said about [bold]some[/bold] users of other softwares - InstantCopy, DVD2One, CCE to name a few.

Whether you believe it or not, v3.2 shows a significant improvement over v3.1.7 and previous versions.
http://www.dvdshrink.info/temp/beta/test1.html
http://www.dvdshrink.info/temp/beta/test2.html
As you can see (and if you trust what you see), v3.2b output is far from being perfect either, but that was never my point anyway.

Good point.
I did not think "hmmm, what shall I use? DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink or another software?".
I do trust "No Compression" to leave the video stream untouched, so I simply used the tool I normally use and am the most familiar with.
Even if the video stream would have been somewhat changed/degraded, all the subsequent backups where made from the same "source".
I don't see how this would have made the comparisons biased in favor of DVD Shrink.

And so do I.

InstantCopy: the comparison tests I have made do show IC8 (and probably IC7) to be better than v3.1.7 and previous versions of DVD Shrink
However...
I bought IC7 a while ago, having heard how good it was.
The first backup I made took almost 3 hours and was undersized: 2.9GB (give me a break!!!).
The second was made after I installed the update available at the time, and using the "whatever-it-was-called" program to tweak the registry settings.
This backup was oversized by 200MB or so.
That's when I cursed at Pinnacle for a short while, and decided to stick to [bold]DVD2DVD-R[/bold] for backups requiring more than 20-25% compression.
When IC8 was released, and I saw the upgrade was not free (which I think should have been considering IC7 issues), I cursed once again at Pinnacle (more midly this time) and decided I had already given them enough $$$s.

- DVD2One: DVD Shrink v3.1.7 output is, in my opinion, on-par with DVD2One 1.4.
It is indeed slower, but has the advantage of being much more flexible, and does not need for the DVD to be ripped first (or for the use of AnyDVD, RegionFree...).
- CloneDVD: it has the advantage to be able to remove titles while retaining menus, but I'm a movie-only guy and have no use for this feature.
It's ouptut does not better DVD Shrink's (IMHO).

- Nero Recode: considered by many to be "DVD Shrink with added features".
I would tend to agree, but have personally no use for these features, so I might as well stick with DVD Shrink.

- DVDCopy2: I must admit I only tried it once.
Its output was mediocre on the DVD I tested it with.
It might be better with others though, but I'd rather trust v3.1.7 as its quality is much more predictable (when good or bad).

These are the only transcoders I have tried.
If there are others, better ones available please let me know.

...
_X_X_X_X_X_[small]~ ddlooping~
For DVD Shrink and related softwares guides and downloads, please visit http://www.dvdshrink.info[/small]

 

B*****S!!!
I just spent 20 minutes writing the 2nd part of my reply, and accidentally closed the page.
Bloody short-cut keys!!

Anyway, 2nd part to come soon....

 

ddlooping

Pinnacle instant copy 7/8 used in conjunction with "Hidden settings editor v1.4.3" has cured, well almost, the "undersizing/oversizing" issue for me.

For "movie only" rips I always get a file size of 4.25/4.3G.

 

You're welcome, and thank you Brian, I appreciate it.

The beta versions of v3.2 contain some debugging code which slows it a bit.
As it is, v3.2b3 was slightly faster than IC8 on the "LOTR-ROTK" backup.
Reports by other beta-testers seem to confirm this.
Hopefully, v3.2 Final will show a more significant improvement.
Something to keep in mind though: the new "Quality Options" only kick-in (when selected) when the compression ratio is inferior to 80% or thereabout (highly dependent on the original title).
Anything above that and v3.2 will work exactly as v3.1.7, and be as fast (or as slow if you think it is).

I'm gonna post this reply now, just in case.
This is gonna take more than 2 parts after all.

 

Well, I guess I was either unlucky in the choice of DVD I made for the backup, or I did not set-up the "tweaker" properly.

