I just bought a portable DVD player that plays DIVX files and am now in the process of compressing some of my tv shows for a trip.  I just started using Video Cleaner since it will convert DVR-MS files but for my DVD collection I use Mediacoder.

 

Anyone have any suggestion on how to keep DVD quality and compress at the same time?  I was taking a look at H.264 but it looks like it takes a while to encode.

 

 

If your only purpose for compression is to view on a portable DVD player, I wouldn't worry too much about quality (screen is what, 8"?).  DivX  at 800 bitrate with MP3 sound is fine.  If you're going to keep the compressed video in your archive for future viewing on HDTV, then I would definitely consider h264 codec with AC3 or AAC audio as the most 'profitable' codec.

 

I generally only compress TV episodes for sake of saving space (although since I built unRaid that is no longer a concern), while leaving DVD in the original uncompressed VIDEO_TS structure.  My general rule of thumb is 10 MB/minute of video for reasonable size with minimal quality loss.  This should run around 2000 bitrate depending on the codec. I wouldn't go less than 1500 bitrate for quality sake.

 

My point here is that it all boils down to bitrate and framesize.  The best way is to experiment with a small chunk of a .VOB file to find a happy medium between size and quality.

As Rob_Esc points out, experimentation is key.  Just remember, you cannot compress and keep DVD quality: all further compression will cause some loss of quality, though it will not be as obvious on a small screen as a large one and some people are more bothered by compression artifacts than others.

 

IIRC, I use 400Kbit/sec for squeezing down videos for the iTouch, but that looks like crap even on my desktop monitor, much less my 50" TV.

 

 

Bill

I rip and compress with DVDShrink to the 4GB size as ISO.

Quality is satisfactory for network viewing

I also rip the main movie as an MPEG2, then encode with AUTOGK as an AVI to 700MB.

This is for portability uses. I move these to a separate drive and if I have the desire to take a movie on travel, I just copy it to the laptop or my Archos 704WIFI.

 

Since I have multiple high powered machines, I rip, then schedule the autogk overnight (the machine is on 24x7 anyway).

I rip with DVD Shrink, w/o compression, movie only, to a single VOB file.

 

I then use AGK to compress to MP4 AVI, with external subs.

 

But I don't use a size setting in AGK.... I use a quality setting.  First, it is faster as it only needs 1 pass.  But most important, with a quality setting of 75 and full frame, I get excellent quality for movies I want to retain premium resolution.  For chick-flicks for the wife, I use quality 67 and resize to 704 pixel width (or even lower).

 

This way, if a movie is highly compressible (The Interview), it will be smaller than one with a lot of action (Terminator 2) even at the same quality setting.  So I get sizes between 1.5Gb and 500Mb.

I use DvdShrink and re-author to extract only the main title and the AC3 audio track.  I delete all the subtitles and extra language audio tracks.  Most of the time I delete the DTS tracks too since my network mesia players do not take advantage of them.    Occasionally I'll leave the director's commentary tracks, but not often.

 

I do not compress anything at all and set the compression to "none", since I want to be able to view any movie in my theater with its 110" screen, and any compression would be very evident.

 

I rip to a single ISO file and name it after the movie.  The files end up  between 3.5 and 7 Gig.  Most are between 4.5 and 5.5 Gig.  I'm not worried about the space needed, the unRAID server is easy to expand as needed. (Just ordered a 1T drive this morning to replace the existing parity drive)

 

Joe L.

I compress everything to h.264 video (typically 1024-1280Kbps for SD and 1536-2048Kbps for HD at 720p) and AAC multichannel audio (typically 192-256Kbps).  I can barely tell a difference in my encodes and sources on my 720p televisions.  File sizes rarely exceed 2GB except for HD films that exceed 2 hours.  I rarely even watch my original discs anymore.

 

It does take time, but I actually enjoy doing it.  Having a 3-year old and newborn, I don't get to watch movies very often anyway, so I have plenty of time for encoding before getting to watch anything.  In fact, my collection is well over 2000 titles (including television series) and there is probably a third of that I have yet to see.  It's all available at the press of a button though

I do not compress anything at all and set the compression to "none", since I want to be able to view any movie in my theater with its 110" screen, and any compression would be very evident.

 

Well, I have a 110" screen also, and a Mits 1000 720dlp.... I've done many dvd's at up to 70% on the compression scale to fit main movie and AC3 on a 4.3gb blank, using settings for deep-analysis and Maximum Smoothness.... I must say that whether I play them on my HTPC or my PS3, "I" cannot see any artifacts and swapping disks, though certainly far from an A/B comparison, I can't see any difference 

 

 

I compress HD video with H.264 using some pretty high settings - with one exception that may have been the playback software I have never seen any issues and I save up to 50% disk space doing this. That's significant when some HD video is over 20Gigs in size!

 

For DVD I compress extras and menus but I do not compress the main movie - I use DVDShrink and am now ripping to ISO vs VOB/IFO as I had before. Easier to playback as ISO <shrug>

For DVD I compress extras and menus but I do not compress the main movie - I use DVDShrink and am now ripping to ISO vs VOB/IFO as I had before. Easier to playback as ISO <shrug>

 

How do you compress just the extra's and not the movie?

For DVD I compress extras and menus but I do not compress the main movie - I use DVDShrink and am now ripping to ISO vs VOB/IFO as I had before. Easier to playback as ISO <shrug>

 

How do you compress just the extra's and not the movie?

 

DVDShrink gives you individual settings for menu, movie and extras (and you can even apply specific compression to the individual extras files, if they exist).  I used to do the same thing when I used to actually burn a backup of my DVDs (pre-NAS video storage days).

For DVD I compress extras and menus but I do not compress the main movie - I use DVDShrink and am now ripping to ISO vs VOB/IFO as I had before. Easier to playback as ISO <shrug>

 

How do you compress just the extra's and not the movie?

 

DVDShrink gives you individual settings for menu, movie and extras (and you can even apply specific compression to the individual extras files, if they exist).  I used to do the same thing when I used to actually burn a backup of my DVDs (pre-NAS video storage days).

 

Exactly! I simply leave the settings alone, select Main Movie, and tell it to not compress. I also do not backup foreign languages and subtitles for languages I cannot read. <shrug>