VOB's & DVD-R's...please assist the newbie

[wapazoid]

Hello all. This may seem like a simpleton/lamer question to some of you, so please bare with me here...

Is it possible to copy extracted VOB's from Smartripper (user selected Chapter...just the movie with no extras/menu), to a blank DVD-R disc and actually play it sucessfully on a standalone DVD player? I have been experimenting with DivX and Xvid encoding for almost two months now using several encoders & encoding methods, but I'm just far too picky when it comes to audio/video quality. Ofcourse, some of my output did come out surprisingly well, but there's no way that I would call it "DVD quality", as some online guides claim to achieve. So now I'm thinking about purchasing a DVD-RW drive so that I may be able back-up a few of my favorite movies. Just for the record, I've no interest in pirating movies (I have well over 300 purchased films), and I'd eventually like to back-up a few of them, or atleast feel comfortable knowing that I could if need be. Thanks for your time.

[Useless]

If the whole DVD is single layer, ie, less than 4.36GB then you can copy the entire contents onto a DVD-R. If it is more than you can strip out just the movie to hopefully fit. If it is still too large than there are programs to either transcode or re-encode the bitrate down to fit.

[vljenewein]

Have a peek at the thread I started just above this one, for a MAJOR progam called DVD2one. What is really amazing is this thing is not even 1 mb big in size (program), yet, it did in 17 minues what took me 8 hours with REMPEG2 to do and it did it better. Quality in the end was outstanding.

From beginning to rip with DVD Decrypter at 7:11 P.M. to finished with final burn onto DVD at 8:38, all went smoothly and litterally FILLED up the 4.7 GB disc with the main movie. plays fine in my set top and friends too. BTW the original movie was 6,345,080,832 bytes big and this program resized it in 17 minutes to 4,688,674, 816. bytes I didn't think it was going to fit (BURN) but it did and plays beauriful from beginning to end. No loss of quality I can discern.

How's 87 minutes for backing up a DVD9 to DVD5 ?? *S*
Vernon
jenefarm@direcway.com

[wapazoid]

Thanks for the replies. Vernon, I checked out your thread and the DVD2one site. Wow, this may be just what I'm looking for. And you haven't noticed any loss in picture quality? I'd like to ask another question pertaining to blank media. What brand would you recommend for standalone home players?

[vljenewein]

I use Maxell 2x for the last few burns. I have not found ONE player that it doesnt' play in when you insert it. Don't know if that's Maxell or the DVD2one ? *S* REMEMBER, when you use DVD Decrypter, choose file mode, and when it picks the main movie files, I (CTL) click, the extra ones above it, especially the VIDEO_TS.IFO file. and other *.IFO files. DVD2one will sort out and use what it want's but better to have a couple extra too many than to be missing some piece.

I also heard that Ritek are very good. Not used them yet. TDK seems to work very well.

Stay away from KHypermedia and some of the others that are made in Taiway by CMC bad stuff. If you notice it made in Japan, it's probably pretty good.. just a guess on that one.

Also I ALWAYS incude a VIDEO_TS (all caps) folder that is empty when I burn. The VIDEO_TS is all caps as well, and has all the files that were created when DVD2one finished it's thing.

Vernon
jenefarm@direcway.com

[wapazoid]

Great...thanks again Vernon, you've been very helpful.

[wapazoid]

Well, I was able to locate a Sony DRU-500A yesterday at a local Best Buy location. My first backup was Saving Private Ryan using SmartRipper 2.42, DVD2One, Nero and a Maxell 2x DVD-R. I must say, I was nearly shocked at the quality of DVD2One's compressed output. I did mention before that I'm very picky, and I do notice slight artifacts here and there up close. But the overall movie (considering it's original size) looks GREAT. As I'm glancing over at it now, I'm convinced that spanning the film on two DVD-R's would be a waste of a perfectly good blank. I have noticed some complaints regarding (the latest) Nero's compatibility with standalone players. I did burn this at 1X in manual UDF/ISO mode with all default setting except for "No multisession" selected and changed the volume label to PRIVATE_RYAN. I included both VIDEO_TS & AUDIO_TS folders on the DVD-R. The disc plays beautifully on a 5 year old Sony DVP-S500D, Toshiba SD-1700, Creative 16X PC-DVD-Rom, Creative 8X PC-DVD-Rom, a friends' Samsung standalone and Pioneer PC-DVD-Rom (don't have the model numbers for these). I'm not looking to start a Nero war...I've just been lucky. Anyways, DVD2One is an oustanding product (and well worth the money).
:D

[Mexman]

Hey,

Remember to finally write your dvd with Record Now by Veritas ans=d not with NERO. If you use Nero then there is a good chance that it will not work in a standalone player. If you use Veritas then it will work, also in a PS2 and X-Box.

[vljenewein]

I disagree about Nero. The latest Nero version 5.5.10.15a has fixed the compatibility issue across the board on stand alone players. Nero is now quite DVD compliant in it's burn and you can get the update at www.ahead.de or at www.nero.com I've used this latest version to burn DVD's and have tried them on many standalone to see how well they were acceptable. Have not found 1 as to date that would not play.

This info about Nero was discussed in other website based forums as well.;)

[Mexman]

Hi m8

Not sure i am running 5.5.10.0 and this is definatly not good for standalone player compatibility. I read loads of stuff on various forums and they all say that Recorn Now by Prassi is the best to use. So i took their advice and it seems to work for me. On the other hand i use Nero for loads of other stuff, but not Dvd writing...

[vljenewein]

Mexman:
Howdy m8!:)
Yep you are right about that 5.5.10.0 version. It defenitely had some problems. Great for burning anything but DVDs. Then the folks at DVD2ONE and Nero got their heads together and then Ahead (Nero) did some major revamping of their software for DVD compliance. Your 5.5.10.0 probably will give you fits with compatibility with other set top DVD players. The new downloaded 5.5.10.15a update resolves a lot of issues with burning DVD compliant discs. Nero is defenitely not the only one to burn good DVDs, and, as you pointed out, you can use Prassi Primo's program to burn a complian DVD video, along with recordnow MAX and maybe there is even some others I am not posting or aware of.

Just you might want to give nero a second chance if you have the older software and download the updates and give it a try. Seems better to get a free update than to have to purchase all new burning sofware. ;)

I've burned in 3 different modes in Nero,, DVD-Video, ISO, and UDF/ISO and all have played in my set top. The UDF/ISO seems to be a very good choice in all compatibility issues. USE leve 1, NO joliet,UDF 1.02, and ISO 9660 at least that is what I am using.

Also I suggest you might download and install the 4.71.2 ASPI layer from www.adaptec.com for SCSI. It really seems to work well with DVD Decrypter and Nero now. :D