So here is what I want to do English, only, something, original, either

andy

I basically want to pick and choose what I want from the original DVD (dual layer) to the backup (single layer).

Things I don't want to disturb;

1. The Menus
2. The picture/sound quality
3. The English audio incl directors commentary

I make this thread as I've just tried to use DVDFab. I may have missed something, but the only two options I've come across is to either copy the entire movie to 2 Discs. Or only copy the main movie to 1 Disc.

This is no good to me as I want to pick and choose the extras on the DVD, as well as keep the menus. Is this possible and how? (I realise I'll probably have to be very selective to stop it going over the magic number, and forcing it onto 2 discs).

Thanks in advance.

Try using DVD Shrink and blank out the bits you don't want with its quot;Still Imagequot; function.

Or, blank out titles completely with VobBlanker/PgcEdit first, then use Shrink.

Good luck

@dmuk

You have to realise that there is a good chance you will have to compress SOMETHING to get it to fit onto a single dvd-r.  You cant have your cake and eat it too.  If you want it to fit onto a single dvd-r you usually have to compress something, be it menus or the movie itself.  I would use shrink or dvd remake to cut out the extras you dont want and run it through dvd shrink and see what you can do.  If you cut out enough audio tracks and enough extras you may get it so there is minimal compression applied to the main movie video files.  But most likely you WILL need to compress the main movie just a bit.

Ok, thanks for the replies, I'll give DVD Shrink a try.

@ dmuk
i agree with TheSeeker and blutach with some aditional hintsVDShrink in 2 steps.
read before to understand how it works!

@Jorel

I guess I dont really see how transcoding the movie once just a bit then transcoding the movie again the rest of the way produces better quality.  I personally think it may result in worse quality as your are transcoding already transcoded source material.  And as you know if you do an encode on something that has already been encoded the resulting material is never as good as if you just did it all in one go.  But if you are able to provide me with sufficient technical proof that this actually can produce better quality (not just saying it LOOKS better to you), then I guess i can accept that.

Originally posted by TheSeeker
@Jorel
I personally think it may result in worse quality as your are transcoding already transcoded source material.  

I kind of agree with you but I'm also wondering if running it through shrinks AEC twice, is what is making the quality better. I think its worth experimenting with and worth discussing.

Your right.  I may try this on a really long and really big title and see if I can make some miracles happen.  Hey if it works then that would be pretty cool to be able to get even better quality out of highly compressed source.  But im skeptical at this point.

Originally posted by TheSeeker
Your right.  I may try this on a really long and really big title and see if I can make some miracles happen.  Hey if it works then that would be pretty cool to be able to get even better quality out of highly compressed source.  But im skeptical at this point.

I'm going to try it with LOR and I'll post my findings here. If your going to try this post your findings. This should be intresting. Did you get the formula for calculating the compression. Its the square root of the original compression for the first pass and let shrink determine the second pass.

Originally posted by dannyv
I'm going to try it with LOR and I'll post my findings here. If your going to try this post your findings. This should be intresting. Did you get the formula for calculating the compression. Its the square root of the original compression for the first pass and let shrink determine the second pass.

good point and the quot;formula is to find perfect percentage.you will see that when start the sencond step you will get the same percentage of the first step using automatic compression.this is the resaon of the formula: equal percentage in each step!  

@ TheSeeker
one thing is very strange for my taste and breath    and makes me wonder: how do you are so secure about things that you never did and is always quot;xequequot; what i wrote?!?!? (here and in another thread about CCE)
do you think that guide was posted in DVDShrink forum without pre authorization from the adiministrators and mods? to post one thing like that was needed lots of test to proove the result and not only opinions. take the second part of your signature and apply to yourself, open your mind man. like i wrote in another thread, some people want fast results, others want best results..differents tastes, differents targets.
now explain how you are so secure about one thing that you never did?
i need to know how you without tests is absolute right of that,i need to learn it cos after long years working with images and sound, i still don't know how get the result without test and be secure to input a final conclusion.
can you without quot;rashquot; teach us all ?  thanks!

edited: corrections in words(mad keyboard)

Originally posted by TheSeeker
@Jorel

I guess I dont really see how transcoding the movie once just a bit then transcoding the movie again the rest of the way produces better quality.  I personally think it may result in worse quality as your are transcoding already transcoded source material.  And as you know if you do an encode on something that has already been encoded the resulting material is never as good as if you just did it all in one go.  But if you are able to provide me with sufficient technical proof that this actually can produce better quality (not just saying it LOOKS better to you), then I guess i can accept that.

well i can try to explain for you but first i need to know the level of your knowledge about DVDShrink.and the best way to know that is asking you:
how DVDSShrink treat the GOP when is transcoding? if you can answer that you will know why 2 passes are better than one big!
after that i can answer you anything about one or 2 passes. Originally posted by dannyv
I'm going to try it with LOR and I'll post my findings here. If your going to try this post your findings. This should be intresting. Did you get the formula for calculating the compression. Its the square root of the original compression for the first pass and let shrink determine the second pass.

