Which solution is right for me?

andy

I am a newbie here. For years I have stuck to DoitFast4U! to get reliably good quality backups of my DVDs. Now I'm looking into an approach which will reduce the amount of time spent in the transcoding process.
The problem is that I can't have my computer running overnight for this thing anymore (electric bills getting to me). So a fast approach with reasonably good quality is what I'm looking for.
I have tried Nero Recode, but the quality hasn't impressed me so much.
Please let me know my options. I have heard that DVD Shrink and Instant Copy are good ones.
My goal is to backup ONLY the Main movie. No menus and no extras.

regards,
Neo

Originally posted by MyNameIsNeo
I have heard that DVD Shrink and Instant Copy are good ones.
My goal is to backup ONLY the Main movie. No menus and no extras.Just give DVD Shrink a try since it's free and less time-consuming. Only YOUR eyes will convince you at the end.  

Here's your DVDShrink reauthoring guides for you to use.

In the case of movie only, I highly recommend you DVD2SVCD (in DVD2DVD mode) for long movies, let say, when dvdshrink has to compress quot;a lotquot;.

Used with D2SRoBa (requires CCE) will give you the quality of an encoder at the fasest speed. (OPV 1 pass, may be two, but the most of the times you can avoid the second pass). In a modern computer and without video filtering you will get an encoding speed higher than the real one.

jsoto

Yea for the smaller shorter films I recommend dvd shrink.  For longer bigger films I would look into DVDRebuilder (which is a frontend for CCE encoder, that is a million times easier than the big 3 method)

okay I just performed DVD Shrink (latest version with the new feature with default 'sharp' option). Quite impressed by the quality.
it took almost as much time as the length of the DVD even with my athlon 64 3200+. I backed up just the main movie which was 2hours and 48 minutes long (168 minutes).
Anyhow, its much simpler than the big3 and the quality is very good on my 36quot; sony wega. It looks better than some of my big3 backups (but thats the whole DVD).
Now what's this DVDRebuilder you guys suggest and how much time is it gonna take on this 168 minute anamorphic 16:9 movie. I hate to do anything with CCE now that I get such good results otherwise.

regards,
neo

DVDRebuilder is a one click front end for CCE.  If you do only 3 passes (1+2) then it should only take like 3 or 4 hours max to do that movie.

Originally posted by MyNameIsNeo
Now what's this DVDRebuilder you guys suggest and how much time is it gonna take on this 168 minute anamorphic 16:9 movie. I hate to do anything with CCE now that I get such good results otherwise.

I use DVD Shrink and DVD Rebuilder only now.

I use DVD Shrink if I am splitting the movie to two DVDs or if the original is under 6 GB since DVD Shrink will usually give a great result to the shrunk down version.

If the disc is bigger and DVD Shrink isn't going to cut it, I use DVD Rebuilder.  Its a great program that takes the DVD apart, re-encodes the video using CCE, QuEnc, or ReJig, and then puts it all back together again.  It has a one-click mode that is almost as easy to use as DVD Shrink.

How long it takes depends on how many passes you are doing in CCE, how long all the video is, and the speed of your computer.  I have a P4 3.0GHz machine with HT enabled and 1 GB of PC3200 RAM.  Using DVD-RB takes me anywhere from 3-6 hours (and I usually do 4 CCE passes).  You can do batch mode processing as well, so I usually just set up 2 or 3 DVDs to shrink before I go to bed, and when I wake up its done.

If you have a DVD that DVD Shrink is just not going to cut it on, then DVD-RB is an easy, powerful way to go.  Its free (well, CCE costs money, but the other options -- QuEnc and ReJig -- are free, and QuEnc has pretty darn good video quality when compared to CCE), its easy to use, and the results for shrinking down larger DVDs can be quite noticeably better than DVD Shrink.

The only downsides to DVD-RB (IMO) are 1) it won't handle DVDs that have multiple angles on them, and 2) it won't compress menu VOBs (so discs with huge menu files won't compress as well).  Sometimes I will use DVD Shrink to shrink the menus and black out some titles, then use DVD-RB to shrink the main movie down.

Anyway, you can learn more about DVD-Rebuilder in their forum:
forumdisplay.php?forumid=75

That's my 2 cents.  Good luck.