 

I was in charge of putting the beta-testers team together, so I'm the only one to blame.
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37392
As we opted for using a "Beta-testers" only forum for testers to post their reports, being a member of the Digital Video Forums was a requirement.
Having said that, most of the members who made the team are also registered at other forums (mrbass is a moderator at Doom9 and has a very good site procurring guides at advice; Laz has his own forums...)
The team also needed to be fairly modest in size.
dvdshrink is after all the only developer/author of DVD Shrink, and cannot be expected to reply to/read bucketloads of reports while conducting his own tests and coding.

Maybe next time, if there is one, things will be done differently.

What hype??
If you refer to my posts, I simply invited people to play a "Guessing Game".
I was asked by a Digital Video Forums member to provide some "Eye Candy", and thought it would be a fun way to do it.
If I made a mistake it's probably to post these compilations in several forums.
I was just curious as to what the reactions/answers would be.

My point exactly!!

That's your prerogative.

I appreciate it.


End of part 3.

 

You're a strong defender of DVD Shrink but you won't help that mission by pissing people off. Deal in facts without pointing fingers at people and calling them down, you don't gain allies by embarrassing them online. You do it by providing credible evidence to support your claims.

BTW, thanks for the links.

Hi Sophocles,

Could you let me know when/where I pointed fingers and called people down?
Please feel free to quote me.

Maybe I did not read your posts well enough, but it seemed to me you were the one "accusing" me of biasing/doctoring my tests.
That indeed kinda pissed me off (and I tried to "mellow" my reply), and I trully felt your finger pointing at me.

P.S: you're welcome (for the links).

Everything you've posted was done with a pointy stick.

Your first post to me:

Sophocles, I did enjoy your Sherlock Holmes power of deduction. (sarcasm).

2nd

I normally pm the answers so as not to spoil the game for others, but I'm gonna make an exception. (condescending

)
Brian100 asked

Just one question. Can you give me an idea of the process time comparisons between the new shrink & Pinnacle IC using the max quality settings of each app ?

I could spend all night parsing sentences but I think I've made a point.

Quote:Sophocles, I did enjoy your Sherlock Holmes power of deduction. (sarcasm).

You're correct, this was indeed sarcasm.
You have to put it into its context though.
Remember you had just tried to demonstrate (in a way I perceived to be very arrogant) that my tests were biased, thus questionning my honesty.
Considering the above, I think the reply was quite mild in comparison.

Quote:I normally pm the answers so as not to spoil the game for others, but I'm gonna make an exception. (condescending)

Correct again, even though it was made in a very tongue-in-cheeck spirit.
(the previous explanation applies to this too.)
After all, your theory was wrong.
The answer for all the tests is:
1.Original
2. v3.2b2.
3. IC8.
4. DVD2One 1.40

Both were simply as come-backs to what I considered to be, once again, very arrogant and bordering on insulting on your part, in a "I-am-the-discoverer-of-the-real-truth-behind-these-biased-tests-and-I-can-mathematically-prove-it" kind of way.
The fact you use Sherlock Holmes as your avatar and quote him in your signature made it simply very hard to reply any other way.

Quote:Just one question. Can you give me an idea of the process time comparisons between the new shrink & Pinnacle IC using the max quality settings of each app

I've been trying to post/write my reply for the last 45 minuttes, believe it or not.

Quote:BTW, thanks for the links.

Correct again, even though it was made in a very tongue-in-cheeck (cheek has no "C." spirit. the previous explanation applies to this too.) After all, your theory was wrong.

No I believe I was right then and even more so now. If you want to make this an online war bring it on! I thnk shrink is a wonderfully engineered software but it's not a "srairway to Heaven."

And you're not all of that and a "bag of chips too!"



_X_X_X_X_X_[small]

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)[/small]

 

Sophocles, I guess you did not have the decency to wait for my answer when you asked if I wanted to make this an online war (????).
It's all good though, I can't wait.

Fire away Sherlock.

P.S: would you be kind enough to wait for me to post our pm exchange, in a better formatted form?

 

FIRST SHOT HAS BEEN FIRED!

Leave us alone, if you don't like what we do here then OK, but don't put us down and register us in your little black book of the stupid.