As promised here are the results. I did a regular 1 pass entire disk with no preprocessing and only kept the 5 channel audio. I used sharp default AEC. Then I did the 2 pass with the same settings as the 1 pass except I set a custom bit rate for menus and unreferenced meteral to 50% to give the movie a little more bit rate. On the PC monitor both copies came out exceptionally well but looked identical. But on my 46quot; HDTV the 2 pass was sharper and backround detail was clearer. Panning was a slight bit jerker then the 1 pass but the extra clearity in the picture more then makes up for it. So my conclusion is that the 2 pass will give you better picture detail and it is worth doing a 2 pass if your going to view the copy on a big screen tv but you will most likey see very little difference if viewed on the PC monitor or smaller TV's. It did not make the transcode worse as theseeker speculated.

@Jorel

First off let me say that I was having trouble understanding what you were trying to tell me here  But I think the gist is Dont knock it until youve tried it.  And To that i would like to say I wasnt saying this method wouldnt work.  Just that i didnt personally see how this would have any positive effect on quality.  I was simply questioning something.  I wasnt putting it down or saying it was incorrect.  Hell I even said that I would give it a try for myself and see how it worked out.  As to your question about dvd shrinks effect on the GOP of a bitstream.  Well I cant say i know personally the inner workings of dvd shrink but Im assuming it works much like any other transcoder in that it instead of having to completely recalculate all motion vectors in a given GOP (like encoders do, and this is why they take so much longer), it just requantizes the coeffecients that decide how much data accuracy is discarded in the given GOP.  So by not recalculating the motion vectors alot of time is saved but quality MAY be less then what an encoder could do.  Also you have to take into account shrinks aec technology. Im not entirely sure how this works but it may be much like instantcopies where it compares the current frame to the previous and in doing so it decides if the quality was dropped too much then it decreases the amount of requantization being performed.  Or if it is a set of algorithms to differently distribute compression amongst I, P, and B frames.

EDIT:  Given dannyv's findings I will definately have to perform a test of my own.  Thanks for reporting your findings dannyv.

If it obviously results in better quality, then it should be a feature in the next Shrink release, should'nt it?

Originally posted by jorel
@ dmuk
i agree with TheSeeker and blutach with some aditional hintsVDShrink in 2 steps.
read before to understand how it works!  

That is so funky!  The things you guys come up with -- I'd use CCE on a compression that big, but hey, whatever works!

Originally posted by JFerguson
I'd use CCE on a compression that big..
me too JFerguson, i only did tests searching better results, take a look...
quoting myself: DVDShrink in 2 steps to get big compression is slow
--gt; but give better quality than only one big compression!

show...threadid=42610
for more than 30/35% my choice is CCE and that guide was build for who do big compression, but don't forget: CCE is an encoder and DVDShrink is  trancoder!

@ TheSeeker
don't bore yourself.is really hard to understand me sometimes, my english is really horrible and excuse my wrong words!  
yeah.you got the quot;feelingquot; about GOP.look at the link that i posted and the other link inside...!

@ dannyv
thanks for your tests(i need one big tv like you to compare)

@ theReal
thanks for comments and idea!@ dannyv

i forgot to ask, sorry.  

how much compression was needed in each step....

edited: i saw .
was 50% after adjusts! more than 30/35% to 49,5% is what i tested!

thanks again!

@Jorel

How did that test turn out?  The one where you compressed almost 50% using two pass dvd shrink?  Very curious as I may adopt this method on movies that I dont really care about quality but i still want to keep everything on the dvd.

more than this  TheSeeker !i did lots of tests, not only one.
one is too big that DVDShrink don't get the final size for dvd-5.
was needed to transcode for 4,735Mb size cos the max compression in DVDShrink is 49,6%...but i did this source 3 times:
1 time for that 4,735MB=49,6%
and 2 times with 66,7%(from formula) to get 4,464Mb dvd-5 size.
is the musical quot;stratováriusquot; that have only one LPCM-2Ch audio track with 1,272Mb size and the full size of this dvd is 7,913Mb. don't have good quality in the image but with that big compression show all wrong details easily comparing with the source.
is the quot;worsequot; that i have cos don't get full compression using only one step, have too big audio track but i did 2 passes to get less final size only to compare results.
i'm cutting parts of round 15 seconds from source, one step and 2 steps and some screenshots to host!

important details :

--gt;with 1 step using 49,6% EAC MAX SHARPNESS: 4,735 - 1,272= 3,463 for video

--gt;with 2 steps using 66,7% EAC SHARP: 4,464 - 1,272 = 3,192 for video

differences are 271Mb for video...~9%, right?
is disproportinal but you will see the results without names in the pictures and in little vobs to choose. your eyes will tell the true!
just wait a little and i will post the links here!

edited: corrections in full details!@jorel (and only slightly OT)

In these types of DVDs, have you thought about converting the LPCM audio to AC-3 or even DTS (if your system is capable of handling that) using something like BeSweet?  Would save you Mega Bytes.Regards