DVDShrink encoding engine -care to comment?

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

My experience with DvdShrink is still small, but so far excellent. In
spite of the need to reencode and lower the bitrate by half, the
results do still look very good. I believe it uses some open source
(or just freeware) mpeg encoder. Can anybody comment on it? Would you
say the encoder is really that excellent? Should we perhaps give it a
try, instead of using Tmpgenc, CCE, MainConcept... ?

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 15:02:52 GMT, Will Dormann
<wdormann@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:

>DvdShrink does not reencode your video. If that were the case, it would
>take at least overnight to do the processing.
>
>It strips the "unnecessary" bits from the video stream, thus lowering
>the bitrate.

It can do a full copy, or remove parts. There's also DVD2One, which
does the same. The output fits exactly in a DVD-R -another reason to
believe it is re-encoding the video (not the audio).

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Will Dormann wrote:

> Bariloche wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 15:02:52 GMT, Will Dormann
> > <wdormann@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>DvdShrink does not reencode your video. If that were the case, it would
> >>take at least overnight to do the processing.
> >>
> >>It strips the "unnecessary" bits from the video stream, thus lowering
> >>the bitrate.
> >
> >
> > It can do a full copy, or remove parts. There's also DVD2One, which
> > does the same. The output fits exactly in a DVD-R -another reason to
> > believe it is re-encoding the video (not the audio).
>
> Believe what you want, but you're wrong. I stand by my original
> statement.
>
> -WD

Hopefully this isn't a dumb question, but how does it remove "extra bits"
without re-encoding? Isn't that by definition, "re-encoding"?

Hey, it's an honest question...

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

> > >>DvdShrink does not reencode your video. If that were the case, it would
> > >>take at least overnight to do the processing.
> > >>
> > >>It strips the "unnecessary" bits from the video stream, thus lowering
> > >>the bitrate.
> > >
> > >
> > > It can do a full copy, or remove parts. There's also DVD2One, which
> > > does the same. The output fits exactly in a DVD-R -another reason to
> > > believe it is re-encoding the video (not the audio).
> >
> > Believe what you want, but you're wrong. I stand by my original
> > statement.
> >
> > -WD
>
> Hopefully this isn't a dumb question, but how does it remove "extra bits"
> without re-encoding? Isn't that by definition, "re-encoding"?
>
> Hey, it's an honest question...
>
>
>

By that I assume he meant it has the option to strip away extra bits as
in features and menus. But even if you leave all that in it makes a
good copy. It obviously is reencoding since it allows you to set the
compression ratio. You could fit a DVD on a CDR with it if you wanted,
it would just look like Lego land.
--
_________________________
Chris Phillipo - Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
http://www.ramsays-online.com

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Will Dormann wrote:

> Keith Clark wrote:
> >
> > Hopefully this isn't a dumb question, but how does it remove "extra bits"
> > without re-encoding? Isn't that by definition, "re-encoding"?
> >
> > Hey, it's an honest question...
>
> Sure, that's a valid question, Keith.
>
> The distinction between true encoding and what DVDShrink does might not
> be that clear to all. If you've ever encoded MPEG2 video, you'll know
> that it takes a long time. So how is it that DVDShrink can take an
> entire movie and shrink it in about 15 minutes? It doesn't re-encode
> your video. It rather takes the video stream and strips out the least
> significant bits from it.
>
> This page can probably explain it much better than I can:
> http://nerds.palmdrive.net/dvds_tmpgenc1.html
>
> -WD

Cool, thanks!

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:43:03 GMT, Will Dormann
<wdormann@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:

>I have found that if you need to agressively compress the video, going
>to a Half D1 resolution can give you better results than Full D1 at the
>same bitrate.

So ReMpeg2 should be able to deliver a better (albeit much slower)
result than DvdShrink. Unfortunately, I'm not able to test it, as
ReMpeg2 stops at the last frame in my system.

>P.S. ReMPEG2 did run to completion without error on my machine, FWIW.

Lucky you!