Top video and DTS quality

[rgardias]

I just finished ripping Shrek to my hard drive with Smartripper and I have to say it was one of the easiest things I have ever done. However, it was hugh! I was left with 9.5 GB if data.

I am not interested in putting this stuff on removable media, I bought 120 GB drive just to be used as a movie library. Howevr, I don't want to piss away space.

Having said that, here is my question. What program should I use to compress the movie file and sound track if I want almost no loss in video qaulity and preserve the Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS soundtrack?

p.s. Remember I want to leave this on my hard drive so a 2 GB file would be a reasonable max.

[Mark Madness]

Well let's see. You can encode the video into DivX format. The higher the bit rate the better it will look. With my experience I always encode the audio in MP3 because it maintains high quality at a low bit rate. Therefore in this case you can go about this way:
Runtime of Shrek: 90 minutes (5400 seconds)

Encode the audio at 320 kbps MP3=211 MB

2048 MB (2GB) - 211 MB = 1837 MB for video
meaning you can have a bit rate for the video around 2787 kbps.

This should give a pretty damn good DivX movie even at a high resolution like 720 x 480.

[Enchanter]

I'm with Mark there, except for a few bits...

It never hurts to crop away the useless black bars and resize it a bit so your computer can cope with the video (720x480 DivX is a heavy tasks for a lot of systems and many can't actually cope).

MP3 format is space-efficient, though some audiophile may not take it too well. The problem with MP3s is that they remove the high-frequency bits and some details from within the audible frequency range. I can always clearly tell the difference between MP3s and Audio CDs, even if the MP3 was encoded at high bitrate. I'm always wondering if there is a format that does maintain the high frequency part. Is anyone using MP3 Pro here?

[Mark Madness]

I agree with you 100%. I always crop if the movie is in widescreen. I'm also aware if the stress of making high resolutions but I have a powerful processor (1.7 Ghz so I never have problems) I guess I should have mentioned that. I also agree that MP3 isn't best for sound but I always use it because space is a big issue for me. If you want better sound, leave it as an uncompressed PCM file. This will cost you in video though.

[rgardias]

Thanks for the tips. I used Flask MPEG with the DivX codec and it works great.

But how do I manage to keep the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack? I figured out in Flask MPEG how to seperate the stream. So I have an AVI file along with a seperate audio AC3 file.

What am I supposed to do next? do I have to manually merge them? Can i just load both into some player so I can watch my movie?

[Mark Madness]

You can convert the AC3 file into a readable wav format with another program. I use PX3 AC3 to Wav. Then with Virtual Dub, you can merge the video with the audio track and save it as one file.

[UncasMS]

Originally posted by Mark Madness
You can convert the AC3 file into a readable wav format with another program. I use PX3 AC3 to Wav. Then with Virtual Dub, you can merge the video with the audio track and save it as one file.

this of course is NOT an answer to the question how to KEEP the dolby digital 5.1 sound!!

a wave can be dolby SURRROUND with 2.0 channels but in order to keep the 5.1 signal there is no other way than to use the original ac3 and mux it with the video!

btw. px3 converter very poorly manages SURROUND information.
i doubt it actually keeps the surround signal at all.

vob2audio/besweet or even dvd2avi will give you better results.
give it a try!

[Mark Madness]

Well there you go! ( no need to be pushy )

[UncasMS]

just trying to put things straight

no offence meant.

[Mark Madness]

none taken I'm new to this stuff anyway

[rgardias]

Hmmm...I was starting to suspect that.

So I guess I am doing the right thing then by stipping out the audio into a seperate ac3 file when using Flask MPEG, correct?

If so, do you suggest I use Virtual Dub to merge the two files (video & audio) together?

BTW, thanks so much for taking the time to reply eveyone.

[UncasMS]

it's no secret i'm dont like flask much (and belive me, i have used it for quite some time - 2 years ago - and thus i think i know especially the older version good enough to base my judgement on personal experience).

therefore, i wouldnt recommend flask for audio (of course for video neither) but suggest to extract audio (ac3 in your case) with dvd2avi after you ripped the movie to your hdd.

here is how to use dvd2avi


for muxing ac3 with your avi, my first choice is NANDUB.

it is better than any vd version.

[rgardias]

That's a lot of work.

Let's say you were going to keep the movie in native MPEG 2. How wouldyou go about reducing the size of a rip (using Smartripper)with a movie like Shrek?

Even when you use movie mode you still get ALL the audio tracks and some DVD extras like storyboard.

I imagine the extras must have something to do with viewing titles and program chains. Is it just a question of experimenting to figure out where the core movie is?

As for audio tracks I have no idea how to rip out just the DTS soundtrack. you can see it in stream processing and isolate it but if you do that it access the DVD drive to play the movie so I don't get it.

All I want to do here is rip out the bare minimum (with DTS) and play in on Power DVD directly from my hard drive. No compression